Hello, Paul.

Hello, Javi. The ominousness abounds.

You said forever, Paul. You said forever and ever.

And ever. For those of you- Wow! For those of you who have not yet stepped foot into our YouTube video version, this is obviously our first ever Spring Break special.

Yes.

But we're also dealing with vampires today. So it's an interesting conundrum, collision.

We're not just dealing- Yeah, go ahead.

I also have an appropriate beverage for today because I figured, you know, it's Spring Break. It's vampires. So, you know, rosé all day, baby. But it's a tall glass.

Paul, this is Paul-

It's quite a movie. Quite a movie.

Yeah. This is, this is, I think, one of the biggest surprises we've had. So obviously, we are talking about, we're talking about Tony Scott's The Hunger. Yes. And it is, Paul, this movie should just be called Shoulder Pads and Cigarettes, right? I mean, it is just an orgy-astic kaleidoscope of the 1980s. And I adored every second of it. I don't know how you feel. How do you feel?

Javi, I am so happy that you are so happy that we did not pick Videodrome.

So happy.

We had a bit of a dilemma, but at the end of the day, this was a no-brainer. How could we not pick The Hunger? Tony Scott, incredibly stylized, incredible, oh my God, opening with nothing short of Bauhaus.

Yes.

I want to say this movie makes Adrian Lyne look like Frederick Weissman, okay? I mean, this looks like so stylish. It's Adrian Lyne famously directed Nine and a Half Weeks and Fatal Attraction, guys, okay? Go on, Paul, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I had not seen this in ages. I did not get anywhere near this movie when it came out in my youth. It was a forbidden fruit that I could only tantalizingly imagine its wonders from afar. But boy, howdy, it is this, oh, what a yummy, juicy treat of a movie.

Look, I saw this movie on cable. I'm sure everybody was my age and your age when that movie came out. And at the time, it really was just about, I mean, I hate to say this, but it was just about the nudity and the sex scenes and all that stuff. And I sort of disposed of it after that. And I got to tell you, like, I'm, oh, God, I just, I'm just crazy. You know what? Let's just toss it to the theme and get going.

Yeah, we got, let's go.

All right. My name is Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is...

Multiplex Overthruster! Summer of 82.

All right, Paul, let me just go through it. Let's just get through it, because we got to start talking about this movie.

Oh, yes.

From the beginning. Okay, so basically, The Hunger is a vampire movie based apparently in a Whitley Stryber book, which is hilarious, because Whitley Stryber is such a dad author, and this is such a young person-stylized movie.

But what was the other book he did around the same time? Communion.

Yes. Communion. Yeah.

Wolfen.

Oh, that's right.

Yes.

That's right. Both of which were made into very... Actually, I don't know the movie Communion very well, but Wolfen certainly also a very stylish, very interesting movie.

And the Holy Trinity of aliens, vampires, and werewolves.

Yeah.

I like that. Wow.

So he's a zombie. He's a zombie away from the egot of horror.

Yes.

So guys, The Hunger. Miriam is an old Egyptian vampire. She lives in 1980s New York with her lover, John. It's clear that John is the partner that she has turned and the one that is her companion. Together they feed at goth clubs in New York in the dead of night. And they feed because she's an Egyptian vampire, not with fangs, but with little knives concealed in their Egyptian ankh necklaces that they wear. However, something is horribly missed. David Bowie's character John is aging rapidly. He goes to seek out the help of famous anti-aging Dr. Susan Sarandon, who works at the famous people, anti-aging famous folk clinic, where they... I don't know what they do there. They're just sort of like all-famous scientists.

They experiment on a lot of monkeys.

They do. They kill monkeys and they do TV interviews and they smoke a lot.

Incessantly.

Incessantly. It's so good.

Oh my God. So much.

Unrepentant smoking is the best thing about the 1980s. I will go to my grave saying that my father is an oncologist. No, my father is an oncologist. I was born to hate cigarettes. And this is me. Yes, Brad.

If an anti-aging doctor smokes a lot, does that endorse smoking?

Yes.

I mean, look, it was the 80s.

Here's the thing, Brad, from what we know from science, the planet might as well have been smoking. So really smoke him if you got him. Anyway. John dies of old age, but not before trying to kill or killing this young woman who is weirdly their piano student.

I wouldn't go so far to say dies, but we'll get to that.

And then it is revealed that all of Katharine knows no- That's what goes for that. I'm recapping the movie.

It's a great reveal. It's the biggest reveal.

Okay, we'll talk about it.

It's the midpoint of the movie. All right, all right.

I won't say it, but it's a recap. I got to talk about the plot, Paul. Okay. Anyway, the point being, Miriam seduces us. I think Sarandon's name is Sarah, but I just call her Susan Sarandon because she's Susan Sarandon.

Yes, Dr. Sarah Roberts.

Susan Sarandon after David Bowie's death turns her into a vampire. Susan Sarandon in a small act of rebellion tries to kill herself, and wow, and then the plot thins. So, Paul, where did you first see The Hunger?

I think The Hunger may possibly be the movie that Cable was created for. It was, I believe, yeah, one late night Cable adventure. I don't think I ever got, I would have had a chance to have rented it without knowledge, but yeah, what a feast.

This movie is like, it's like a Skinimax. If you could just put all of Skinimax, all that was good about Skinimax into a movie, it is pretty much this, right?

It's a lot. It's a lot. And I also appreciate it as with coming out within a year of Tony Scott's brother Ridley Scott's iconic Blade Runner. Yes. This kind of makes a great bookend to it. It's an interesting companion piece, certainly in terms of style, aesthetic and approach and kind of blurring the lines between. I mean, it literally starts like a music video.

It's interesting because both Ridley Scott and Tony Scott cut their teeth on commercials and music videos, right? And their aesthetic is very similar on the surface. But Tony Scott has his own thing he's doing. And I think he's a really interesting underrated director, but he also wasn't much more of a populist director.

Yeah.

I mean, his movies were a lot sort of more kind of like grind housey than Ridley's, you know?

Yeah. And what also struck me and we need to ring the bell. But one of the overarching things that struck me was how aggressively stylized this film is, not just in terms of the filming, but in terms of very impressionistic, chaotic editing. That makes it a little challenging to penetrate and grasp. But I think also does an effective job of kind of covering for a relatively simplistic plot. But is so evocative.

I will tell you this, and just in a little bit of a pivot, I watched Sinners this weekend, which is just a great movie.

Wanted to get to that.

Yes. But also a movie that also has a pretty simple plot. What I thought was interesting between these two movies is how much of their time they each are.

Yes.

I mean, The Hunger might as well be if you took the 80s and boiled them down to their essence and put it in a syringe and stuck it in your temple.

That's this movie. And then you look at, I mean, literally, Maybe stick it somewhere else, but yes, yes.

No, but I see this movie literally as the bridge between Liquid Sky, right? And something like Blade Runner, which was a summer movie, you know? Liquid Sky, total cult movie. This movie is kind of in the middle. It's not quite a cult movie, though it is, and it's not quite a mainstream entertainment, though it is. Sinners, to me, is a really interesting movie because it is a total mainstream entertainment, but it is so much of its time. And when you look at how the style in Sinners you literally see how much digital editing, drones, and the ability to use digital editing to put camera shots together seamlessly has changed the language of film, whereas this movie relies so much on editing and on cuts. And I think it's just a fascinating thing to kind of look at these two vampire movies from different times and see just how much they both reflect the cinematic language of their time.

Yes. And with that, I think it's the perfect time to ring the bell.

Ring the bell thing. God, I love this. I love this movie. Paul, Paul. One of my favorite singers of all time is Peter Murphy.

Yes.

He's also probably my personal icon of male beauty. He's like nine feet tall, vampire skinny, and sings like this, you know. And he's the first thing you see in this movie.

Quite a statement.

Holy crap. But he's also behind like Chainlink, which I didn't know if he was sort of a digital grid or not at the beginning, but then he kind of puts his hands through it as he performs.

Yeah. It's very strange and creepy. And just immediately this movie says, we're going to be weird. And you're either along for the ride, you're either all in, like join us at this weirdo club or it's not for you. Like if you aren't, if you don't get it right at the beginning. And it's interesting just speaking also in terms of the cinematic conversation across time between different vampire movies. The opening club scene here, where you see suspiciously numerous characters wearing sunglasses inside, also reminds me of the iconic opening club scene in Blade. Obviously it goes in a very different direction, but clearly there's a connection there. But as you mentioned, so much smoking in this movie, so many shadows cast by blinds.

Yes, oh my God. But it's sort of like that, also so much film noir lighting. Yeah. So many times you see like a shaft of light across David Bowie's eyes or something like that, and it's so... I mean, like I said, this movie is also in conversation with Blade Runner because Blade Runner is a film noir, and this movie has a lot of the... In fact, this movie leans into a lot of the film noir tropes even more because it's got many more shafts of light around people's eyes and things like that, you know?

Yes, but it is this remix of noir through 80s music video aesthetic, and it's...

By the way, while at the same time seeing some of that aesthetic, because this is 1984, MTV had only been out for like, what, two years in the suburbs at least? Yeah.

So this was cutting edge at the moment. It was avant-garde.

83.

Yeah. And anyway, so what better way to kick off 1983, as we have a brief rest stop on our way to the summer of 83? I couldn't be more excited. I'm so delighted. I was betting you were going to have this response to the film, and I'm so happy.

No, no, listen, I'm shocked that I never revisited this film, you know, because it is just so I mean, it's just so stylish. But you know what movie really reminded me of more than anything else? Highlander.

Yes.

Because like Highlander, you know, Highlander was directed by Russell Mulcahy, who directed Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf and Save a Prayer.

Yeah.

Some of the most iconic videos of the 1980s, too.

Yeah.

And it also has flashbacks to the distant past, like this movie does, because it's a vampire movie.

And some great cuts, transitions.

Exactly.

There's one beautiful one in this film I love.

Yeah. There's a weird continuum between, you know, this movie and Highlander and Blade Runner. And there's a couple of these movies in the early 80s, where those music video directors were starting to kind of creep into film and back and commercial directors are getting into videos and going, it's an amazing time.

