_poster.jpg){kind=link}
The Hunger is a 1983 erotic horror film directed by Tony Scott in his directorial debut, starring Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon. An international co-production of the United Kingdom and United States, the film is a loose adaptation of the 1981 novel of the same name by Whitley Strieber, with a screenplay by Ivan Davis and Michael Thomas. Its plot concerns a love triangle between a doctor who specializes in sleep and aging research (Sarandon) and a vampire couple (Deneuve and Bowie). The film's special effects were handled by make-up effects artist Dick Smith.
After premiering at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, The Hunger was released in the spring of 1983 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Though it received a mixed critical response, the film has accrued a cult following within the goth subculture in the years since its release.
Plot[]
Miriam Blaylock is a vampire, seen in flashbacks drinking from victims in Ancient Egypt, promising specially chosen humans eternal life as her vampire lovers. Her current companion is John, a talented cellist whom she met in 18th-century France. In a nightclub in New York City, they connect with a young couple whom they bring home and feed upon by slashing their throats with bladed ankh pendants. The victims' bodies are disposed of in an incinerator in the basement of Miriam and John's elegant New York townhouse, where they pose as a wealthy couple that teaches classical music.
Now, 200 years after he was turned, John begins suffering insomnia and ages years in only a few days. John realizes Miriam's promise, that periodically killing and feeding upon human victims would give him immortality, was only partially true; he will have eternal life, but not eternal youth. He seeks Dr. Sarah Roberts, a research gerontologist who, with her colleagues Charlie and Tom (also Sarah's boyfriend), are studying the effects of rapid aging in primates, hoping she can reverse his accelerating decrepitude. Sarah assumes that John is a hypochondriac or mentally unbalanced and ignores his pleas for help. As the angered John leaves the clinic, Sarah is horrified to see how rapidly he is aging and offers her help, but John rebuffs her.
One of the Blaylocks' students, Alice Cavender, drops by their townhouse to say that she cannot attend the next day's lesson. In a last attempt to regain his youth, John murders and feeds upon Alice, whom Miriam was grooming to be her next consort when she came of age. However, her blood does nothing to restore him, so John begs Miriam to kill him and release him from the agony of his decrepit body. Weeping, Miriam tells him there is no release. After John collapses in the basement, Miriam carries him into the attic, which is filled with coffins and places him in one. Like John, Miriam's former vampire lovers suffer an eternal living death, helplessly moaning and trapped in their coffins. Sarah comes looking for John at his home, and Miriam claims that her husband is in Switzerland. Sarah asks to be updated on John's condition. Later, a police official comes to the residence, looking for the missing Alice. Miriam feigns ignorance.
Sarah returns to Miriam's home to again inquire about John. Miriam, who feels alone after losing both John and Alice, initiates a sexual encounter with Sarah, during which Miriam bites her arm and some of Miriam's blood enters Sarah's body. Miriam attempts to initiate Sarah in the necessities of life as a vampire, but Sarah is repulsed by the thought of subsisting on human blood.
Sarah returns home and goes out to dinner with Tom, who becomes argumentative when she rejects food and is not forthcoming about her three-and-a half-hour disappearance to the Blaylock residence. The next day at the lab, the team investigates Sarah's blood and reveal she has some kind of infection, in the form of a foreign and inhuman type of blood, that is taking over her own. Confused, Sarah returns to confront Miriam. Still reeling from the effects of her vampiric transformation, Sarah allows Miriam to put her to bed in a guest room.
Tom arrives at Miriam's home, looking for Sarah. Miriam shows him to the upstairs bedroom, where Sarah, starving and desperate, kills him. Miriam assures her that she will soon forget what she was. As the two kiss, Sarah drives Miriam's ankh knife into her own throat and holds her mouth over Miriam's, forcing Miriam to ingest her blood. Miriam carries Sarah upstairs, intending to place her with her other boxed lovers. A rumbling occurs and the mummies of Miriam's previous lovers, including John, emerge from their coffins, driving her over the edge of the balcony. As she rapidly ages, the mummies become dust.
The police investigator returns to find a real estate agent showing the townhouse to prospective buyers. Sarah is now in London with two new companions, standing on the balcony of a flat in the Barbican Estate's Cromwell Tower, admiring the view as dusk falls. From a draped coffin in a storage room, Miriam continually cries Sarah's name.