The Hunger DVD Movie Review

The Hunger... Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are rich, handsome, and oh-so stylish as inhabitants of the night. Wearing sleek outfits and classy sun shades, they haunt rock 'n roll clubs on the stalk for young blood, whom they bring back home to their incredibly lush mansion for a late-night break.

Being a vampire never looked more horny, but there is a price : Bowie starts to age so fast he wrinkles up in the waiting room of a doctor's ( Susan Sarandon ) office. Tony Scott's ( Ridley's bro ) directorial debut, changed from the Whitley Strieber novel, revises the vampire parable with Egyptian inflections and removes all references to garlic and crosses and wooden stakes--these parasites can even walk around in the daylight--but the ties between blood and sex are as robust as ever.

Scott's background as a prize winning commercial director is clear in each luxuriously textured frame and his densely interwoven revising, but the moody atmosphere comes at the cost of dramatic pressure.

At times the film is so languid it becomes mired in its misty, impeccably designed visible style. In its own way, The Hunger is the ideal vampire film for the '80s, all poise and angle and surface beauty. Sarandon talks truthfully about the film in the documentary The Celluloid Closet.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans DVD Movie Review

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans... This prequel to Len Wiseman’s Underworld and Underworld: Evolution is distinctively different, especially minus the nimble vampire warrior star, Selene (Kate Beckinsale). Underworld: Rise of the Lycans takes its cues from the vampire/werewolf battles that occur in the other films, but director Patrick Tatopoulos focuses here on the young werewolf Lucian's (Michael Sheen) rise to leadership. Rise of the Lycans is set mostly within the walls of vampire lord Viktor’s (Bill Nighy) castle, so the film’s silver, black, and blue palette reflects a world happening under moonlight. From the outset, when Viktor brings Lucian, the first werewolf, into the world, this villainous bloodsucker’s daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), is smitten with Lucian’s hairy appearance and instinctual intelligence. As years pass, Lucian grows tired of watching his race suffer slavery and imprisonment, and recruits a human named Raze (Kevin Grevioux) to assist rebellion. This archetypal plot is not so riveting, and what carries Underworld: Rise of the Lycans are the battle scenes between vampires and werewolves, which are excitingly fast-paced and brutal. The whole film adopts a medieval battlefield aesthetic that carries an otherwise clichéd story about illicit love and freedom fighting. Some characters, like the traitor vampire Tannis (Steven Mackintosh), also intrigues throughout, as one guesses who he will ally with. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans may not be the finest film in the werewolf and vampire archives independently, but its mixed monstrosity makes it unique and entertaining, especially on a big screen.