Oh, yeah.

It really is.

Yeah. Yeah.

So exciting. And so we have, yeah, we have this opening club scene, pulsing music and vibes and Peter Murphy and Bauhaus singing their iconic iconic.

This movie is the stairway to heaven of Goth. Okay. I'm sorry. The song and it's called Bella Lugosi's Death. Bella Lugosi's Dead. It's Bauhaus, Peter Murphy's lead singer. The song is about the actual song is about 47 minutes long, which is kind of interesting because the lyrics are just, you know, reinforcing the fact that Bella Lugosi's Dead.

It's just to make sure you get it.

He's no longer with us, he has passed away. You know, it's like it just goes. That Belfrisa are empty, the castles are dead. I mean, it's just literally all about he's making sure you, you got the memo that he's dead. Yeah. And it goes through the entire opening credits. Paul, the only thing in this movie that I would classify as cheesy.

Oh.

Because everything else is high style is the rapidly approaching title, The Hunger.

Oh, yes.

You know how it kind of streaks toward you?

Yes. Yes. It's so great. It's so great. I love it. But it also just screams 1983.

Like, in a way, in a way, in a way that the rest of the movie, the rest of the movie screams 1983, but not in the same way. This is the rest of the movie screaming like, like the cheesy shit. And this and then it goes into all the super modernistic, awesome shit. So it's great.

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul, do go on.

Okay. So, so there's something going on in this club scene. There's clearly this weirdness with like people with the sunglasses, where they were wearing sunglasses in the dark in the Star Club, pulsing music. We transition to this swanky home and I might also say they get to the swanky home in the, in the, in the car from The Matrix. Yes.

It's the same car that I think it's the same car. It's a continental suicide door car that Jane Mansfield died in, I think. I mean, that's what it looks like to me. And it's gorgeous. It's like, oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's just this weird, this movie's just dripping with style right from the outset.

And did you notice, by the way, I'm so sorry. I know you're trying to recap the movie.

No, no, no. I'm so happy you're excited.

My next note here is even the movements are 1980s. Did you notice how in this movie, especially in those first 10 minutes and the first 10 minutes have barely any dialogue.

Yes.

Bowie, De Nerve, like everybody in the movie looks like they're in a modern dance like thing. They're all just like, like their movements look like they themselves are in slow motion and like they themselves are sort of like modern dance marionettes. I mean, just even the way they move is so stylized.

It's great. It's great. And the way that they are dressed and styled and lit and shot, it is just delicious. But yeah, we're introduced sort of visually with this couple, the Blaylocks, Catherine De Nerve and David Bowie, who looks spectacular.

Oh, my God, Becky.

They have lured a couple of very kind of mod club victims to their, this pad. And one being Anne Magnusson, who's just amazing.

From Making Mr. Right and from Clear and Pressing Danger. Yes, of course.

Yes. And we also then it's and it gets starts getting freaky really fast with inexplicable in the moment, intercutting to like screaming howler monkeys in a laboratory. And we're like, what the hell is going on?

They seduce the man and the woman separately. Yes, yes. It goes off with the woman. The nerve goes off with the man. They're seducing them separately. And we're intercutting with shrieking howler monkeys. And what's you know, there's an intercut of some human beings, but I couldn't quite figure out what who they were. Did you did you get that?

No, it's an inscrutable mystery. But then we also see that both of the Blaylocks have an ankh symbol necklace that contains a secret hidden blade. And it is with that that they dispatch their respective victims.

Slash their jugular veins. And then that's how they feed. By the way, the first thing about this movie that I love is that it does kind of take a bunch of tropes and sort of turn them upside down. And this is an interesting one. It's vampires, but they don't feed with fangs, which I thought was just because they don't exclusively feed with fangs.

There is a feeding scene, but we don't actually see fangs, but we see bite marks.

I mean, yeah, they still suck the blood with their mouths, obviously, yeah. But they don't have fangs.

The principle way, yeah, it's very interesting that they have this device, this kind of mechanism that provides a little bit of an impersonal distance to the proceedings. Then we kind of cut, the intercutting continues as we meet Dr. Roberts, Sarah Roberts, Susan Sarandon.

I want to stop again for a second because as the victims die, there's two things that happen. One of them is the intercuts to the drips of blood.

Oh, yes.

Bowie and Sarandon wash their hands afterwards in the sink, is the end of the montage. And it's these lovingly shot drops of blood.

Lots of great inserts.

Oh my God, like just flowing down the ceramic of the sink. It is just gorgeous. And everything in this movie is so painterly. You know, every scene, every shot is just composed out of its mind. Nothing in this movie wants you to think you're in reality. Everything in this movie is about you are in a dream state, you know?

Yeah, it is just stylized. And you could do an incredible supercut just of the inserts. It's the same shape as the film. It's beautiful. Oh, right.

Yes, that's right.

Right. And we would be remiss if we didn't give a shout out to DP Stephen Goldblatt, who does remarkable work here and did other films including Outland, Cotton Club, Lethal Weapon, Young Sherlock Holmes, Batman Forever and many others. And he is, boy, he is going forward big time.

I can't say enough good things about this guy's work in this movie and in movies like Outland and even Batman Forever. Like Stephen Goldblatt was one of the sort of wonderful, less heralded, you know, you hear about Cronan with and Woody, you know, any number of other people, you know, Haskell Wexler. And you never hear about Goldblatt, but he's one of the greats too.

Yeah. Yeah. But then we get images of bodies being burned in an incinerator.

They said they have their own cremation facility.

Yes. It's interesting.

You've lived in St. St. Egypt, you've collected some artifacts, you sell them, you own your big building with your own cremation facility.

Yes. It seems like a significant investment that must have been warranted for some reason. We also get a...

Can I ask a question about immortality though?

Please.

So at what point, at what point when you're an immortal, do you realize, I better start saving up some of these trinkets.

Yeah.

Like, since ancient Egypt, at a certain point, maybe you didn't keep that stuff, but maybe then you realize, hey, you get that stuff out of the tree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're not picking it up yet. I mean, how does it work? At what point when you're a MacLeod from Highlander, do you go, I better start keeping some of these paintings?

Yes. It occurs to me that there is maybe an untapped potential in a vampire movie told from the perspective of a long-term strategic financial advisor, the vampires.

Listen, around 8030, I realized if you start collecting some of this ancient Rome shit, eventually it's going to get very valuable.

Exactly. You can imagine what other things that they have stashed. We get in a sign of more, let's say, evocative things to come. We get a lovingly shot shower scene with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve.

With my favorite thing about the 1980s, the obvious body double, which is almost a trope. You literally have a shot of Deneuve and Bowie from the shoulders up, kissing and snogging and being like blah, and all of that. Yes. Then you cut down and you see breasts and a male chest, and they clearly do not belong to Bowie. Then you cut back to them kissing and then you cut back to boobs, just to earn your R-rating, right?

Oh, yeah. This film, I would say decisively commits to its R-rating.

But I said the obvious body double is a total 80s trope. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. Then we cut back to this lab. There's a debrief about some monkey stuff, and then we get the first of many impressionistic flashbacks between David Boyle-Lux.

Yes, please. I have a note here which is, smoking veterinarians. Just so we go into it. Susan Sarandon works at a clinic where they are studying longevity by fucking around with howler monkeys, right? One of the monkeys has gone berserk and attacked another monkey.

An important point. I believe we have a clip that sort of summarizes what horrible thing has occurred in the lab.

Yes.

Last night he turned on Betty. He loved Betty.

You thought he loved Betty. He tore her apart and then he ate her.

Okay. I want to go on record. First of all, that last line was spoken by a character who I've come to call Dr. Bootsy Collins. Because they literally hired a black man to play the scientific character, but somehow they gave him the instruction. They gave him fluorescent green sunglasses, right? Kind of a kind of a jive haircut. And then he speaks like in. He speaks with a very kind of stereotypical urban intonation, shall we say. Yes, a kind of sing song, kind of barely hip hoppy, but sort of like, you know, and then he ate her. You know, like, like, I don't know what that was about. I don't know if it's racist or if it's empowering.

It's a fine, it's a fine line. And it's a, it's, I think, a very worthy question to pose. I appreciate his ability to land a punch line. Yes, which we get a few of. And he lends an important dimension and vibe to the lab ensemble that I would have loved to have gotten more of. I would love to see a whole movie of his life in perspective and what he goes day to day where, like, he goes back home, you know, to his neighborhood and is then saying, you're not going to believe what these crazy white people do in this lab to these monkeys.

Well, that's the thing is that this guy literally walked out of Do The Right Thing, you know?

Yes.

And you totally, yeah, and I could totally see him going back to that neighborhood and being like, holy shit, guys, you know?

Also, I find over the course of the film, and we again get fleeting interactions, but he's a critical component of the group dynamic in the lab.

Yes.

It strikes me that I believe he's sort of inarguably the smartest person in the room.

Oh, yeah.

He's also the most unflappable and kind of unfazed because he kind of, I think, knows what's what's at least he knows that this is bad, but it's on these stupid, crazy white people. It is not going to be his problem. He's just like telling him how it is, what's going down. But he clearly has got his escape plan and everything worked out. So I have this whole other narrative in my head about him and I love him.

I honestly think he's got his own research in another lab that's better than this, and he just shows up to tell them what's what. Maybe.

Yeah.

I also want to say it's interesting. So the character playing the other lab person.

Can I interrupt real quick?

Please do.

That actor was in Andy Warhol's Batman Dracula, and he was in the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Amazing.

Wow. And we should, and I'm blanking on his name. So please let's give him...

Rufus Collins.

Rufus Collins. Again.

Rufus Collins. Every scene in this movie you're in, you ran away with them, and we love you for it.

A hero. And an icon.

But by the way, again, even though the character is coded in this very 1980s urban kind of way, and which sort of we don't know exactly how to deal with it, and we're not going to make too many pronouncements about it, because I don't think we're qualified. It is, again, once again, really nice to see a black character who is competent.

Yes.

Even though the coding is weirdly like, and who is actually smarter than all the white people in this movie. Yes.

Even though his affect is a little stereotypical to be charitable, he is, I believe, maybe the only non-white character in the film.

