Directed by Tony Scott / Screenplay by Ivan Davis and Michael Thomas

The implicit sexuality of the vampire - a creature that preys on its victims in their beds in a grotesque parody of lovemaking - is a notion that goes back at least as far as Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 story Carmilla. Pre-dating Dracula by 25 years, Le Fanu’s tale is in some respects more audacious, for here both vampire and victim are female. With its torrid romanticism and lesbian subtext, Carmilla has became an enduring influence on horror cinema: adaptations of varying fidelity include Vampyr (1932), Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and The Vampire Lovers (1970). The legacy of Carmilla can also be detected in the simmering pansexual eroticism of Tony Scott’s The Hunger, a horror film for the MTV age which begins with the appropriately gothic spectacle of Bauhaus performing ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ in a New York nightclub. There we encounter the ice-cool pairing of Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) who stalk the dance floors, seducing young couples and bringing them home to devour. While Miriam has been prowling the world for thousands of years, John is just the latest of many consorts, a youngster of a mere couple of centuries - for Miriam’s tragedy is that she can give her partners eternal life, but not eternal youth. Her attic is lined with coffins containing the withered husks of her past lovers, trapped in a living death. The time has come for John to join them, and as he accelerates into old age (the make-up created for Bowie’s transformation is extraordinary), Miriam turns her attention to a young doctor played by Susan Sarandon - but in the words of The Hunger’s tagline, ‘Nothing human lives forever…’

Framed Dimensions: 330mm x 410mm

Acrylic on 300gsm Arches oil paper
Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.