The Hunger (1983 film)

Lore & Background

The plot concerns Miriam Blaylock, a vampire who bestows immortality and apparently eternal youth on her lovers. However, the latter proves unreliable, and her lover John undergoes rapid ageing after 200 years. He seeks help from Dr. Sarah Roberts, a gerontology researcher, but is rebuffed. Miriam later initiates a sexual encounter with Sarah, transferring some of her blood and beginning Sarah's vampiric transformation. Sarah eventually kills herself with Miriam's ankh knife, forcing Miriam to ingest her blood, leading to Miriam's rapid ageing and the destruction of her previous lovers.

Reader's Guide

The Hunger received mixed critical response upon its release, with reviewers like Roger Ebert calling it 'an agonizingly bad vampire movie' and criticizing its emphasis on cinematography over story. Despite this, it has gained a cult following within the goth subculture. The film was nominated for two Saturn Awards for Best Costume and Best Make-up. Its special effects were handled by make-up effects artist Dick Smith. The final scene of Sarah on a balcony was added at the studio's behest to allow for possible sequels, a decision Susan Sarandon later regretted as it contradicted the film's established rules. David Bowie expressed concern that the film was 'perversely bloody at some points.'

Did You Know?

• The film features English gothic rock band Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in the opening nightclub scene.
• The two youths who harass Sarah at a phone booth are played by John Pankow and an uncredited extra; Willem Dafoe does not appear in this film.

A Director's Debut in Erotic Horror

Tony Scott stepped behind the camera for the first time with The Hunger, a 1983 erotic horror film that marked his entry into feature filmmaking. The picture was an international co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom, released in the spring of that year by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Its screenplay, penned by Ivan Davis and Michael Thomas, drew a loose adaptation from Whitley Strieber's 1981 novel of the same name, reshaping the source material into something more visually lush and sexually charged. The cast assembled three major international stars: Catherine Deneuve as the ancient vampire Miriam, David Bowie as her aging cello-playing companion John, and Susan Sarandon as the gerontology researcher Dr. Sarah Roberts. Make-up effects artist Dick Smith handled the film's special effects, crafting the rapid-aging transformations and the mummified states of Miriam's trapped lovers. For Scott, this debut established a tone of gothic sensuality and baroque imagery that would influence his subsequent work, even as the film's critical reception at the time remained decidedly mixed.

The Mythology of Unreliable Immortality

At the heart of The Hunger lies a vampire mythology that subverts the traditional promise of eternal life. Miriam Blaylock, first glimpsed in flashbacks draining victims in Ancient Egypt, has spent centuries bestowing what she calls immortality upon her chosen lovers. Her current companion, John, a cellist she met in eighteenth-century France, has lived for two hundred years under the belief that feeding on human blood grants him both eternal life and eternal youth. When John begins suffering insomnia and ages years in mere days, the cruel truth emerges: his immortality is real, but his youth is not. He will live forever, but in a state of accelerating decrepitude. His desperate search for Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher studying rapid ageing in primates, sets the film's central conflict in motion. Miriam's attic, filled with coffins housing her previous lovers who moan helplessly in a living death, becomes the film's most haunting image—a graveyard of the eternally young who were never truly young at all.

Gothic Aesthetic and Cult Legacy

Despite a mixed critical reception upon its 1983 release, The Hunger has grown into one of the most revered films within the goth subculture. This enduring appeal is rooted in the film's sumptuous visual language: the elegant New York townhouse where Miriam and John pose as wealthy classical-music teachers, the bladed ankh pendants used to slit their victims' throats, and the incinerator hidden in the basement where bodies are disposed of. The opening credits feature the English gothic rock band Bauhaus performing their single "Bela Lugosi's Dead" at the nightclub, with Peter Murphy visible onscreen—an early and iconic intersection of goth music and cinema. Cameo appearances by Willem Dafoe and John Pankow as youths harassing Sarah at a phone booth, and by silent-film star Bessie Love in what would be her final screen appearance, add layers of pop-culture texture. For goth audiences, the film's blend of eroticism, baroque horror, and melancholy made it a touchstone, a picture that critics initially dismissed but that subculture embraced as a kind of sacred text.

The Studio-Mandated Ending and Its Aftermath

The final sequence of The Hunger—Sarah standing on the balcony of the Barbican Estate's Cromwell Tower in London, admiring the dusk with two new companions—was not the conclusion the filmmakers originally intended. It was added at the studio's behest to leave the narrative open-ended and to keep the door open for potential sequels. Susan Sarandon later expressed deep regret over this change, arguing that it undermined the film's central thematic question about whether one would choose eternal life while remaining an addict. In her view, the studio's decision to spare Sarah's life rendered the rules the film had painstakingly established—Miriam's indestructibility, the irreversible nature of her transformation—meaningless. The image of Miriam, trapped in a draped coffin in a storage room, endlessly crying Sarah's name, carries a tragic weight that the balcony scene dilutes. The ending thus remains a point of contention among fans, a reminder that commercial pressures can fracture a film's internal logic and leave its most powerful thematic statements unresolved.

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