And the smartest guy in the movie.

But he is this capable, smart, professional, not a victim, and that is worth mentioning.

And like all of the best characters in 1980s movies, while the white people are getting bitten and bled out and turned to zombies, he just goes home to his own movie that we were not privileged enough to see.

Yeah, exactly.

The other member of the tree in the lab, I want to say, is an actor named Cliff DeYoung.

Yes.

We have seen in every television show ever made by anyone. Literally, this guy's filmography consists of a guest shot or a recurring part in every television show between 1975 and 2013. Yes. And he actually worked on a show called The Chronicle in an episode I wrote. Yeah, I never met him or anything, but he's just one of those guys that you see him and you're like, he is one of those, hey, it's that guy, guys, and it is just a pleasure. I also want to say that like his character, who is also Susan Sarandon's live-in lover, right? Yes. It's weirdly too real, like every character in this movie is a trope. Susan Sarandon is the trope of the famous scientist doing famous work, you know? Then you've got Rufus' character, who's the jive-talking, truth-telling black character. Then you've got Deneuve as this sort of stylized ancient Nefertiti-like vampire. Bowie is playing Bowie. Bowie is just Bowie, and it's just the best thing ever, right? Clifty Young's character, weirdly, is the only character who seems like he walked in from the real world.

Yes.

He's the cynical, unlikable white lover that you have no idea how he got with Susan Sarandon in the first place, and the one who gainsays everything she says, right? He's like, no, you're wrong, you're this, you're that.

He is sort of the mediocre, normal white guy. Yes. He has some function in the lab.

We don't know what it is. We don't know what it is.

We don't exactly get clarification of what he does there. But he's a peer to Sarandon's character, and they're having, I think, a questionable relationship, given that they work together. But again, it's the 80s, so this is just how things were. Yeah. But yeah, he has some moments coming on.

Their experimental monkeys are going crazy and eating each other, which is something that we saw intercut with the vampire attack, right?

Right. Yes.

And then what happens, Paul?

And then we get the first of these impressionistic, stylized flashbacks to what looks like, who knows, Versailles era France or something of a period dressed Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie and her turning him, basically.

Yeah. So you get the sense that his sojourn with her started in Louis, the whatever, France. And here's what I wrote was, Bowie is Conor McCloud because at the time, I didn't realize that Bowie was the sub-vampire, not the master vampire. But then I realized, yeah. So this is where you find out that she's actually the boss, which is great. Yes.

And that's something I really appreciate about the film, is that it is a very female-centered woman-empowering film.

Until, well, we'll get to the end, but-

We'll kind of get, yeah.

Yeah, because this movie is so much on the line between the lesbian death trope and any number- We're going to get to it.

Oh, yes. We're going to get to a lot. But it is a notable twist for the genre convention, in terms of how things typically go. And we also get the first utterance of a recurring verbal motif and kind of central promise that's at the core, which is forever and ever.

He actually says it in The Shower when Bowie and Deneuve are-

That's right. And then in the-

I'm not sure if Bowie and Deneuve say it or their body doubles, but one of them says it.

Yes. So we start getting this, which will recur and will take on greater importance. And then they are, you know, I'm just- the Blaylocks, but I'm just going to call them Bowie and Deneuve. Are in their Manhattan townhouse mansion.

Oh my god, it's beautiful.

Which is stunning and gorgeous. And they happen to catch Dr. Roberts, Susan Sarandis' character, on television.

Because she is a famous doctor at the famous clinic doing her famous work, yes.

Yes. And she's talking about her research into sleep and longevity. And then Alice, this neighbor kid, violinist, shows up for a lesson with her Polaroid camera. And then we get a scene of them playing a trio.

I have four things to say about these.

Oh, yes. So many.

First of all, David Bowie wears that ice cream-colored, double-breasted, shoulder padded suit.

Yeah.

Like, on my best day, I will not look as cool as David Bowie probably looked on his worst day. And this was not his worst day.

It is hard to imagine, much less remember, any other people looking better in any other context than Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in this movie. Just spellbindingly, immaculately.

Just both of them are just insanely beautiful.

Styled from top to bottom and it is just a visual.

Can we take a moment and talk about the designer? Please. The costume designer?

Yes.

Please.

Her name is, Javi, can you help me? It's an Italian name, Milena Cananaro.

Milena Cananaro and she did everything.

She did everything, but she worked with everyone important. She did A Clockwork Horror and she won Oscar for Barry Lyndon, The Shining, won for Charites of Fire out of Africa, Asteroid City, Megalopolis. She won an Academy Award in four separate decades.

Yup.

Yeah.

Which is amazing. Milena Cananaro is a legendary, legendary human being. And yeah.

They're mortals in the world of costume design. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, and by the way, you missed Ocean's 12, which is the most stylish of the Ocean's movies. Ocean's 12. I am an Ocean's 12 defender. We'll get into that some other time. Okay. So two other things. So one of them is, it is such a trope that one of the characters appears on TV in a talk show giving exposition about the movie. Yes. And here's Dr. Susan Sarandon from the Susan Sarandon Institute talking about the Susan Sarandon signs. And even that hackneyed corny trope is somehow redeemed in this film. I don't know how. I don't know how. Yeah.

It's pretty efficiently done. And there's other stuff going on because it's juxtaposed against interplay between Bowie and Deneuve.

And Bowie's having a really hard time. He can't sleep. He's suffering. Even his dream is kind of a waking dream.

Yeah, we're getting some foreshadowing that something's amiss in Bowieland.

And we don't quite know what it is yet. And so two more things. These two are piano teachers?

What?

They're music teachers? That's how they make a living. That's their cover for owning this building?

I... Yes, this is maybe of all the requests the film makes for us to suspend disbelief. This is maybe the most confounding mystery, which is, why do they... And maybe it's just that they look at humans as pets. Maybe they're just charmed by the youth of a child, of a precocious tween.

She's kind of a violent prosody too, and they play music, so I get that.

And they clearly are classical music aficionados. And this is a wonderful film, if you are a classical music geek.

Oh, is it ever, yes.

And we get this delightful scene, but it does beg the question, they clearly don't need money. I don't think that they're getting paid for this. But they have clearly this relationship with this kid from across the street, who we find out later lives across the street, who is really into her Polaroid camera and has real character and personality. And they play a trio with Danube on piano and Bowie on cello with Sarah, the kid, on her violin. And it's lovely. But then abruptly, Bowie, Mr. Blaylock, stops playing and leaves. And he seems to be unsettled by seeing himself in the Polaroid that she has taken.

I have two notes about the Polaroid camera. First of all, I really love, just from the point of view of who we were back then and who we are now, the Polaroid camera is really introduced as an exotic piece of technology. Yes. And by the way, by 1984, it kind of wasn't, I don't think. I mean, I remember Polaroids kind of being...

It was the Instagram of 1983.

It was indeed. Yes, indeed.

And so it's like this kid has got her phone and is taking selfies and photos. But it's the 83 version. It's a Polaroid.

She sort of introduces it like, Hey, here's my Polaroid camera. My father got it to me on a business trip to Europe or something like that. And you get the sense that it's a fairly like exotic piece of film.

I took it as this is just a contemporary kid with some privilege. Who is expressing their modernity in contrast to these two ancient characters. And also gives us this device where that then Bowie is confronted with himself. And we don't quite know what's wrong yet. But then later, but very soon we do.

Oh, but I thought what was wrong with him was that somebody, it's like, look, this movie also pulls an incredible miraculous feat. Somebody takes a bad picture of David Bowie. How the hell that happens? I don't know. But it's not a flattering image.

And also someone takes a photo of a vampire. And as you pointed out earlier, we come to this film. And again, in 83, I don't know that, I don't recall that we were as quite deeply versed in vampire lore and tropes as we are now, given the volume of vampire movies that have been made in the interim. But this film aggressively contradicts expectations in terms of how we think vampires and vampirism works. Yes, they have no problem going out in daytime.

Nope, I wrote that down too. Daylight is okay.

Daylight is fine. They can be captured by photographs. Visitors do not need permission to enter their space, which is a wonderful thing that Sinners does.

Sinners, the entirety of Sinners is based on vampires can't come in and invite them.

It's maybe the best film ever for that specific rule of vampire lore.

It's better about that than Let the Right One In. Think about that.

I don't disagree.

A movie whose title is about that, but Sinners makes such a meal of it.

Anyway, the hunger. Anyway, we then have a couple of things that happen in quick succession. We have the great scene before we get back to, I'll just jump to this because it connects, of Bowie worrying about aging. He's looking in a mirror after the Polaroid has unsettled him. And it's now clear he's losing his hair. And so it seems like, whoa, how and why is he aging and is he dying? But meanwhile, Catherine Deneuve has gone to the book signing to encounter Susan Sarandon's character.

I have a question.

And basically to put the whammy on her.

Yes. Well, that's the question. It's like, first of all, first of all, Paul, it was in our previous podcast, I think the awards one, where you first used the words put the whammy.

Yes.

And I just want to say that I love that and please use it freely. The other thing, you know, you know how much I restrict your language in this podcast. This one I sanctioned. Anyway, so does she go because she knows Bowie is aging and she wants to talk to the anti-aging doctor and then puts the whammy on her because she's so beguiling? Or does she go because she saw her on TV, found her attractive, wants to put the whammy on her, and it just so happens she's an aging expert?

Paul. D. All of the above. I believe that this is, as Agent Cooper would say, when all roads lead to Rome, it's time to buy Lyra and go. And her lover is aging? We don't know this yet, but we will find out this has happened to her repeatedly. So she knows what is coming and what she's faced with. But...

And she's kind of been lying to Bowie about it. Yes.

She's been keeping him completely in the dark about this. And we'll keep him in the dark in more literal ways later.

That's right.

But there's this glimmer of hope with the wonders of science and this research that she's seen on television. And she wants clearly to keep Bowie around. But I think at the same time, she has been conditioned through her personal past experience to also realize probably time to be on the lookout for maybe new opportunities. So it's a fortuitous convergence of circumstance that I believe leads her to Susan Sarandon's book signing.

