The Hunger (1983), Or Bitchy Vampire Queens Forever

You haven’t known true joy until you’ve seen David Bowie play a vampire consort.

Fortunately, The Hunger is widely streaming, so you can reach your newfound, undead bliss without expending too much effort.

Also, his vampire queen—the vampiress who turned him into a vampire hundreds of years ago—is none other than Catherine Deneuve, whom you may remember as Carol from Repulsion (1965). So, it’s just a win all around on this one.

Here’s the story. It’s the 1980s, in New York City: a time and place of killer music, drugs, raves, indecent sexuality, conspicuous wealth, and dope accessories. We meet Miriam (Deneuve) and John (Bowie) as they seduce two young party-goers at a rave. Miriam and John both wear golden ankh necklaces; the film asserts, very early on, the relationship between vampiric monstrosity and the ancient Mediterranean—here, it’s a relationship with Egypt. They also both look absolutely amazing. Deneuve wears dark sunglasses in a barely-lit club, and a very structural, very beautiful black dress. And cherry red lipstick, and black silk gloves. Meanwhile, Bowie also has one dark sunglasses, and a conservative, but elegant, black suit. They stare from a slight distance at a couple dancing erotically on the dance floor, whom they eventually pick up and transport in a black limo to their swanky 1980s mansion. It’s all very chic, very goth, very sexy. Dead sexy, if you will.

(I’m sorry: I’ll try to stop. I am just so excited about Bowie as a vampire, I can hardly contain myself.)

Miriam and John each corner their marks. They seduce them slowly, sensually, luxuriously. But suddenly, each yanks the golden ankh from their necklace—it’s a concealed tiny dagger. They each slash the throat of their mark with the ankh. On a dime, the scene turns from erotic to brutal violence—it’s intercut with strange scenes of monkeys bleeding. John and Miriam drink their fill; they wash the blood off their necklaces and hands. End of scene.

When we next meet them, they’re in the shower, kissing and confirming their undying love for each other. John asks her—somewhat imploringly—to confirm that they will love each other “forever and ever.” Rather than answering him, she begins kissing him.

Alarm! Erotic power imbalance alert! Yes, we all know it: when one partner asks another for a form of assurance about love, and the other answers back by kissing instead of speaking, that doesn’t augur well for the partner seeking assurances.

And indeed, that’s the case here. Over the course of the film, we learn that Miriam—whose name is unmistakably Old Testamental—has been a vampiress since she was some kind of ancient Egyptian queen. She converted John to be an undead consort for her hundreds of years prior. He has always hoped and thought and assumed that he was of the same ontological order as she was—that is, he’s always hoped that, since she is immortal, and she converted him to be like her, he will be immortal, too.

Of course, as we all know from the book of Genesis, being “made in the image” of an immortal being does not necessarily confer immortality itself. This is why you should always read the fine print before agreeing to let someone convert you into being an undead. Pro tip.

Notwithstanding the power imbalance, Miriam and John appear to have a loving, passionate, intimate marriage. But something is wrong. John appears to be aging. We see shots of John staring into the mirror at the fine lines that are suddenly developing around his eyes. In a panic, Miriam goes to see a scientist named Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who is studying the science of aging. She is desperate to be able to halt what she already knows to be the progressive effects of decay on John.

John realizes Miriam is holding back, that she knows more than she’s letting on about his condition. “How long is it going to take,” he asks. “How long did the others take?” John is aware that he’s far from the first long-term consort that Miriam has taken; he’s asking her to trawl through her own memory of how quickly her past lovers decayed away. Bowie plays the scene elegantly—of fucking course he does, because he is perfect in every way—and we can feel the waves of betrayal rolling off his body. She knew all along that there was no “forever and ever” for them, that John would have an expiration date, even though she would not. She tells him she prayed that things would be different for John somehow, but her promises ring false. She used him. “Who’s to keep you company when I’m gone? I’m sure you’ve thought about that.” He is angry in a way that only the dying can be: angry with a profound, aching sense of powerlessness. Anger that knows it will never dissipate, because it won’t have time, nor to heal. She tells him she thinks—based on her past experience with other lovers—that he has a few days left. It will go very, very fast.

I want to pause for a second to think about the emotional power of this story. We’ve all seen or read—and some probably lived through—heart-wrenching sudden loss. But every living human—or, at least, every living human past the age of reason—knows they are going to die. It sucks, but we expect it. John, in this film, has been expecting not to die. And now he is, and very, very fast. It’s excruciating to watch the vigor, youth, and power drain out of his body, and the elegant confidence drain out of his voice, his demeanor.

John goes to see Dr. Roberts himself, and reveals that he is now covered in liver spots, but is only 30 years old: “I’m a young man,” he protests. She feels compassion for him, and has him wait for her while she goes to a meeting. When she returns a few hours later, he has aged maybe 20 additional years in the interim—he looks about 75 now. In a rage that the doctor hadn’t hurried to help him, he leaves and goes home.

At home, he is visited by a teenaged neighbor girl—a violinist—who sometimes accompanies John on cello and Miriam on piano. John has already worked out that Miriam—who is bisexual—has already selected this girl as John’s replacement, as Miriam’s next companion “forever and ever.” In a fit of jealousy and hungry, he kills and drains her.

Now, at this point, it’s worth stopping to point out the incredible feminist experiment that’s going on in this film. Western culture tends to view a woman’s aging process as disgusting, disappointing, and something to reverse at all possible costs—this is why the cosmetics industry is a multi-billion dollar mini-economy, and why plastic surgery and botox are happening in younger and younger women, all the time. Women grow up believing—knowing—that they will somehow age faster and more consequentially than men will. Women routinely get romantically replaced by younger women, because older women have rapidly decaying social and romantic value.

