The Addiction
The Addiction (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)
1995 / US / 82 minutes
“My indifference is not the issue here. It’s your astonishment that needs study.”
Director: Abel Ferrara / Screenplay: Nicholas St. John / Director of Photography: Ken Kelsch / Music: Joe Delia / Production: Dennis Hann and Fernando Sulichin for Fast Films / Cast: Lili Taylor (Kathleen Conklin), Christopher Walken (Peina), Annabella Sciorra (Casanova), Edie Falco (Jean), Paul Calderon (Professor), Fredro Starr (Black), Kathryn Erbe (Anthropology Student), Michael Imperioli (Missionary), Jamal Simmons (Black’s Friend), Robert Castle (Priest).
After the disappointing experience of directing Body Snatchers (1993) and it’s even more disappointing opening, Abel Ferrara again returned to independent filmmaking- this time for good. Having had a much better time quickly making Bad Lieutenant with his old crew in their old school style, Ferrara again reassembled his key collaborators to film two more Nicolas St. John scripts- gangster drama The Funeral (the film eventually appeared in 1996) and The Addiction.
Although The Funeral is still a very good film, it’s The Addiction that’s the more interesting of the two. Shot on the streets in grainy black and white, it’s an existential horror like no other. As with Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) it’s a vampire film in which the word “Vampire” is never used but it also combines the undead myth with philosophy and theology to create a unique cinematic experience with very limited resources.
The Addiction begins with philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor) getting dragged into a New York City alleyway by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra), a strange woman who bites her on the neck. Over the next few days, Kathleen develops an aversion to sunlight and mirrors as well as a taste for human blood. But it’s the way she deals with her transformation- applying what she’s learnt through her studies to what’s happening to her- that sets The Addiction so far apart from the standard genre fare.
Like Thana in Ms. 45, Kathleen undergoes a sudden change in personality that leads to her going out at night to look for victims- unlike Thana’s though, Kathleen’s victims survive when Kathleen turns them into what she is, all the while explaining and justifying her new lifestyle through the words and ideas of the philosophers she’s been studying.
Eventually meeting Peina (Christopher Walken), a much older creature like her who has been “Fasting“ for years, Kathleen listens to his own philosophical ideas on their nature and their addiction before assembling everyone she knows- including the people she’s turned- to a party that turns into a violent feeding frenzy…
Also like Zoe Lund in Ms. 45, Lili Taylor carries the bulk of this film herself. By her own admission dealing with a real life addiction of her own at the time (in her case, to alcohol), she is outstanding throughout, completely selling Kathleen’s transitions from quiet academic to merciless predator and finally to repentant survivor in recovery.
While the film’s ending is extremely ambiguous (it most likely represents a division between Ferrara and St. John), the whole thing’s clearly an analogy for drug dependence and Ferrara himself was still addicted to heroin at the time. The Catholic sin and redemption angle is also played up even more than in Bad Lieutenant but in the end everything is open to interpretation.
Kathleen’s philosophical outlook changes a lot throughout the film, often twisting itself completely around to make sense of actions that she no longer has any control over. In her shades, boots and Grunge getup (Taylor would get into character by walking the streets all night listening to Pixies tapes on her personal stereo), Kathleen looks and sounds every bit the cooler than thou ’90’s student of lethargic nihilism, delivering speech after speech of her at once profound and preposterous insights throughout her voiceover.
“It makes no difference what I do, whether I draw blood or not” she whispers at one point, “It’s the violence of my will against theirs”. But for all it’s darkness, there are moments of completely out of place humour in The Addiction that somehow still work the same way Ferrara made them in The Driller Killer, Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant.
Kathleen slamming a woman’s head into a wall so she can knock her out and steal her clothes is played totally seriously but looks completely comical (it’s also obviously a move she got from Casanova, who does the same thing to her at the start of the film) and the climatic party / massacre is a simultaneously horrifying and ridiculous exercise in excess (in every sense).
Walken’s really only around for an extended cameo (he would take the lead role in The Funeral) but his character makes a lasting impression. Although Peina clearly isn’t really following his own advice about blending in with normal people, he is a vampire being played by Christopher Walken at the end of the day so that was never really going to happen anyway (interestingly, St. John had written Casanova as male and Peina as female but Walken persuaded Ferrara to switch them because he preferred the other role).
The established rules of vampirism (or, at least, one version of them) are also followed throughout. We never find out if Kathleen still has a reflection or not because she covers up her mirrors but other details (avoidance of direct sunlight, not daylight) are pure Stoker. There’s also the chance Casanova and Kathleen give to their victims to tell them to go away “Like they mean it” before going in for the bite (Presumably, Black’s “Get the fuck off me, bitch!” wasn’t forceful enough).
As ever with Ferrara’s films, there were controversies upon the film’s release- this time because he’d used real footage of dead bodies from the then ongoing war in Yugoslavia (I included material from the same conflict in my 2005 short The Future and inadvertently demonstrated The Addiction’s points about desensitisation by never really realising what I’d done until watching it with an audience).
Asked about the inclusion of the images by Irish critic Paul Duane (who predicted trouble with the ironically very Catholicism- influenced Irish Film Censor’s Office) in 1995, Ferrara answered “Why shouldn’t I put those images in the film? They happened. You could have just picked those out of a hat if you just turned on the TV any night- it’s any place, any time”.
For me, The Addiction remains it’s director’s best film. Certainly subtler than The Driller Killer or King of New York, it’s also deeper than Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant and condenses all of Ferrara and St. John’s obsessions into a single hypnotic, completely immersive cinematic experience. Unavailable (and, for a while, out of copyright) for years except on poor quality bootleg tapes and discs, it’s recently been completely restored and re-released by the brilliant Arrow Video so now’s the perfect time to discover- or rediscover- it.
