THE ADDICTION (1995)
“Eternity’s a long time. Get used to it.”
Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer: Nicholas St. John
Cinematography: Ken Kelsch
Editor: Mayin Lo
Music: Joe Delia
Notable Cast: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Edie Falco, Annabella Sciorra, Paul Calderon, Fredro Starr, Kathryn Erbe, Michael Imperioli, Father Robert Castle, Jay Julien
And here, my friends, we come to the last great film by the illustrious Abel Ferrara. Not just the last in this month-long Ferrara takeover of the 1ST 5 Minutes, but the last time he ever made a great theatrical movie… ever. He fell off, big time, after this, and delivered one flop after another. No idea what happened, but just like that, he was done.
Why does that happen?
I know some will disagree with me, but The Addiction is the dividing line between great Ferrara and warmed over Ferrara. I mean, look at his output after: The Funeral, The Blackout, New Rose Hotel, ‘R Xmas… like what in the actual fuck? I tapped out after the one with the schmuck from Bronx Tale. I couldn’t take it anymore. How the fuck did the guy who made King of motherfuckin’ New York AND Bad Lieutenant make ALL THAT BULLSHIT?
It was so disappointing back then, and even now.
All of a sudden in 2011 people started talking up 4:44 Last Day on Earth, which sounds like some cheeseball flick you’d see at 3AM on the syndicated channel back in the day. Unfortunately, I love Ferrara and was sucked in by the hype, only to be 1,000% let down by the product.
Poor Willem Dafoe, a truly great actor who somehow found himself being the star of Ferrara’s worst era of films. But if you check out Dafoe’s IMDb he’s in a ton of shit you’ve never heard of. Hope he’s okay, cause he either REALLY fucking loves acting or needs money desperately.
And interestingly enough, for my last great time at the cinema with an Abel Ferrara film, the man himself was there in the theater for an advance screening October Films was doing for NYU film students at the time. I myself was not a film student, but my buddy Altos was, and we were both Ferrara die hards. Not only that, Annabella Sciorra accompanied Ferrara (!) and they both did a Q & A after the movie.
Pretty wild. Here we are, at NYU, watching a film made by Ferrara, with Ferrara in attendance, where the main setting of the film is NYU and the neighborhood around it. How great is that?
Quite a surreal experience, made more surreal by the fact that I got to ask Ferrara a question about Bad Lieutenant, which had Annabella Sciorra nodding her head in agreement at my take on the film. Hot shit. And THEN, Ferrara walked out WITH US and put his arm around my buddy Altos, cracking jokes and laughing.
My friends, it remains one of the absolute best experiences of my life. I’ve almost never experienced a sober high like that ever in my life, at least up until that point. It was truly something else. To say I was optimistic for my future as a filmmaker was an understatement. Ferrara made it seem so possible, so real. While it didn’t work out for me, he’ll always be an inspirational figure in Hollywood lore, a beacon for all of us who didn’t grow up with connections, showing what one determined man can do in the factory of dreams.
Back to the movie, though. As I said, we’re sitting in a theater at NYU to see a film about students at NYU, sitting in the actual building we see on screen before us. Much like sitting in the same theater as we see onscreen in Six Degrees of Separation, there’s really something special about that experience I imagine most have not gotten to have firsthand. It resides on a cinematic plane of rarified indulgence.
Pure.
Gold.
Like Pony Boy says.
We had great 1ST 5s for Dangerous Game and Body Snatchers. Can The Addiction continue the streak?
What the fuck do you think?!
1ST 5 MINUTES
Damn, how lucky are we to have the whole flick, for free, on YouTube AND it’s in 1080p?! What a mitzvah!
Right off the bat, we get this soft R&B song by Eddie Kendrix and David Ruffin, Addiction, over the opening credits. It is absolutely hilarious to start a low budget indie horror movie about philosophy spouting vampires with this kind of music, but it is also perfect, and a really memorable tune actually. I can’t get it out of my head once I get going. It’s infectious.
To go from that to giant CU pictures of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam with tender Asian music is jarring, to say the least. Followed by narration (done by the great Father Robert Castle, who has an amazing voice) that dryly explains the massacre itself. Sitting in the audience watching is Lili Taylor’s Kathleen Conklin, and we are immediately struck by the fact this movie is in black and white.
Fuck. YES!
