The Addiction

Dir Abel Ferrara, US 1995 Arrow Video, £19.99 (Dual Format) Abel Ferrara’s career has to date encompassed three phases: the grainy, underground initial forays into genre film-making, including the notorious Driller Killer; then the mainstream years; and finally, since roughly the turn of the century, a return to obscurity and diminishing audiences.

The Addiction comes from more or less the peak of his career and in some ways is typical of his oeuvre, being a heady brew of religion, sex, violence and metaphysics. Chucked into the mix for this movie is horror, dealing as it does with the descent into vampirism of student Kathy (Lili Taylor) after she is bitten while walking home one night. Plenty to get one’s teeth into, you might think, but it’s actually an almost total dud. The acting is OTT, some of the dialogue cringe-inducing (“Have you read Naked Lunch?” a vampire lord – Christopher Walken, natch – inquires at one point) and there are plot holes galore. By far the worst aspect, however, is the unbearable pretentiousness. I realise the film concerns a philosophy postgrad student and that Ferrara believes he has Something To Say, but it has all the profundity of a Lloyd Cole lyric sheet, namedropping philosophers like mad as if the script was written by someone (actually regular Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St John) who had just finished Philosophy 101 and had his mind blown. At times, it resembles nothing more than an Ingmar Bergman parody made by Woody Allen (and anyone who has seen the hilarious Love and Death will know how adept Allen is at that). I will give credit, though, to the beautiful b&w photography by Ken Kelsch. For what it’s worth,