Forever and ever.

Not that there’s ever been any doubt, but Tony Scott is nuts. I mean crazy, as in Arkham, as in Artaud, as in theophonies emanating from pink lasers in outer space, and nothing less. But that doesn’t change the fact that The Hunger is undoubtedly the best New Wave bisexual Egyptian goddess vampire movie I’ve ever seen. Also, you know, the only. But still.

Tony Scott doesn’t believe in the slow build, and The Hunger is no exception. He wastes not a frame before slamming you with a vicious, non-linear assault of superslick horror film theatricality, opening with a New Wave vampire fashion show that’s a fussillade of hypnotic and horrifying images. The first ten minutes of the film are an extended montage. There’s next to no dialog, and the few words that are spoken don’t matter: Scott, even more than his brother, is concerned solely with image.

Foreshadowing his even more disconnected work in last year’s Domino, The Hunger’s opening spins out a an array of disparate, darkened images – always in extreme close or long views – that aim not for narrative coherence, but for a plane of imagistic meaning that supercedes the banality and familiarity of language. It’s pure film, designed to shred your brain apart.

And so Scott deliberately jars you, lurching through time and place like a junkie with a time machine/teleporter. He traffics in impression, not reason. So David Bowie, a perfect fit for a vampire’s odd blend of weird, cool and suave, is cool, but not for any reason you can name. He simply is cool, and you’re aware of it but don’t – couldn’t – question why. Scott works at a nearly subconscious level.

I imagine the film must’ve been even more shocking when it was released in 1983. Although audiences had already tasted Ridley’s immaculate, light-sculpted images, nothing in mainstream film history would’ve likely readied them for Tony’s barrage of erotically charged, uber-chic sadism. These days, Scott’s influence is all over the Hollywood mainstream. His fingerprints can be seen in such disparate films as Requiem for a Dream, Blade and 28 Days Later, as well as the supersaturated worlds of directors like Michael Bay and Simon West (which Scott largely created with his 80s classic, Top Gun). But Tony’s taste for blood – made quite literal in The Hunger – was orders more brutal and base than anything outside of the grindhouse before then. Ridley brought a European classicism to genre material, raising it in the process; Tony coated his brutal passions in an eloquent, upper crust veneer, passing off underworld filth as high class. With most of his movies, it’s not so much whether or not you like them, but if you can stand them, and for how long.