Ferrara is NOT fucking around here, and I love it. That first image of Taylor’s face is great, framed by the images before her (which almost seem to form a crucifix). Good shit by cinematographer Ken Kelsch, who is at the top of his game throughout this picture, from fantastic lighting to great use of shadows.
Perhaps he watched Bojan Bazelli’s lensing of Body Snatchers for tips!
The lights come up, Kathleen is sitting next to Edie Falco’s Jean, her classmate and friend in their Masters Philosophy program at NYU (though they never explicitly call it NYU). They discuss what they were just watching as they exit the class and building, headed toward Washington Square Park. They go separate ways, with Kathleen going west toward 6th Avenue, where she walks past loud black dudes up to no good as rap music blasts from unseen speakers.
Love the juxtaposition of a black and white image with the hip-hop tunes Ferrara sprinkles throughout.
Quite unexpected.
And amazing.
Kathleen rounds a corner and stops at a crosswalk to wait for the light. As she does, she catches the attention of a slender woman in a black dress, who approaches her. It is Annabella Sciorra’s as yet unnamed character, Casanova.
As she approaches Kathleen, she can be heard muttering something inaudible.
And that is the 5 minute mark for The Addiction. Even if I wasn’t a Ferrara nut and had no idea who did this, I’d be so in at this point. Between the black and white, the music, and the setting, how can this movie not deliver?
The rest of the flick
Casanova grabs Kathleen by the wrist, knocks her head against a wall before dragging her downstairs to a dark alleyway. Peep the lighting here, love these images. Combined with the great Joe Delia music, it is genuinely unsettling. As Kathleen pleads mercy, Casanova gets irate that Kathleen won’t simply tell her to go away, like she means it. It’s so weird and amazing, never seen this in a vampire film before (also… no fangs! Which actually works, makes it scarier).
I love how they really play up the notion of how you “allow” the evil into you. This is their version of inviting a vampire into your home. You must invite the demon in. Evil needs permission. It’s why they always have to tell you what they’re doing to you first.
Your acceptance of the evil allows it to flourish.
It’s great how they tie this evil into other historic evils like My Lai and the Holocaust (the latter especially interesting due to the B&W photos we have, tying that evil to the black and white images in the film before us).
Some may find the use of images of real atrocities tasteless. Fuck those people. This is art. It’s SUPPOSED to upset you and make you uncomfortable.
You’re watching an Abel Ferrara film, motherfucker, what you expect, hearts and flowers?
As Kathleen repeats the word “please” like a wounded animal, Casanova gets angry, and as she goes in for the bite, she mutters to herself in a very Christopher Walken way, making us wonder on subsequent viewings if he was the one who changed her into a vampire (love). She drinks Kathleen’s blood, leaving her in a daze. As Casanova releases her grip, she says one word to Kathleen:
“Collaborator.”
YES!
She walks away, satisfied and full, blood smeared around her mouth, then cryptically tells Kathleen, “Wanna know what’s gonna happen? Just wait and see…”
So good!
At this point, there is no “vampirism” acknowledged, Kathleen simply thinks she was attacked by some freak, and goes to the hospital, where she tells the useless cops what happened, before being sent home with a bloody bandage covering her wound. But something’s wrong. Instead of it merely being a cut that needs to heal, she starts to feel quite ill, to the point where she is writhing in bed. She goes back to the hospital, where they say she is merely anemic (nice), and send her on her way.
She tries to go back to class, but feels awful, leaves to vomit in the bathroom, then just goes home. Great panning shot from her window to her sitting still on the floor in near darkness. Creepy. I like how she already has a basement apartment even before she got turned. Already living in the earth, her very own apartment sized coffin. Nice touch.
Eventually, her hunger must be fulfilled. She goes out at night, finds a homeless man passed out cold. Takes a syringe from her pocket and draws blood from him. LOVE the way the blood catches the light as it seeps from his arm. And not for nothing, but the black and white adds so much to the atmosphere here. Makes NYC look foreign and weird, the way the blood looks black as tar, it’s incredible.
Pure cinema!
Love being in a master’s hands. Had I known then it’d be the last time with Ferrara, perhaps I’d have relished it more…
The way this movie links drug addiction with vampiric blood addiction is GENIUS! Obviously made explicit by Kathleen using the needles at first to “drink” blood, but also in the behaviors and effects.
Notice the deeper Kathleen disappears into vampirism, it mirrors what a drug addiction would be like. She loses interest in her studies, she stops caring about her hygiene, she gets her friends addicted, and is an all-around piece of shit.
