David Bowie’s worst movie role, according to Roger Ebert: “Sorry, but that’s the way it is”
With his extravagant performances and penchant for embodying various characters on stage, like Ziggy Stardust – complete with his iconic lightning bolt painted across his face – or the suave Thin White Duke, it was only a matter of time before David Bowie made his way to Hollywood.
In fact, the singer was deeply enamoured by the art of acting, making his on-screen debut in the 1967 short horror film The Image. For Bowie, music and acting seemed to go hand-in-hand; both were physical forms of creative expression, and he combined them by incorporating performance into his musical persona.
This is one of the many reasons why Bowie remains so beloved. Not only did he produce great songs, but he was fully dedicated to the ever-changing world of David Bowie, where his different eras of musical experimentation were defined by new characters. Yet, he never lost sight of that special something that made him ‘Bowie’, no matter the costume he was sporting.
Bowie’s innate love of the weird and wonderful eventually led him to a proper acting career, with the musician earning a leading role in Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, where he played an androgynous alien. Establishing himself as an actor concerned with unique roles and unconventional storylines, Bowie appeared in the erotic vampire movie The Hunger a few years later, but Roger Ebert didn’t have the kindest words to say about the movie.
Directed by Tony Scott, the film is now considered a cult classic, but many people hated it when it first emerged in 1983. Ebert rated it just one and a half stars, believing it to be “an agonisingly bad vampire movie, circling around an exquisitely effective sex scene.” He added, “Sorry, but that’s the way it is, and your reporter has to be honest.”
Ebert continued, “I mention the scene so prominently because it’s one of the few scenes that really work in The Hunger, a movie that has been so ruthlessly overproduced that it’s all flash and style and no story. Well, there’s probably a story moping about somewhere within all the set decoration. It seems to involve Deneuve as a vampire of vaguely Egyptian origins, whose latest partner (David Bowie) is giving out on her after three or four centuries.”
The erotic vampire sub-genre has always been a popular brand of arthouse or low-budget horror, with Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy or Jean Rollin’s whole filmography standing as prime examples. Many of these films include lesbian elements, and The Hunger follows suit, although Ebert believed much of the appeal of the movie was in seeing how far Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon would take such a potentially controversial scene.
“The Hunger approaches its big scene on an altogether different level, with understatement, awkward little pauses in conversation and a canny awareness of our own curiosity about whether Deneuve and Sarandon really will go ahead with this scene, or whether the director will cut away to the usual curtains blowing in the wind,” he wrote.
For Ebert, the film just didn’t have enough bite, and he found it lacking in “real drama.” It seems as though many critics were divided by the movie, which further proved Bowie’s lack of concern for taking on conventional roles. Many loved it, however, believing it to be a bold and stylish film, and Bowie would soon go on to appear in several other controversial movies, like The Last Temptation of Christ and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