It doesn't speak well for Miriam's character that she's finding the rebound person before the other ones kick the bucket. You know, like I'm just saying.

There.

I mean, come on. You know, Miriam, Miriam, Miriam, bad form, Miriam.

Meanwhile, there is a cameo.

Are you doing a cameo?

Yes, Producer Brad.

Yes. At the book signing.

Go ahead, Paul. I think you got it.

Okay, do go on.

Oh, no, no, no. I defer to you. I want you to open this present.

A very short shot of this older woman who's in her 80s. And she asked for a book to be signed by two Lily Bell. And she is the actress Bessie Love, who is a silent film star, who is in DW. Griffith's Intolerance and, more importantly, a Baccarat player in the Honor of Majesty Secret Service.

So the film is a fountain of wonders.

One second.

Yeah. Yeah.

You've got a costume designer who literally worked with Kubrick, Coppola, Soderbergh, Wes Anderson. You've got Susan Sarandon, who is not only an actress whose work spans decades, she's also, she's not only a wonderful actor, or, you know, there's some problematic stuff about her, but also one of the most, between her and Deneuve, who is a living legend, even at this point in the 80s, right? I mean, she's Belle du Jour. So you've got two of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen at all of their ages. Susan Sarandon continues to be shockingly, stunningly beautiful, so is Deneuve, you know? Yes. Bowie, right? And then you've got a lot of other people just in the, there's an actor in this movie who we'll talk about at the very end of it, who's literally in every franchise ever made. And he's not who you think he is. You know who I'm talking about, right? Yeah, you do, because you're a nerd like me.

Yeah.

I mean, no, the movie, just the confluence of genius in this film is kind of shocking.

And we haven't even gotten to the best one-shot moment scene, unexpected cameo in the film, which is quite a bit later. I'm sure I missed it, but yeah, go on. Oh, my Lord. Anyway, so, but yeah, we get the sense that Deneuve and Sarandon, they forge a mystical connection. As I read it, it is Deneuve putting the whammy on Sarandon. So that she-

Deneuve has this power. She does have a hypnotic power over people.

She puts some psychic hook into her.

Which she also clearly did to Bowie.

Yes, yes. And then she heads back home. But meanwhile, you'll recall both she and Bowie, John Blaylock, saw the TV broadcast. And we know he is worrying about aging. So we now follow Bowie's character going to the lab, finding and confronting Susan Sarandon in a desperate plea for aid. She thinks, rightly so, he's a crazy person, leaves him in the waiting room to literally age. As we then cut back to her in the lab with these monkeys. And there is a lab monkey. And now it's like you thought this movie was freaky before we go to super freaky mode. As the lab monkey starts rapidly aging to death and decay. As Bowie also starts rapidly aging in the waiting room. It is wild.

It is. This sequence is amazing. Yes. I love how, first of all, Bootsy's scientific explanation of, well, scientific in quotes, because this movie is about quote science unquote. It's about famous people science. His sort of explaining what's happening with the monkeys is prelapped quite extensively with Susan Sarandon walking to the lab, I believe. Yes. Bowie has been left in the waiting room. And my note on this was that the cuts, this is the first time in the movie when the cuts get really, really fewer and farther between, the shots are a lot longer. And it's a real contrast to everything we've seen before in the movie where the cutting tends to be pretty cutty, even in the dream scenes.

Yes.

The editing really calls attention to itself. And in this one, there's a lot of long shots. This pre-lap goes on forever while Sarandon was, and it's all to put you in that head state bit of, she's kind of shined Bowie on, made him sit in the waiting room because she thinks, and she literally calls somebody and says, yeah, he's crazy, but he's harmless. Just let him sit here for 15 minutes and maybe he'll leave. So he's aging rapidly. We're seeing the monkeys on the monitor screens decaying. And it literally is, the film really slows down in a way that is terrifying.

Yes. This is an abrupt gear shift in the film. And it's necessary to accentuate coherence.

Yes.

And the movie becomes much more coherent at this point, less impressionistic and intercutty.

You've been watching, you've kind of been watching an extended music video style silent movie. Like literally, you do not need any dialogue in this movie until now. Yes.

But it is effective because it also, again, it's happening in tandem with this revelation of time and aging now also shifting gears. And we're seeing also perfect time to give credit to the great Dick Smith.

Yep, another incredible genius working on this movie.

A towering artist whose old age and aging makeup work in this film is stunning. And the film, and he really is one of the stars of the film. And his work. And the film would not work if his work did not work as effectively as it is. Because it is shocking and it holds up remarkably well, I think, throughout the film.

Greg, can you give us some of Dick Smith's other credits? Because I think it's one of those, first of all, the name is very generic, Dick Smith, you know, right? It's not like Ray Harryhausen or Rob Boteen or a guy, Nick Atero, Greg Nick Atero. I mean, it's Dick Smith, right?

Well, first I'll tell you that this film was the only film that was nominated for Best Makeup. And because there's no competition, they did not give an award out. And there was a push to give it a Special Honorary Award, and the Board of Governors rejected that.

Oh, that's bullshit.

That is... Wow.

Okay.

I can... This is a horrible thing for me to say, but it's in keeping with some themes in the film. I can only hope that those members of the Board of Governors are now all dead. Because what a grave, no pun intended, totally intended injustice that was. Also worth mentioning, Dick Smith, a mentor to generations of genre talent in the industry, and including Rebecca and including a young Guillermo del Toro, who basically reached out to him as a student, the godfather, the exorcist, taxi driver, marathon man, exorcist 2, altered Sith, The Hunger, Starman.

Do you have one in mind? Death Becomes Her?

No, no, I'm just enjoying this list of incredible movies with...

Yeah.

And it's funny because you talk about taxi driver and the effects on that, and you don't know taxi driver as a movie with makeup effects, but you look at Travis Bickle's Transformation, you look at the gunshots and the gunfight that happens in that movie, all the carnage in that movie. I mean, this is a guy who could do great genre stuff, but he could also come down and make Marlon Brando look 30 years older and like an Italian man. It's just an amazing... He was just one of those amazing talents.

Yeah. And the film hinges on our ability to believe what Bowie is expressing in his plea to Sarandana. That's a clip I believe we have.

Yesterday, I was 30 years old.

That's remarkable.

I'm a young man. Do you understand? I'm a young man.

But he's not. But he's not.

He's aging terribly. And you know what? It's funny because Bowie is a killer. He's a vampire. I mean, he's obviously not a good person. And yet you feel such... I love this performance because it is Bowie. But it's not quite man who fell towards. He's not that unearthly, but it really trades on his frailty. He was a very skinny. He was a tall, thin guy. He always looked kind of consumptive.

Delicate look to him.

I mean, obviously, him and Peter Murphy are sort of the blueprint for the archetypal goth person. And the other thing I would say also is that this is a great example of cinematography and makeup working together. All the shots of Bowie as he sits on that couch in ages are lit really well. And they're lit in a way that really helps the makeup. If you were looking at this makeup in broad light, you might see any number of things about it that don't quite add up. But with the cinematography here, it is utterly convincing. I'm in. And they never get an old guy to play Bowie. It's always Bowie.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is a way they could have gone. But it wouldn't. I mean, it's Bowie. So it's like, who do you get to play old Bowie? Then we get some pretty big strides of plot advancement in succession. As Bowie is aging in the waiting room, and Sarah and her lab cohorts have witnessed this unbelievable rapid aging death decay of the monkey, that thankfully they've gotten on videotape. She talks Tom, her boyfriend co-worker, to then show the monkey tape to potential funders because as concerned as they should be that what is going on that would cause this insane thing to happen to this monkey, we have more overriding concerns which involve funding for our research. And that this is a potential tool to unlock more money that they need to do that work.

My note about this scene that I wrote down is every time this movie turns into a movie, it's a worse movie. You know, anytime there are scenes in this movie of people talking about stuff that scenes are about, it's not great. And this is something that feels so quotidian. I would have cut the scene. It feels so quotidian and stupid. And it's two good actors doing the best they can. But this is not much of a scene, you know?

Yeah, no. It feels a little extraneous, a little off the mark. But I mean, I get that maybe that's the intention. It's a misdirect. It's like they should be paying more attention to what's in front of them. Like the fact that Bowie now looks like a freaking corpse in the waiting room. He is tempted to feed in the bathroom on some lab technician or worker who for some reason becomes shirtless in the bathroom.

There's something really interesting that happens in this movie because, you know, everybody knows this movie as being a very sort of sapphic, you know, treatise. But it's interesting that as Bowie gets older and older, I've decided to move into more New York in the 1980s.

This is a good look for those of you who are not watching on video.

How is this? Well, because now we go in the streets of New York for the first time and we start seeing, you know, street people. You know, people, very stylish people in the street.

Not quite on the street. There are a couple of beats before we get to him out on the street.

Yeah, okay. So, well, then let's keep going.

So, yeah, so there's a scene of temptation in the bathroom with this guy, this topless guy who's very attractive.

Several times, he tries to feed during the sequence, and you'll cover it, but it's most of the time until the very end of it, it's men, and they're very attractive men. And the movie takes on this very sort of like the movie is very homoerotic later on, especially with Sir Andan and Deneuve, obviously. But it's interesting how suddenly, like, we get a little bit more of a male homoerotic thing happening here, because he's always looking at the first two people he tries to feed on, and he fails because he's so old and frail. Yes. Are, in fact, sort of these very attractive young men.

Yes. His hunger is non-gender specific. Exactly. And, but he, just as it looks like he's about to pounce, he's interrupted by someone else enters the bathroom, so then he rushes out. He then zones up in an elevator, a packed elevator full of nurses that he is also tempted by, but kind of can't do anything with so, I mean, there are too many. Yeah, nurses with cleavage. For him to deal with, it's, let's say nurses with, yes, cleavage. And I'm gonna leave out other potential descriptors. Then emerges, sees a shocked Sarah, who at first doesn't recognize him, but then recognizes the voice, but he's so tired of waiting and so insulted that he's been kept in this waiting room for hours until the end of the day. He's been there all day waiting for her. She said 15 minutes.

And he's aging in dog years, man. Yes, yes.