Writer Nicky St. John and Ferrara really nailed something here, and serves as the apotheosis of Ferrara’s career in terms of the way drugs played a role. Ferrara himself soon sobered up after this film, and one can’t help but wonder if it was the drugs coursing through his mind that alchemically produced Ferrara’s most prodigious output. How nice it is to sit in a chair, writing, and wondering what has been and could be…
Kathleen’s first injection of blood is handled expertly by Ferrara and hearkens back to Bad Lieutenant. The flashback to Kathleen as a child with that great music sting sends me. Perfect way to illustrate her transformation, a break with who you were. And when Kathleen gets up and sees her reflection has disappeared from the mirror? LOVE! It’s just a sticker on the mirror, but it WORKS! I love hands on filmmaking like this. You got no money so you figure it the fuck out.
Lili Taylor is fantastic in this scene and throughout the entire picture. She has to play a lot of shades and emotions and aspects of this character and is never less than compelling. Between this film and her genius turn as Robert Downey Jr.’s better half in Robert Altman’s magnum opus to L.A., Short Cuts, she had quite the 1995!
The costume design changes as she goes deeper into the vampirism is a nice, unsaid touch that helps drive the narrative forward. She goes from dressing like a bookish lesbian to a woman in her prime, wearing long black dresses, much like Casanova.
I believe this is also the first use of sunglasses in a vampire movie. In the mythos of this film, the vampires can walk around in daylight, at least at first. The more they drink blood the more they can only go out at night.
Except for one character, Peina, played by Christopher Walken, with black pageboy haircut, slicked back, in the film’s standout sequence. His entire little side movie is my Favorite Scene in the whole picture. It really opens up the world of these vampires and the possibilities therein.
The sequence starts with an overhead shot of a Greenwich Village street as Peina, casting a long shadow, talks to himself as he crosses the street. Kathleen approaches, grabs his arm, tries to get him to go with her, but he’s stronger, and reveals he’s been playing this same game for much longer than she has when he asks, “why don’t you tell me to leave you alone, like you mean it?”
What follows is a wonderfully written, performed and shot 10 minute sequence that gets to the heart of what this film is about. You really just need to watch it to get the full effect of how utterly brilliant Walken is here. The way he modulates his voice throughout their conversation, seeming friendly and jovial one minute and then truly terrifying the next (“No, what do you want from me?” LOVE!).
My Favorite Line is when she inquires how he could drink the tea she was just offered. He scoffs, says he drinks it same way others drink it. She replies, “I mean people like us” and his response is devastating. “Well, I’m not like you, you’re nothing. That’s something you ought not to forget. You’re not a person. You’re nothing.” Then brings his hands together, almost in prayer at the truth he just revealed to her.
Walken is a God amongst men, truly. How lucky are we that some exec gave this lanky kid a break? How many potential Walkens are walkin’ around out there, and never got that break? How many?!?
FUCK!
Eventually, it is revealed that he wants to teach her something. He hasn’t “fed” in 40 years, he’s trained himself to go without, to survive on a little. He eats, he defecates, he has a job, he’s “almost human.” He basically looks at her as an animal. An animal that he will teach what true hunger is.
To achieve this, he drains her of every drop of blood in her body. Amazing bit where we see him after, in the bathroom, gargling with her blood as he drops one great line after another. Such a fantastically written role that Walken digs his teeth into, pun only slightly intended.
My Favorite Shot is also in this sequence, as Walken finishes drinking more blood from Kathleen, he raises his head and looks directly in the camera, and they hold this for a beat. YES! I loved when Walken did this in the shower in King of New York, and now he does it again here. I’m not sure if Ferrara is going for something or what with this breaking of the fourth wall, but I love it.
Walken is the fucking man, dropping references to Naked Lunch, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, while philosophizing about his habit and his free will, that long black hair draping in his face. Amazing. As is him leaving for work the next morning, all cleaned up.
I NEED A PEINA MOVIE NOW! What fucking job is Peina going to? Can you imagine? Goddamn, so fucking good! What a character to just drop in and then exit just as swiftly.
Kathleen finally escapes from his apartment that night and feeds on a hapless taxi driver that tries to help her. Seems the Peina experience, instead of abating her habit, has only hastened it, as Kathleen, and the people she’s turned, plan a truly hell’s-a-poppin’ party for the completion of her dissertation on the nature of evil and becoming a doctor. But there’s a speed bump.
