Bounding Into Halloween: It’s Hump Day On Night 15 With ‘The Hunger’ And ‘Nekromantik’
Love is in the air, creeps! If there’s a mental condition out there that rivals paranoid schizophrenia in terms of irrational, self-sabotaging behavior, it’s when a person is grasped by the diseased hands of fierce infatuation, and there are plenty of serial killers throughout history to back up this harsh truth.
Many have died in the name of love, but there are some who’ve been able to keep the fiery embers of passion glowing beyond their mortal lives, and tonight’s movies stand as incontrovertible proof that even Cupid has a sick sense of humor.
The Hunger (1983)
This first love ballad is the debut of late director, Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, True Romance), and it’s based on the novel by Michael Thomas. Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) is a vampire, and she has been walking the earth since Ancient Egyptian times.
To combat the loneliness that comes with eternal life, she chooses a lover to go steady with, and turns them into an immortal bloodsucker, but Miriam fails to mention that they’ll begin to rapidly deteriorate somewhere around the 200-year mark. Her current squeeze, John (David Bowie), would’ve liked to know that before taking that first bite.
A former cellist from the 18th century, John begins to suffer from insomnia, and his body is aging decades with every passing day until he’s a literal Dead Man Walking. The fading space oddity tracks down Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon) who specializes in premature aging, but she writes off John as a loon when he visits her office.
He eventually withers into a dry husk that still lives. Miriam puts him inside of a coffin in the attic with all of her past lovers whom she didn’t have the heart to kill. Newly single, she seeks out her new consort, and that Dr. Sarah isn’t looking too bad at all.
If there’s one movie that people in the Goth scene talk about as much as The Crow or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it’s this bizarre display of tainted love, but it’s most certainly more of a Gothic love story than the other two. The pacing is slow, it’s not as violent as the vampire movies of that period, and it has a lot more style.
Bowie isn’t in it for very long, but he still gives a great performance that proves that he should’ve been in more horror movies. Give in to The Hunger over on TUBI. Below are the opening credits to the movie that features the band Bauhaus, and a song that has become an anthem in darker circles:
Nekromantik (1988)
It was William Shakespear who once wrote, “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes,” but his version of “dying” referred to the big climax that usually comes before birth.
If the last feature wasn’t enough to make you delete that Tinder profile, this German import will have everyone running to their nearest monastery for a lifetime of silence and celibacy because the lovebirds you’re about to meet have a kink that goes far beyond bondage, blood play, and bird masks.
As with The Hunger, it’s about finding love with someone who has already shed their mortal coil, but with the biggest difference being that these lovers don’t have to be moving. From 1988, this is Nekromantik.
Robert (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) works as a street cleaner for a company that’s charged to clean up the human debris left by road accidents. He likes to snag the occasional severed limb to enjoy with his girlfriend, Betty (Beatrice Manowski), in their apartment full of formaldehyde jars.
Everything is going well in their little world of morbid matrimony, but then Robert brings home an entire corpse that’s near the final stages of decomposition, and that’s when one of the most disgusting love triangles takes place.
This movie is not for everybody, or quite possibly anybody. Aside from the necrophilia that you will never unsee, it’s poorly made, and the best acting came from an inanimate skeleton, but it has still gained a big following.
One fan is “The Patron Saint of Smut Cinema,” John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Multiple Maniacs) who called it “The first ever erotic film for necrophiliacs,” but this also the same person who filmed the late Divine eating dog droppings at the end of his movie.
Grab a barf bag, if you dare, and watch Nekromantik on Shudder, or on YouTube where it’s free (with age restrictions):