And he is a walking corpse pretty much at this point. And Sarah, of course, has seen what's happened to the monkey. Now is starting to put two and two together, chases him out the building. But he is like, no, you had your chance.

Chases him out into a street, which is populated exclusively by taxis with JVC signs on top of them.

Yes.

Which is really interesting because JVC is one of the brands of the Blade Runner curse, if you may remember.

Oh, I had not connected those dots.

All the brands in Blade Runner went bankrupt, right? Pan Am or, you know, TWA, JVC, Atari. So, yes, it's just the Scots putting the whammy on another brand here, just making sure that they kill it.

So, yeah, so now we're out in New York. And again, sunlight, not a problem. We then get this great abrupt cut to a roller skater. This is actually, I think, is the second non-white character to appear in the film, who's got a boom box on the floor in the concrete. It's sort of like under an overpass or something and starts this whole roller skating dance sequence.

And this sequence goes on for a while.

It goes on for a while and it feels really incongruous. Like, what are we doing with this? And it's like, oh, of course this is what's going on.

Because this character is also quoted as like a breakdancing type character. He's got the boom box. He's got the street jive clothing. You know, he's coded as very much like... Right.

And so not only are the vampires' hunger non-gender specific, it is non-racial specific. And Bowie finds him in this isolated location and with no kind of buildup or prelude, he just kind of goes right in for the kill and feeds, but for in vain, again, no pun intended.

He's too old.

Because no matter what he does, no matter how much he feeds, he's passed his expiration date and his number is up. So he returns to the confines of the extravagance that is the Blaylock home. But lo and behold, and the moment this happens, there's this dread because you know this is not going to end well.

No, Alice is waiting. Alice is coming into play.

In her school uniform, shows up at the doorbell. It's notable that they have a video doorbell, which is very advanced technology for 1983, very expensive.

Well, they do have vampire financial advisor work.

Exactly. Clearly. Clearly, their investments have paid off well. Alice is coming, looking for Miriam. She wants to play music. Well, no, to let her know that she's not going to be able to come to practice tomorrow.

Oh, got it.

Because she's going out of town. So she wants to let her know because she is a kind hearted, considerate, well-mannered child.

Oh, we're in trouble.

And Bowie is trying to get rid of her through the speaker.

She doesn't even want to let Bowie because he's so old.

Right. She doesn't recognize him. He's trying to make excuses. Alice is asking, can she leave a note? Again, because she's thoughtful to her doom. Bowie lets her in. And so she can leave a note. She doesn't recognize him. She thinks and questions because the voice is familiar. And as she observes, he has the same eyes as Bowie. And we all know how distinctive Bowie's eyes are. So she hypothesizes that is he Bowie's dad? Although at this point, he looks like he could be his grandfather. Yes. Bowie denies this, which seems like an easy out. Why wouldn't you just agree and indulge the whatever?

But but no, he's he's not he's not he's not in his right mind at this point.

No, he isn't really he's 500 years old and he's on the precipice of death. Yes. Or whatever death is for this creature. And then rather than letting her leave, they start talking music and he asks her to play her violin for him. And he circles around behind her. And it's it's just horrible. And thankfully, we're spared seeing it, but it's almost worth imagining it.

And you see a piece of sheet music fall on the floor.

Yes. I heard blood spatters on it. It's yeah, it's but yeah, he murders Alice to feed on her. But still, it's not reversing the aging at all. And then Miriam returns home.

Yep. And this is where we get the really what's the biggest reveal in the film. Yes. And the biggest plot point in the film.

This is the narrative fulcrum. We're at the kind of the midpoint of the film. And this is then a big confrontation between Bowie and Deneuve or John and Miriam. Because John realizes the promise that she made to him was a lie.

Well, it's not a lie. It's not a lie, but it has strings attached, I think, is what we're trying to say here. And would you like to describe the string, Paul?

Pretty, pretty, pretty, yes, pretty big. But before, there's a quote here, there's a line. Oh, yeah, we're going to get to the attic. But before then, we have Bowie's plea slash accusation.

OK, let's hear it.

You said forever. Never end.

I mean, this is operatic tragedy.

It's interesting because for a movie that is this distance from character, there's so much style that it kind of, you're really watching the style and the dreamlike state of it. This is a pretty emotional, and Bowie's not a good man in this film. Obviously, he kills people in front of a little girl, but this is very sad and it is very emotional. And it is a moment when all of the style of the film kind of does come together to give you a true emotional payoff, you know?

Yeah.

But here's the thing. The nerve should have disclosed that there is a catch to the forever and everything.

Yes. Although, an important moment here, and I spared us the clip because the clip was already long and it's very soft.

I was getting to it.

I was getting to it. Yes. We have this moment of elegiac, operatic, poetic tragedy and heartbreak between these two characters. It evokes the Scandinavian vampire film you mentioned earlier. Let the Rye Win In that then was remade as Let Me In. There's a similar relationship and romance. Yes. But after this plea, then Bowie pleads with her to kiss me like I was. And we're intercutting between them at their first early meeting and his youthful beauty. And it is so creepy and gross how he... Because again, he's a walking corpse at this point. But they kiss, and we intercut between them kissing now and when their relationship began. And it is... It's a lot. It's a lot.

And then he asks for the favor that explains the big plot twist, which is... He says, kill me.

Yes. Release me. And then she says, I can't. Yes.

And then we find out.

She needs to keep him. So how does one square this circle? Hmm. She leads him up to the attic where there are a lot of dumps.

Yeah.

Almost like a John Woo.

I was going to say, it's the John Woo Memorial Attic in this building. You know, not that John was dead, but it's it's nevertheless. But there's also billowing. You can't have an 80s movie without billowing white curtains that sort of flow.

Yes. There's a lot of fabric flowing in this film throughout. Yeah.

Now, Paul, Paul, I feel like we're in competition to say this.

So you get this. You get it.

No, you got it. It's you. OK.

Oh, it's so good.

It's so good.

It's so fucked up. It's so good.

He pulls out a plain wooden coffin.

Yes.

She puts David Bowie in. It's still alive.

Yes. He's still alive.

I'm laying and he says, jaw is moving like like he's, you know, eating cream corn and and because he's old and that's right. Right. Anyway. And and and then she closes the lid over him. And then she puts the box on top of another box. And there's a bunch of boxes there. And now we know she has a lover. The previous lover was named Lily. I think Lily Beth, like like like the queen of it. No, that was the woman from the Lillaria, Lilloria, Lillaria.

We have we have this this this line, which we'll say in a moment. But yeah, yes, the the reveal.

Yes. That her lovers don't die. It is seven coffins for.

Oh, my God.

Get old. And she can't be with them anymore.

Because it's bad enough. It's bad enough. She lures him to the attic. And she's like, OK, he can't die. But he's a walk. He's a walking corpse. And she can't release him. She has to hold on to him because she boxes him up in a in a plain Spartan wooden coffin and nails it shut, where he's just going to apparently be trapped in the cask of a Monte Ghiato forever. And then she re-reveal that as she puts it in next to the stack, this pile of so many other caskets. Oh, my God.

It's this is where we find out the casket is a true villain. Like, I mean, yes, they're both villains. They both killed.

Yes.

But she literally has lovers from all of history dating back to Egypt. And she's so greedy about her emotions and doesn't want to let go of them, that she just leaves them in living death in coffins forever. So forever and ever was not a lie, but it was, you know, there were some, there were some...

It was an Obi-Wan Kenobi from a certain point of view...

.disclosed in the original contract.

Yes.

Come for him. All of you, all my loves. Be kind to him tonight.

Okay.

I mean, it's psychotic. We skipped over a couple key beats. There is the... Deneuve finds a Polaroid that was taken when...

That Bowie left behind, yeah.

Well, when Alice dropped the camera, when she's assaulted by Bowie and murdered, and then asks him, what have you done? And then we cut to her incinerating, presumably, Alice's corpse.

Oh, you mean Miriam, not Deneuve, yeah.

Miriam, yes, yes, sorry. And then, you know, Bowie continues to plead for release and throws himself down the stairwell.

In slow motion?

In slow motion, in vain, and to the bottom floor, from up high, from many, is this huge column, yeah. But a cool moment is, Deneuve then proceeds, Miriam proceeds to then carry Bowie up all the flights of stairs to the attic, effortlessly. So we do finally get a reveal that, oh, she is superhuman. She does have super strength as a vampire.

She has the whammy and she's got the super strength.

Yeah, yeah. So she is a force to be to be reckoned with. And almost, um, immediately the doorbell rings yet again. Let me just say the doorbell in this movie gets a hell of a workout over the course of the film. There are there are so many crucial doorbell moments.

This movie reminds me a little bit of a...

That the plot hinges on.

It kind of reminds me of Iron Man 3, Iron Man 2, where basically Tony Stark sits in his basement waiting for the plot to arrive, you know? It's like, it's like ding-dong. They're attacking the Stark Fair, Mr. Stark. Okay, I'd better get out, you know? It's just, a lot of the plot comes to the nerve.

Deus ex doorbell.

Exactly. You go on.

I will grab that doorbell and make it a little sound clip for us to use repeatedly.

Oh, that would be nice. I didn't even think of that. That's a delicious suggestion. None other than Sarah has arrived. But she's not there for Miriam.

No.

She is there for Jon. And she is apparently figured out or hunted down. No way how she, we have no idea how she could have possibly done this. Where Jon lives, because she's trying to find him after that encounter, to get him into the lab and study him. But Miriam tries making excuses, saying he's away in Switzerland. But she recognizes, but then opens the door, and then immediately, of course, Sarah recognizes Miriam and starts connecting these implausible dots of coincidence that occur. But anyway, Miriam sends her on her way, because right behind her...

Right, because the doorbell is the plot device in this movie.

Someone else is arriving at the door.

And it's...

The great Dan Hedea.

Nick Tortelli.

Right? Yes.

I mean, seriously, but he's not just Nick Tortelli. Here's the thing, Dan Hedea, again, another one of the great character actors of all time. Nick Tortelli in Cheers, right?

Yes.

Mr. Waturi in The Greatest Film Ever Made, Joe vs. The Volcano.

Yes.

And also John Gomez from Buckaroo Banzai.

