Ill-Informed Gadfly

My friend Violet Glaze recommended this movie to my wife because she likes vampires: not “Twilight” ninnies but the sort that suck blood and have sex. Before we popped in the DVD, I had no idea that “The Hunger,” released in 1983 and said by some to be a cult classic, was also Tony Scott’s first feature. I don’t think Tony Scott ever sets out to make a cult classic, although he’s arguably done it several times unintentionally. (His second movie was “Top Gun.”)

I spend more time thinking and writing about Tony Scott than is probably healthy. I’m fascinated by his mix of gifts and shortcomings. And they’re all on display in his precocious debut. His signature is a mix of astonishing technical virtuosity and equally stunning vapidity. His work spills forth with impressive but empty visual flourishes. As I see it, there are two recurring goals in his movies: to capture the zeitgeist and to goose the audience in any way possible. His big brother, Ridley Scott, occasionally has loftier aims and has been rewarded with Oscars and other mainstream accolades. Ridley was at his best at the beginning of his career, when he made two justly legendary movies: “Alien” and “Blade Runner.” (Although the latter, with its endless series of director’s cuts, has become overrated. Watch it more than once and you might realize how lugubrious it is.) These films earned Ridley the lasting respect of critics and cineastes, while Tony has never quite repaired the reputation he established with his contributions to 1980s culture: “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop II.” (Before Michael Bay, there was Tony Scott.) Since that decade, Ridley’s films have veered frequently into self-important bloat, while Tony keeps his lean and mean. The younger brother is more likely to appall. That’s probably why I enjoy his movies more, even when they’re terrible.

“The Hunger” is not terrible. Typical for Scott, it’s unconcerned with conventional notions of good taste, and that’s what you want in a vampire movie. It begins with a coked-out mashup of incoherent cross-cutting: an early-MTV-style musical sequence, primate research and a seduction by vampires, thrown together with little purpose and less sense. The sequence succeeds only in establishing “The Hunger” as a product of its time — an obsession for Scott. His use of aggressively of-the-moment music, fashion and technology, of course, only makes the movie look more dated in retrospect, but I’ve never gotten the sense that Scott is concerned about shelf life. He directs like a shark: always moving forward.

After the gonzo opening, “The Hunger” settles into a more sane rhythm, and the elements of a plot begin to emerge: Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and her lover, John (David Bowie), centuries-old vampires both, live in elegant, dimly lighted splendor in a vast Manhattan townhome. They become aware of research on aging by an ambitious young doctor, Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who has successfully toyed with the biological clocks of primates, manipulating them into extended youth until their age ultimately catches up with them. This research is of particular interest to John, who like Sarah’s monkeys is beginning to show his age — rapidly. His decline is precipitous, and Sarah doesn’t comprehend the gravity of his condition until it’s too late to save him. Ultimately, though, Sarah’s line of work proves an elaborate red herring, a pretext to set up the central tale: her seduction by the omnisexual Miriam. Clearly, Miriam targets her not because of her intellect or expertise but because she looks like Susan Sarandon. By the way, John does not go quietly — before he deteriorates into little more than an animated corpse, he kills and drinks the blood of his neighbor, an androgynous girl of around 12 who comes over to play the violin with Miriam. The girl’s death, like Sarah’s profession, is gratuitous, tethered only loosely to the story. Like I said: those in search of good taste ought to look elsewhere. I’m certain some aficionados of classical music also won’t appreciate how Scott raids familiar chestnuts to underline key scenes, including the central seduction sequence, which he punctuates with ample nudity. Thank you, Susan Sarandon, for your lack of inhibitions. (Deneuve, a gorgeous 39 at the time of the movie’s release, is more demure and appears to have employed a body double.)

“The Hunger” starts out manic, gets languid and then goes nuts again, with a schlock-horror finale in which Miriam, Sarah and the audience confront the horrible truth of what happens to Miriam’s old lovers. Throughout, it is an exercise in high style, from the stately music to the shadowy lighting to the entwinement of naked bodies. Scott sets out to create a mood of gold-leafed eroticism, and the images carry his signature nervous energy. I suppose you could read the film as a meditation on feminine power, a daring inversion of the conventional gender roles (dashing rake, wilting damsel) that traditionally populate vampire films. But as a critic with a working knowledge of Tony Scott, I would venture that these ideas hardly crossed his mind, or if they did, they have virtually no impact on his cinema. (A thought that might have danced around in his brain: “Hee hee, lesbian vampires!”) “The Hunger” is completely meaningless, executed without feeling or insight. It’s also thoroughly entertaining. This is what I expect in a Scott film.

After “Top Gun” and the “Beverly Hills Cop” sequel, Scott made some desultory thrillers before teaming up with Quentin Tarantino, another sensationalist with a suspect moral code, for the bloody pulp fantasia “True Romance.” Scott then entered what I would call his respectable period, working with A-listers for the submarine thriller “Crimson Tide” (Tarantino jazzed up the dialogue) and two well-received — if, once again, shallow — espionage films: “Enemy of the State” and “Spy Game.” In 2004, he went off the deep end with “Man on Fire,” easily his most appalling movie and the one that established the manic style — jagged editing, crazy subtitles, whooshing helicopter shots — in which he continues to operate. (The first five minutes of “The Hunger” offer a preview of what Scott would become.) The best example of this period is his loopy time-travel thriller “Deja Vu” (2006), which stages a terrorist attack in post-Katrina New Orleans because, hey, Louisiana offered some sweet incentives! In “The Hunger,” as in all his movies, the man does not hold back, and I think his unwavering enthusiasm is what I admire the most about him. No matter the quality of the material or the relative importance of an individual scene, you can be sure that he will direct the hell out of it.