1995 / US / 82 minutes
“My indifference is not the issue here. It’s your astonishment that needs study.”
Director: Abel Ferrara / Screenplay: Nicholas St. John / Director of Photography: Ken Kelsch / Music: Joe Delia / Production: Dennis Hann and Fernando Sulichin for Fast Films / Cast: Lili Taylor (Kathleen Conklin), Christopher Walken (Peina), Annabella Sciorra (Casanova), Edie Falco (Jean), Paul Calderon (Professor), Fredro Starr (Black), Kathryn Erbe (Anthropology Student), Michael Imperioli (Missionary), Jamal Simmons (Black’s Friend), Robert Castle (Priest).
After the disappointing experience of directing Body Snatchers (1993) and it’s even more disappointing opening, Abel Ferrara again returned to independent filmmaking- this time for good. Having had a much better time quickly making Bad Lieutenant with his old crew in their old school style, Ferrara again reassembled his key collaborators to film two more Nicolas St. John scripts- gangster drama The Funeral (the film eventually appeared in 1996) and The Addiction.
Although The Funeral is still a very good film, it’s The Addiction that’s the more interesting of the two. Shot on the streets in grainy black and white, it’s an existential horror like no other. As with Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) it’s a vampire film in which the word “Vampire” is never used but it also combines the undead myth with philosophy and theology to create a unique cinematic experience with very limited resources.
The Addiction begins with philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor) getting dragged into a New York City alleyway by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra), a strange woman who bites her on the neck. Over the next few days, Kathleen develops an aversion to sunlight and mirrors as well as a taste for human blood. But it’s the way she deals with her transformation- applying what she’s learnt through her studies to what’s happening to her- that sets The Addiction so far apart from the standard genre fare.
Like Thana in Ms. 45, Kathleen undergoes a sudden change in personality that leads to her going out at night to look for victims- unlike Thana’s though, Kathleen’s victims survive when Kathleen turns them into what she is, all the while explaining and justifying her new lifestyle through the words and ideas of the philosophers she’s been studying.
Eventually meeting Peina (Christopher Walken), a much older creature like her who has been “Fasting“ for years, Kathleen listens to his own philosophical ideas on their nature and their addiction before assembling everyone she knows- including the people she’s turned- to a party that turns into a violent feeding frenzy…
Also like Zoe Lund in Ms. 45, Lili Taylor carries the bulk of this film herself. By her own admission dealing with a real life addiction of her own at the time (in her case, to alcohol), she is outstanding throughout, completely selling Kathleen’s transitions from quiet academic to merciless predator and finally to repentant survivor in recovery.
While the film’s ending is extremely ambiguous (it most likely represents a division between Ferrara and St. John), the whole thing’s clearly an analogy for drug dependence and Ferrara himself was still addicted to heroin at the time. The Catholic sin and redemption angle is also played up even more than in Bad Lieutenant but in the end everything is open to interpretation.
Kathleen’s philosophical outlook changes a lot throughout the film, often twisting itself completely around to make sense of actions that she no longer has any control over. In her shades, boots and Grunge getup (Taylor would get into character by walking the streets all night listening to Pixies tapes on her personal stereo), Kathleen looks and sounds every bit the cooler than thou ’90’s student of lethargic nihilism, delivering speech after speech of her at once profound and preposterous insights throughout her voiceover.
“It makes no difference what I do, whether I draw blood or not” she whispers at one point, “It’s the violence of my will against theirs”. But for all it’s darkness, there are moments of completely out of place humour in The Addiction that somehow still work the same way Ferrara made them in The Driller Killer, Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant.
Kathleen slamming a woman’s head into a wall so she can knock her out and steal her clothes is played totally seriously but looks completely comical (it’s also obviously a move she got from Casanova, who does the same thing to her at the start of the film) and the climatic party / massacre is a simultaneously horrifying and ridiculous exercise in excess (in every sense).
Walken’s really only around for an extended cameo (he would take the lead role in The Funeral) but his character makes a lasting impression. Although Peina clearly isn’t really following his own advice about blending in with normal people, he is a vampire being played by Christopher Walken at the end of the day so that was never really going to happen anyway (interestingly, St. John had written Casanova as male and Peina as female but Walken persuaded Ferrara to switch them because he preferred the other role).
The established rules of vampirism (or, at least, one version of them) are also followed throughout. We never find out if Kathleen still has a reflection or not because she covers up her mirrors but other details (avoidance of direct sunlight, not daylight) are pure Stoker. There’s also the chance Casanova and Kathleen give to their victims to tell them to go away “Like they mean it” before going in for the bite (Presumably, Black’s “Get the fuck off me, bitch!” wasn’t forceful enough).
As ever with Ferrara’s films, there were controversies upon the film’s release- this time because he’d used real footage of dead bodies from the then ongoing war in Yugoslavia (I included material from the same conflict in my 2005 short The Future and inadvertently demonstrated The Addiction’s points about desensitisation by never really realising what I’d done until watching it with an audience).
Asked about the inclusion of the images by Irish critic Paul Duane (who predicted trouble with the ironically very Catholicism- influenced Irish Film Censor’s Office) in 1995, Ferrara answered “Why shouldn’t I put those images in the film? They happened. You could have just picked those out of a hat if you just turned on the TV any night- it’s any place, any time”.
For me, The Addiction remains it’s director’s best film. Certainly subtler than The Driller Killer or King of New York, it’s also deeper than Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant and condenses all of Ferrara and St. John’s obsessions into a single hypnotic, completely immersive cinematic experience. Unavailable (and, for a while, out of copyright) for years except on poor quality bootleg tapes and discs, it’s recently been completely restored and re-released by the brilliant Arrow Video so now’s the perfect time to discover- or rediscover- it.
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