Oh, you know it. You know it.

Yeah, you know it. So, and it's interesting because, again, Dan Hedea playing the trope of a New York detective. He's not, you know, like, no one in this movie is real, except maybe Clif DeJong because he's supposed to play reality, the ugly intrusion of reality. So, here's, so here's-

And because, and is he, are we getting him introducing himself? But what we get, because this is The Hunger, and nothing is subtle in this movie.

Nothing.

He's not just any New York detective. He is Lieutenant Alegretza. That's right. Just a delicious Italian name. Yeah, but he is there investigating a missing person, young Alice, who lived across the street, and is curious to ask if he understands that she came here for violin lessons, and proceeds to interview slash interrogate Miriam, taking in the mysterious splendor of the domicile, and we're also intercutting with the whammy infected Sarah, wandering back and having a near-death experience with a big semi truck.

Yes, but she kind of shines Dictortelli on, and he goes on his merry... He's kind of the least, what's the word I'm looking for, the least focused New York detective. He's like, hey, there's a little girl missing. I don't know.

Yeah, he's kind of just going through the motions and checking it off the list. He's like, okay, I talked to them, and she says they haven't seen her, and so, okay, she's moving on. We're good. But you have a feeling we're gonna see him again, because it's Dan Hedea. It's like, we gotta have him for more than that. Then we get Sarah back at home. Again, another shower scene. She has a vision of Miriam.

She's starting to feel the whammy, like the whammy's kicking in.

The whammy is kicking in big time. Sleeping, it is becoming cinematically clear that there is a weird psychic bond between Sarah and Miriam, and also some things are not in the best groove with her and Tom. She goes back to the lab office. She answers a phone that's not ringing.

She's having issues. She's having issues.

She's having a little... She's a little off. She heads back to the Blaylocks. This time, Miriam lets her in. And then we get this expanse of courtship.

Oh, my God.

That begins with sculptural admiration of Miriam's collection.

I wrote, this is the longest Meet Not Cute ever. I'm like, literally, we have to watch these people do dialogue that leads to them sort of falling into romance. We know she put the whammy on her. And then we got to hear them talk about sculpture and about...

Yes.

Oh, it just goes on. It's really funny that movie where I just went like, oh, enough, you know.

It does kind of, again, open the door to how old Miriam is through the collection and a sculpture that Sarah observes looks like Miriam, but couldn't possibly be her because it's so ancient. They talk, they flirt over the piano and glasses of Sherry. Right. And Sarandon straddles a chair as Miriam is playing and asks a natural question.

It's Lakme by Dilip. Lakme is a Brahmin princess in India. She has a slave named Mallika. In a magical garden, they sing how they'll follow the stream to its source, gliding over the water. Is it a love song? I told you. It was sung by two women. Sounds like a love song. And I suppose that's what it is.

Are you making a pass at me, Mrs. Black?

Miriam.

Miriam.

Not that I'm aware of, Sarah.

And then, of course, Sarah spills the sherry on her shirt.

Yes.

And it's the, by the way, by the way, the oldest trick in the book.

Yes.

The oldest trick in the book. Oh, I spilled something on my shirt. I better take it off.

And let's just, to be specific, her white t-shirt, yes, which is all that she's wearing up top. There is, she is, she is not wearing a brassiere because she's a scientist. Notably, Braless, she is a progressive woman of science in the future. Yes. In 1983 New York. And, of course, tries to clean it up. As Miriam puts her feet up, observing leisurely. And then, of course, yeah, takes off her shirt and they kiss tenderly and then go for it in what is probably the greatest lesbian vampire classical music video ever.

That's very specific. That's a niche category, but I'll agree. I think it's interesting. So here's what I wrote. I wrote, this movie, truly this movie was Xena for Goths. As we all know, Xena was one of the touchstones for a lot of gay women during the 90s that sort of saw the subtext in it and then joined with it. And it's interesting because for me, this scene actually, I heard a lot about the scene. Let's just say I heard a lot about the scene in college. And I think people of our age, gay women of our age, the scene was pivotal, you know?

Formative. Formative, yes. Yeah, it is a landmark, I think, in lesbian lore and cinema and iconography. It is, yeah, it is not messing around. And just when you think, oh, we're going there, oh, we're gonna keep going there and keep going to the point that then they feed on each other.

And I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, though, like the one thing about the 80s that I think is fascinating is, you know, you have these sex scenes in the 80s, right? With men, with women, they're all very similar. They all involve some element of slo-mo. They all involve some element of sort of fracturing the body from the head of the person, because we're looking at a lot of body doubles, except for Susan Sarandon, who did famously kind of do a lot of nude scenes, especially early in her career. And I find these scenes incredibly tedious, to be honest with you. Even though I was a hot-blooded American kid at that time, like I just remember watching these love scenes, and it's like, these two seem to go on a while.

This scene is dated by any contemporary measure or standard.

And yet it's great, and it was great at the time, and it helped a lot of people find their own sexuality.

Exactly, exactly, but it needs to be seen, I think, through a specific lens. Yeah. But it is noteworthy in its place.

Can I just quote Roger Ebert's review of the scene?

Oh, by all means, I can only imagine what his thoughts on this were.

He did not like the film, and he said the film basically is circling around an exquisitely effective sex scene. That's how he starts his review. But then he goes on to say, it has an uncanny awareness of our own curiosity about whether Deneuve and Sir Edmund really will go ahead with the scene, or whether the director will cut away to the usual curtains blowing in the wind.

He does both. Why can't we have both? Exactly. Why not? Why not both? But this is a setup for, I will say, a Highlander level edit. Yes. Cut.

Yes.

From them feeding on each other, as it's clear that Miriam has chosen John's successor in Sarah, and is going to turn her, and we see blood dripping, as then we cut to an overhead shot of a rare steak of Sarah slicing open, a rare steak on a plate at dinner with her charmingly clueless boyfriend, Tom.

By the way, her very aggressive boyfriend, who's just like, what were you doing for three hours there? What's going on?

He's pretty aggro, and jealous, and suspicious. He says three and a half hours, repeatedly, beating it like a drum in terms of how long-

You were gone for three and a half hours.

She was gone at Miriam's and-

What could two women do in a house for three and a half hours? What were you doing for three and a half hours with that woman?

You can get a sense that even though Tom is ostensibly a fellow person of science, that there are limits to his imagination that are creating a cognitive dissonance in his male ego and pride.

Now, look, in his defense, she's eating a rare steak, which she never does, and she sent back the clams.

I mean, who does that?

Who sends back the clams who is not having a love affair?

No symbolism in this dinner, these choices at all. But Sarah is in a state of, let's say, beguiled reverie by her interaction with Miriam, and she is notably now wearing the Ankh necklace. Yep.

Who gives someone a present after three and a half hours? You've only known this so much for three and a half hours. She just gave you a present?

Well, exactly. And this leads to this juicy interchange.

What's that?

What? The chain around your neck.

Oh, it's an Ankh. It's Egyptian.

Miriam gave it to me.

Mrs. Blaylock, the woman that I went to see this afternoon.

You just met her and she gives you a present?

She's that kind of a woman. She's European.

Oh, yeah.

She's European, if you don't want to say.

Yes. Nothing's coded here at all.

It's kind of how Ellen DeGeneres used to say, Well, I'm Lebanese. Does speaking European excuse everything?

It's like, Oh, I love this. I think it's a great punchline. And I think the delivery is so great. This whole dinner scene is this dance of awkwardness. And we're dancing around what should be obvious while Sarah is intercutting daydreaming of sapphic swimming sessions in the nude. Apparently, there's a pool, an underground pool also at the Blaylocks. I mean, yeah, they clearly had had lots to do. But then we get back. Tom and Sarah go back home. Sarah is unwell and is throwing up. But no, she's not having morning sickness. She's not pregnant. Then we go back to the lab. They run a blood test on her. And it turns out that she has, in one of the maybe biggest leaps of pseudoscience in this film, that she has non-human blood intermingled with her human blood. And these two strains of blood, again, foreshadowing the strain series of vampire novels and FX series that Guillermo del Toro did, are fighting for dominance within Sarah's body, which is bullshit. Like, it makes no sense at all. But it is what the plot demands.

If Wilford Brimley from The Thing had shown up to deliver this monologue, it would have not, I mean, you can't sell this shit.

Yes. It's so stupid. But then we get another, within that, we get a, let's just say, well executed observation.

The spooky part is, it isn't human blood. It's not human. It's stronger blood than ours. Very similar, but more disease resistant. What species?

I have no idea.

How the hell would it get in Sarah's veins?

Well, it beats me.

Now, wait a minute. Hey, Tom, calm down.

Every scene in this movie should end with she's European.

Yeah, all right.

She's European.

She's European. Beats me. I love, again, the contrast of vibes where we have the one character who knows everything, but is also the least bothered. Like he is completely unflummoxed by this terrifying revelation, which, again, is wildly implausible. It is a stronger strain of blood. What is stronger blood? How do they know it's... It's ridiculous.

Yeah.

None of it makes any sense, but I just think it's hysterical that our hero in the lab is delivering these revelations, and he's so casual and unbothered by it, and everyone else is freaking the fuck out.

When I get sick, I go to work, and I just take my sickness there. She goes to work, and does blood tests on herself. I don't know.

Anyway, look.

Anyway, so then they find the bite mark, the bruise on her arm, and they're like, where did he get this? I don't know. She's denying that. She's European. Exactly. It's a thing. It's a thing they do. It's how they say hello. But then we cut back. Sarah knows, oh fuck. Right. Something worse.

The whammy has been hit.

I've been hit with something worse than the whammy. She goes back yet again to confront.

To ring the doorbell.

Marry him again. Then we have their confrontation. What have you done to me? There's some alien strain consuming my blood.

That's right.

I know that's right.

What I want to know is what is it?

Why have you done it?

You're frightened. You're damn right I'm frightened. It's natural. You don't know what's happening to you. But there's nothing to be frightened of. As long as you put your face in me. Give me time. Trust me.

Trust you.

I did trust you.

Look what happened.

It's a bruise. It will fade.

Again, another great throwaway. It's a bruise. It will fade. Like, why are you so bothered?