This movie turns all of that on its head. Miriam only gets sexier and more powerful as she “ages”; she’s basically the vampire equivalent of George Clooney. John, by contrast, withers away, and will be replaced by a younger lover. He, taking on the role of a spurned older woman, takes revenge on his fate by dispatching the younger competition. He is the jealous lover, the jealous wife. And he’s jealous because he knows he can no longer keep the attention of the true master of the house, who is, of course, Miriam.

Eventually, when Miriam says she can’t give John any more time, he asks her to kill him, to release him. At this point, John is totally decrepit. Miriam reveals what is the true, ultimate horror of this film: her lovers do not die. Instead, they exist in a perpetual state of rot, of decay, of decrepitude. She tells him, “In the earth, in the rotting wood, in the eternal darkness, we will see, and hear, and feel.” This is the stuff of nightmares. And she has consigned him to it knowingly: a perpetual, unending, living death.

Miriam carries John up the stairs to the attic, holding him in the same posture a groom uses to carry a bride over the threshold of their home, once again, iconally reversing gender norms. The attic of their mansion, it turns out, is full of sarcophagi, each of which contains a prior lover of Miriam’s—each existing in an advanced state of decay, but each with their consciousness fully intact. She places John in a coffin, urging the still-sentient rotting beings in the adjacent coffins to “be kind to him" and to “comfort him.” She then abandons him, going in search of her next “companion.”

Her next mark is Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who calls to try to connect with John. Soon, Sarah finds herself drinking sherry at Miriam’s house, while Miriam serenades her with beautiful piano music. Sarah asks what she’s playing, and Miriam says, “It’s Lakme, by Delibes. Lakme is a Brahmin princess in India. She has a slave named Mallika.” Miriam is providing Sarah with the metacommentary on what’s about to happen between them: she—the all-powerful princess—is about to enslave Sarah.

Next thing Sarah knows, she is taking off her blouse once it gets stained with sherry. Immediately thereafter, Sarah and Miriam—the two Old Testament-named women—repair to the bedroom for a glorious sexcapade. With “Lakme” playing in the background all the while. While they make love, Miriam surreptitiously bites her own arm and Sarah’s combining their blood in Sarah’s body, thereby initiating the process of converting her to vampire.

Miriam does not—in any way—elicit Sarah’s consent for this, though it certainly appeared she had done so with John. So, now we’ve got this vampiress functioning as a deceitful spouse, who callously dispatches with her many concubines over time, in favor of younger models, and we’ve got her functioning as a rapist and—in effect—murderer. I say “raping” because, even though Sarah definitely consented to the sex, she in no way consented to being infected with a blood-borne disease, which is precisely what happens to her.

Once Dr. Sarah has realized what’s happened, she is none too pleased. She returns to Miriam’s home, and shouts at her for poisoning her blood. Miriam responds violently, by throwing Sarah against the wall, and then tossing her easily across the room. So, if you’re keeping track, that’s like five separate kinds of gender-based violence, all being committed by a woman. Next up: Miriam is going to get Sarah hooked on a drug: human blood. So that’s lying, gaslighting, endangering, burying alive, adultery, rape, deliberately transmitting a lethal STD, physical battery, and causing someone else to develop a drug dependency. Miriam is the worst romantic partner in the history of ever.

Much of the rest of the movie can be read as an allegory for drug addiction in the 1980s. In fact, this is how Sarandon has said in interviews that she thinks of the movie. Sarah Roberts looks and acts very much like someone in withdrawal: groggy, dysregulated, sweating, trembling, unable to get out of bed, wracked with stomach pains. Until she caves to what she craves: she drains her own boyfriend, drinking his blood to the last drop. Then she floats around Miriam’s mansion like someone high on ecstasy or heroin, looking happy, suffused with pleasure, almost orgasmic.

But when Sarah realizes what she’s now signed up for—against her will—she doesn’t want to live as an addict. So, while pretending to passionately kiss Miriam, Sarah slits her own throat with the ankh, rather than accepting eternity—or at least a very long life—by the side of a murdering vampiress. Horrified, Miriam tries to save her, but to no avail. She carries Sarah, as she had carried John only days before, up to her attic of undead lovers. But evidently, Sarah’s act of self-harm has somehow broken the spell.

All of the other vampire lovers are out of their tombs, and they attack Miriam in vengeance for what she’s done to all of them, grabbing her beautiful face with their withered hands, coming at her through the dark. It is perhaps the most goth scene I have ever seen. in eventually causing her to decay into a horrible, twisted mummy herself. Once Miriam is decaying, her undead and undying lovers all collapse into crumbs. They are released from the ultimate horror, which in this film is eternal life-in-death. The horrific, predatory sexuality of Miriam is thus destroyed, forever and ever. The world is safe again.

Mais non. In the final scene, we are at a new location, and we see Sarah, very much undead and well, kissing her own new paramour. Sarah keeps with her the sarcophagus of Miriam, who is now in the position her own old lovers were: undead, undying, but in a state of advanced decay.

So there are two horror hangovers in this film. The first is the truly abject notion of living forever in a state of conscious decay. The second is the idea that, even when one particular vampiress queen is incapacitated, she will simply be replaced by another. The world will never be rid of this blood-sucking, monstrous bitch: she will simply change bodies.

Put otherwise, this film offers up a fantasy rendering of what the world might look like from the vantage point not of a predatory patriarch—we see enough of those on the TV every day—but of a predatory matriarch. A woman of profound entitlement and selfishness, bound and determined to ride roughshod over the wishes and basic human rights of all those around her, who sees herself as the master over those she loves and who understands them as slaves in relation to her ancient, insurmountable, self-justifying will.

STAY TUNED: we’ll shift from this theme of the terrifying matriarch to a series of posts about ECO-HORROR, where Mother Earth turns out to be…not so maternal.