On her way into the event, she tries to ensnare a young Michael Imperioli, who is innocently and kindly handing out fliers for his Christian church. She grabs his hand, beckons him inside, but he resists, and is able to send her on her way with a simple and docile, “I can’t.” All because he is filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ.
It’s a remarkable moment and turning point in the film for Kathleen, as she sees all is not remittingly evil, there is good as well, and it is powerful, more powerful than even she is with her demonic “gifts.”
It sends her into a brief spiral, where she screams up to God, repeatedly, “I will not submit!” as she tears her clothes off. Echoes of Frank’s “I need these things” here. Glorious. After her meltdown, she recovers just enough to get the party really going. Love the reveal of Edie Falco, who went from a similarly dowdy, bookish dressing lesbian to a hot bitch in black stalking her prey before the feast.
Once Kathleen thanks the assembled guests, she waits a beat and then bites the neck of the old professor standing next to her and angrily spits the flesh out at the party goers.
The other vampires immediately start attacking and the grand guignol affair has commenced. That black blood is something else, none moreso than here. It looks amazing and scary and otherworldly.
And the sound design! Put the volume all the way up as those screams reverberate on themselves. Such an unsettling sound the way they either manipulated or mixed it. It’s terrifying. You’re not sure if it is the scream of the victims or the sound of the blood suckers. Bravura sequence by Kelsch and Ferrara here.
And even Casanova returns! Sciorra is delightfully malevolent in the role despite scant screentime. I will say though that she seems to have the toughest time spouting some of the inane philosophical bullshit. I’m specifically referencing her last scene in the hospital. It’s… not good.
Kathleen has her version of hitting rock bottom here at this party, namely, gorging on humans until she can take no more. The evil has filled and overflowed within her, perhaps spilling out and leaving room for something else to enter. She winds up at the hospital, looking like the escapee of some massacre, where they promise they won’t let her die. I love that slo-mo shot of her on the stretcher, covered in blood, being rushed through the hospital.
The black and white images in this film are frame worthy. You want to bite some of these images.
Kathleen’s attempts to kill herself with direct sunlight in the hospital (check that dope shot of the light streaming through the slats, moving ever so perilously down the wall toward Kathleen’s face) fail due to interference from Casanova, who says it’s not going to be that easy.
Eventually a Catholic pastor comes by, doing his rounds for those wanting confession or what not, and Kathleen willingly takes the body of Christ into her mouth as the pastor recites a prayer and does the sign of the cross on her forehead.
We end in a cemetery, it’s daytime, where we see a gravestone for Kathleen Conklin, saying she died in 1994 (with a quote from the Bible, “I am the resurrection John XI;25”), accompanied by an amazingly poignant piano track from Joe Delia. A flower is laid, pan up to reveal Kathleen, still alive, wearing her hair differently, more feminine, wearing normal clothes, staring at the gravestone, before walking off.
Her narration kicks in as the camera pans up a giant gravestone to a sculpture of Jesus Christ on the cross, “To face what we are in the end, we stand before the light, and our true nature is revealed… self-revelation is annihilation of self.”
Really good shit. I’m sure real philosophy students could probably illuminate some of the themes here that play into what Kathleen is studying and how the filmmakers integrated that into the narrative. As it is, I love this movie. Fantastic take on the vampire genre that is thoughtful, provocative, original, and daring in its presentation.
That quote the film ends on could be also describing Ferrara’s career and how his post sobriety output suffered as a result of him standing before the light and finding his own form of salvation.
He annihilated the great artist within and replaced him with something… else.
The One Sheet
I love this one-sheet. Had it on my wall for years after this movie came out. The black and white image of Kathleen with the sunglasses, the faintest hint of words on her face denoting her studies, with the title written in a cool orange/yellow. Great shit. Not as great as Bad Lieutenant, but what is?
That does it for Abel Ferrara’s final masterpiece, The Addiction, featuring a killer soundtrack to go with killer performances from Taylor and Walken.
Aside from a future, theoretical King of New York post, that’s gonna be it for this Substack and Abel Ferrara films. I’ve covered the waterfront.
I love the guy, he was the voice of my youth and nascent steps into filmmaking, but time is undefeated. Here’s hoping he can pull a Lynch and deliver a Twin Peaks Season 3 level return to form.
I’ll be first in line.
Promise.
See you in two Baudelaires…