She's European. She's European.

Yeah. It's like she and what's his name in the lab? Our hero?

Yeah.

I can't believe I forgot his name. Rufus? Rufus. They need to hang out because they're like the coolest, chillest people.

Right.

And if they teamed up, I mean, the world would be over. They would take over the freaking world.

Catherine Deneuve and Rufus in a movie together would be far more interesting. I imagine that Susan Sarandon, you know, if she brought in the vampires, they'd probably just brood and kill people. But Rufus and Deneuve would have like a relationship. They would have conversations about stuff. I'd be interested in that.

Anyway, she then declares, Miriam declares that you belong to me, we belong to each other, which Sarah storms out. There is a physical confrontation, and I believe, and I think at this point, and Deneuve throws her across the room. But as Sarah storms out, Miriam says she'll be back when The Hunger overwhelms her, and that then she'll need her to feed and to show her how to feed. Sarah cannot get a cab to save her life, because it's New York in the 83, but she's very attractive, so it's very strange. But maybe it's the whammy vibe that the cabbies know do not pick up this woman. So then she goes to a payphone, trying to reach Tom, and then we get...

The two greatest cameos in this film.

Oh my lord. Yes. Who accosts Sarah at the payphone, randomly out of the blue?

There's some dude going, hey lady, what's it going to be? Come on. Come on, lady, whatever. So this is some New Yorkism like that.

And who is it?

It's John Pankow and Willem Dafoe.

Well, first it's Willem Dafoe.

Well, but John Pankow too from Mad About You. I mean, come on, this guy's in everything. He's in everything.

Yes. But let me just say, it's a little more impactful that when you least expect it, you get Willem Dafoe in a vampire movie. Again, foreshadowing his later roles.

Look, I'm just saying-

That he does not know yet exist.

It's just like Cousin Ira shows up. Cousin Ira from Mad About You.

Yes.

He's in Delivered, Dying LA. And I get it, Willem Dafoe is a screen legend. Yes. And also, by the way, a man who's played-

But I get the Dan Hedea and we're also crossing over into sitcom realms with some of these other cameos. This is a kaleidoscope of cinematic convergence.

Yes. But wow, yes. So anyway, this is on par with Jeff Goldblum playing a street thug in Death Wish. Anyway, but she's on the payphone and the guy's trying to get her to get off the payphone. And I wrote, payphones are so much more dramatic than cell phones. Like I love payphones. Payphones are just such a great device. And obviously, we can no longer do this. So-

Right. So then she has no choice but to return to Miriam. Exactly. And Miriam says-

I'm going to bring someone to you. Someone who can feed your hunger.

Which is how we opened this episode. And so Miriam, of course, heads to Times Square and picks up some, again, unassuming-

I call him Lawrence Bryan Ferry.

Exactly. Exactly. Brings her home. Sarah is now feverish, curled up in bed. Miriam kills this guy, slashes his throat, calls Sarah down to feed. But the doorbell rings yet again. And it's none other than Tom, who was tracked down Miriam's place, looking for Sarah who has gone missing. Miriam lets him in. He races up to find a near-feral Sarah, sweating and convulsing and like in a really bad state.

And he's actually quite tender with her in this. You know, he tells her he loves her.

He's kind of take care of her. He's actually very unjudgmental in this moment and compassionate. He's clearly managing his freakout, trying to get her out and to safety because he knows this is something's not good. She then sort of goes for him, kisses him passionately, but then catches herself because again, the hunger.

The hunger, send the hunger.

Is trying to send him away to save him, but then the hunger, the hunger's too strong. The Ankh blade is unleashed and we get the Egyptian flashback of Miriam to her origin as the chandelier trembles. And then Miriam is back at the piano. Sarah returns from feeding. And now we kind of get Miriam laying out the new, her new reality.

The new reality. Let's hear it.

You will sleep six hours in April 24th. You will feed one day in seven. And from this moment, you will never grow old. Not a minute. You'll be young forever. You're part of me now. And I cannot let you go. We're done to live forever. There's no release, no end. And I need you to share it with me.

So the cycle continues as it has apparently over and over for centuries. And these are words that Miriam clearly has spoken repeatedly to many victims slash partners. But then an unexpected twist occurs. Because Sarah is still clinging to some portion of her humanity that is overwhelmed with guilt and anguish over what she has just done to Tom. And what is Beholder? But please.

No, she tries to commit suicide. She susses her own throat with the ankh, right?

But this is the thing, the way it is shot and cut.

Yes.

So they go in for a kiss. And you would think, okay, she's surrendering, she's giving in, the cycle is going to just continue. But she pulls the ankh blade out, we get inserts of this, she stabs a neck. In the moment, it is not clear who she's stabbing. And so first we think, oh my God, did she stab Miriam with the neck? But then the reveal is, no, she stabbed herself in the neck.

And that's the part where I feel like this movie, really, I'm not sure how to parse it myself because, you know, there's this thing called the lesbian death trope, right? And it's that women in lesbian relationships can't have happy endings. And as this happens, I'm like, oh, fuck, this is happening here. You know, she's committing suicide rather than be a lesbian. This is horrible. Now, I can't ever love this movie or watch this movie because it's really problematic for me now.

And then it's not that simple. It's not that simple. So because we know what happened to Bowie's character when he tried to kill himself. Yes. Doesn't work so good when you've been turned. And but Deneuve is acting like she's going to lose her, but she's losing her in a way. It's just not the way we or Sarah thinks and pleads with her to stay with me. But Sarah says, I can't, she's just not. It's a bridge for her to have this life. So Miriam takes her to the attic.

Now, here's the thing. Now, the thing where my head was at is she's saying no to queerness and gayness and being a woman, a gay woman, or she's saying no to vampirism as one is standing for the other. It's really, the messages get very muddy here.

In the moment, we don't know, but we will soon get clarity.

There will be clarity.

It'll be very clear by the end, thankfully, which I think is a generosity of the film and its conclusion. This whole sequence is so unexpected because you think you know how it's going to end, how it's going to tie up, and it defies expectation repeatedly in quick succession. Back in the attic, we've been led to, we've been shown exactly what's going to happen and what's going to play out. Apparently, okay, Sarah's not going to work out. She's going to go in a basket and back to square one. Miriam's going to have to go find somebody else. But big twist, somehow, doesn't really matter how.

Somehow. Somehow.

Somehow. John and all the other corpses rise up. They apparently have had enough of this bullshit.

I love that John, somehow John has become the Spartacus of the living dead.

John has rallied all the centuries, generations, of past decayed, desiccating lovers, and raised this army of corpses to burst out of their caskets.

And finish this shit once and for all.

And, yes, and finally break the cycle and put an end to it. And even as Miriam is earnestly pleading and exclaiming, I love you, I love you all.

Yep.

It's so twisted.

Yeah. They throw her down the stairs. She doesn't go down the stairs. She goes down the middle. It's a scrolling stairs. So there's the whole- Yes, yes.

She's fleeing. She's trying to get away. And they keep coming and attacking.

And then she falls for approximately 27 minutes.

Yes.

It's got 27 minutes of just Catherine LeMoure falling in slow motion, through billowing curtains, through shafts of light.

Yeah. And because-

She falls through the 80s, quite metaphorically.

Yes. And because presumably she did not complete the- closed the loop with Sarah, Sarah broke the cycle, then she starts aging rapidly as all these corpses converge and collapse. It's very loosey-goosey and it's like, oh, what the mythology, how this all works. But then the corpses all collapse, like they basically disintegrate. It's a great secret. So they're now all finally free and dead. But then we get two Kodas, because that movie could end there.

It could end there. But the doorbell rings.

The doorbell rings. Lieutenant Alegreza, Dan Adya is back again. I guess making more than a mild attempt to follow up on the case or cases.

Is he following up even?

I don't know what even what he's doing. Who knows? But he's looking for Miriam, apparently, because apparently she's now missing, and he finds a real estate agent.

Played by the great Shane Rimmer. Now, here's a selection of movies Shane Rimmer has been in. Ready?

Please.

Superman 2 as one of the NASA guys and 3. Batman. Batman Begins. Star Wars. He was in a James Bond movie. He was in Space 1999. He was in Doctor Who. He was in The Saint. He's in Doctor Strange Love, and he's also in every Jerry Anderson thing from Space Precinct to UFO, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and The Thunderbirds. He's literally one of those actors, American actors who wound up in England and he's like a Pinewood guy. He's just in every movie ever shot of Pinewood.

Just, hey, dude, come here. We need you. We need a body.

I think he's a submarine commander in The Spy Who Loved Me. That's why he is.

Yeah. But it's a great scene where he basically is talking about how he's been hired. He's selling the estate that the Blaylocks have moved, have left to make whatever some excuse. But Aligretza finds a Polaroid of Miriam, but just sort of accepts it and whatever. It's like, okay, the house is vacant. It's empty. It's gone. Oh, well. Then we cut to the final coda.

Which redeems the suicide attempt.

The coup de grace of the film.

Yes.

Which is Sarah is now living in opulent European splendor. She's European. Now, she's European and has taken a very fetching female lover. Yes. And has keeping Miriam in a coffin.

It's beautiful. And the thing I love about it is that for Tony Scott, well, he's a man of his time. And it would have been very easy for this not to have been the case. And I generally was really upset with the suicide attempt because I was worried about it. But then she's there with, by the way, an actress named Sophie Ward, who was the love interest in Young Sherlock Holmes, who imprinted on me in that film as just one of the most beautiful women ever. And I actually worked with her on my first pilot, which just happened to be called The Van Helsing Chronicles, and she played the fire.

Amazing.

So for me now, I have this connection to this film that I never know.

That's incredible. I had no idea.

But more than anything, I'm just glad that she lived and she's queer.

Yes.

Yes. She was rejected Catherine Deneuve, not her queerness.

Thank God. It is triumph of the lesbian. It is that Sarah has connected with her true identity, with herself. She's moved past the insufferable mediocrity of Tom, controlling whatever. Now she's in control and command on her terms and is free, and hopefully, we'll see. Is she going to do better than Miriam? Maybe, but it's now, fate is in her hands.

Well, Miriam got her comeuppance, which is great. You're so conditioned to worship Miriam in this film. She's always shot so breathtakingly beautifully. It's Catherine Deneuve, and you just sympathize with her, even though she's profoundly evil. Well, not evil. She does evil things because she doesn't have the mercy, the gentility.

She's a tragic villain, but she is a ruthlessly vile villain, nonetheless.

Love makes her do vile things because she can't let go, and that's the lesson that she should have learned.

Yeah. Exactly.

But thankfully, queerness wins the day. Susan Sarandon is with a nice young lady in Paris, and Miriam is where she belongs, in a coffin.

Yes. And all is right as much as it can be with the world.

So, Paul.

So, Javi.

So, we finished watching The Hunger, and obviously, as you can see, I'm now wearing my cardigan, so we did take a break. And we left it on a note of praise for them not using the lesbian death trope, and in fact, having Susan Sarandon move forward with her life in a sapphic manner.

Lesbian victory.

Yes, I think this movie, we'll talk about sort of the impact of this film, and I think this movie is just terrific, and I am so happy to have seen it because it transported me back to the 80s in a way that felt ageless. And I gotta tell you, it's like when I was a kid, I don't think I would have responded to this movie the way that I have as an adult, you know? Because I remember when we said, yeah, yeah, so...

Yeah, no, it's so of its time, it's so singular, it's such an interesting, again, kind of a companion piece to Tony Scott's brother's, early Scott's Blade Runner, but not as well-known or legendary or has not been as influential, but is still so worthy of appreciation.

Yeah, and it's interesting because I think out of the two Scott brothers, Tony Scott was, like Ridley Scott, you can always count on him to deliver stunning, beautiful visuals to deliver. You know what you're getting when you see whether it's Gladiator, Blade Runner, White Squall, a year in Provence. But his style is very much his style, and I feel like Tony Scott tried more things.

Yeah. Tony Scott has an edge. He's got a different kind of, I think they're both fairly fearless as characters, but yeah, Tony goes in these different directions that are so unique and can be very polished. But again, I think it's like I'm really glad that we had an opportunity to celebrate him who is dearly missed.

Well, I mean, yeah, he sadly committed suicide, which is, you know, like...

Yeah, it's absolutely heartbreaking and tragic, but should not be lost in the shadow of Ridley Scott. On his own has just some incredible, I mean, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, like some extraordinary films that also showcase some of the most exciting performances by his actors. And that's another thing that over time, he became more impressive as a director of actors.

Not to mention The Great Top Gun.

His next film. Yeah.

Was Tony Scott as influential as Ridley Scott? Well, arguably with Top Gun, yes. Because I think Top Gun is a movie that, I mean, it is embossed in the face of popular culture indelibly. Also, and I got to say, the way that Tony Scott could do something like this, or something like Domino, and Domino is a scuzzy, unpleasant movie, but stylistically, it is incredibly daring and worth seeing. Then he goes and he makes Crimson Tide, which is just a beautiful classic Hollywood movie.

It's exceptional.

Yeah, exceptional.

Such a well-oiled machine. Again, powerhouse performances. Oh, yeah. With again, the great dearly departed Gene Hackman and-

And Denzel. And Viggo.

Of course, Denzel at the peak of his powers. And on and on and on.

I mean, it's a classic. That movie is insane.

It's a feast. So yeah, we love Tony Scott. And I'm so glad that we got to kick off 1983 in his hands.

And while Roger Ebert did not like this film, Vincent Camby of the New York Times did. And what he said was, here is a film that for once is appropriately served by fast cuts, overlapping dialogue, flashy camera work, wildly fashionable clothes and decor so elegant that only mythical creatures could sit around in it.

Well said, Vincent.

It was nice and it was light.

Yeah, no, but you know what it is? It's like watching it now. Like it actually, it makes me, I don't know if it's nostalgic or whatever, but it's like, I really miss that film language. Yeah, you know, and I feel like because the technology has made it possible to do a very different kind of film now, and that's sort of become the house style for movies now. You don't see this kind of cutting, this kind of like mise en scene with a lot of editing and stuff like that. Movies have become much more fluid in the way that the cameras can move in them and the things that cameras can do. So you don't have as much of this sort of like cut together, I don't know how to describe it, but the language has changed because of the technology. And I feel like we've lost a little something in that this language has kind of receded into the past. I don't know.

No, I agree. I think that there's been somewhat, especially at the studio level, somewhat of a homogenization of style, whereas it would be very difficult to get away with something this stylistically bold and experimental on today.

It's a major studio movie. It's a major studio film, you know?

Yeah. But no, thank goodness it exists. And I'm so happy we got to revisit it. It's tremendous. So yeah, now I could not be more excited for what wonders await us on the looming horizon that is Summer of 83.

But before we go there, because we always have to pivot before a big point. Producer Brad, this might be the moment where you tell us a little bit about how the film did at the box office and what its cultural impact might have been.

I was about to ring the doorbell on Paul.

Did you get the The Hunger doorbell?

No, not yet, but I will. So The Hunger opened on April 29th, 1983. It made 1.8 million in its opening weekend, was number five at the box office behind Flashdance, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Tootsie and Valley Girl. The other two movies that opened were Something Wicked and Valley Girl. Overall, it only made 4.8 million. So in the grand scheme of things, it's ranked 6,759 all time at the box office, which puts it in the same range as Steve Martin's The Lonely Guy and Tom Beringer's Rustler's Rhapsody.

Wow.

They weren't ready. They just weren't ready for this. It was too bold a swing.

Nor were they ready for Rustler's Rhapsody, I might add, but that's a whole other thing.

And Tony Scott admitted that the visual style may have smothered the plot of The Hunger.

I disagree. I disagree. The visual style is the plot. I mean, the visual style is a character in the movie. It's like, it's sort of like, yeah, no, I, I, I, um.

He said this right after it was released and he had receipts in hand. So he was trying to figure out what happened.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think, I think for 83, this is cutting edge avant-garde and, and outside the mainstream in a way that audiences were not prepared to embrace, uh, nor many critics. Uh, it's, could this have been a bigger hit at say 85 or 86? You know, I don't know, but, uh, at least it got Tony on the map in a way that then helped propel him into Top Gun and then, you know, every, everything else.

Was this his first film or did he have anything before this?

He had one film before it. Um, actually two, he had something small in 1970 and then, no, I'm sorry, this was the first film.

There's a feature film, first feature film. Okay, great.

Yeah. Cool.

Yeah. And what a debut. What a big screen debut.

I got to tell you, I would be, I would be proud to have made a movie like this, this movie. I just, oh my God, it just, it just triggers, you know, it's funny that I didn't see it at the time and that I didn't appreciate it at the time because the amount of, and it is nostalgia, but it also feels like inspiration in a way. Like, I feel like this is the kind of movie that you see and you go like, it just, it just reminds you that, that there's a lot more to the visual language of film than, than what we see from mainstream movies today, you know?

Yeah.

And it sounds like in reading production notes, he fought for a lot of things to do what he wanted. And studio and producers Rodham to stay on budget and stay on schedule. And he was able to get some extra days and finish what he started.

Good. Good. Good for him.

Yeah.

All right. Summer of 83.

Summer of 83.

What do we got? All right. 83.

So we start off Memorial Day weekend for Summer of 83. And we have two movies opening. First up, Chained Heat.

Well, that's the one to beat right now. I'm in. I'm going to watch. Who's in Chained Heat? It's Stella Stevens, John Vernon. Wow. Linda Blair. Sibyl Danning, the great Sibyl Danning. I mean, uh-huh. What else? What could possibly beat this?

Henry Silva.

Oh, well. Yeah, that's it.

Okay. I think we got a movie here. I think we're good. Okay.

I'm reserving judgment.

No, no, no. I'm in. It's all-

Being Memorial Day, our other option is Return of the Jedi.

Well, shit. I guess I ain't watching Chained Heat.

Not in our time.

My sincere condolences, Javi. But as I may have said in another context, at another time, I have just two words regarding this decision that lies before us, yub nub.

Yub nub. As we all know, yub nub is just another word for freedom.

Yes. Yes. I could not be more excited. I don't know that there was any movie in my youth I was ever more excited for than Return of the Jedi. The anticipation for this was off the charts.

Yep. Absolutely.

Probably the first one I waited in line for.

I don't remember. I think I saw this. I remember seeing this movie. Brad, do you remember there was a theater that was like maybe 45 minutes from Ann Arbor called the Mickeye? And that was the theater that had like the really big screen. It's 70 millimeter theater. And I think I saw Return of the Jedi there. And I know that when Aliens came out, we made a special trip to go see it there too.

I know I saw Return at the campus theater.

Okay. And but Aliens, Aliens, we definitely saw the Mickeye. So there you go.

Yay. And for clarity, we are going to be reviewing and revisiting the 1983 version of Return of the Jedi. Not the special edition or editions thereof, but the original classic.

Lapte Neck is much better than Jedi Rocks.

That's all I have to say about that. I mean, it's not even in the same galaxy.

Lapte Neck, which is, by the way, Huttese for Working Out.

Javi, is your laserdisc player still connected?

Sadly, no. But I just want to say, one of my favorite thing about watching the Return of the Jedi, making of special, which I watched endlessly, was that they actually had, they played the rehearsal for when they were doing Lapte Neck and The Thing and they were using the English version of the song. So I know that the course goes, so I'm shaping up and working out. Anyway, so that's, I can't wait. I can't wait.

That is going to haunt my dreams, as so many other things in this podcast have. I wonder whether we should float a poll slash wager among our followers, whether or not the Return of the Jedi episode is going to exceed the length of our Star Trek II episode. Because I have a feeling we're going to have a lot to talk about. I have a lot to say. I have a lot to say about this fine film.

Are we talking about the live runtime or the Brad edited version? Because I can't control that.

Release, release the hobby cut. Release, release the hobby cut.

Anyway, thank you all for listening as always and for either sticking with us or joining us for season two, which we couldn't be more excited to venture into on full blast.

To unleash or there we say inflict on the world.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, in that case, I cannot wait and we will see you in line at the Multiplex. Catch you later.