Main Cast: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, Paul Calderon
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Director Abel Ferrara applies his eccentric vision to the vampire genre with this cerebral "Art" film about graduate philosophy student Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor), who is bitten by an aggressive female vampire (Annabella Sciorra) and soon spirals into a nightmarish world of blood addiction and existential angst. Driven by her merciless condition, she attacks several of her pretentious friends and classmates (even her professor) and mainlines their blood like heroin. Just as she becomes more bold in seeking prey on the streets of New York, she is waylaid by a potential victim -- actually a sophisticated vampire himself named Peina (Christopher Walken), who chooses to control his own blood addiction through fasting and meditation. Seeming to regain her self-control, she eventually completes her graduate thesis (helped by a bit of vampire nepotism) and holds a party to celebrate, inviting the entire faculty as well as members of her new "family" to join in the festivities. Although the parallels to heroin addiction are in plain view, this is also a study in the essential evil of humankind -- a theme evident in much of Ferrara's work. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
Review
Although vampirism has been the subject of a great deal of re-examination and re-interpretation in books and comic books, motion pictures have tended to treat its vampires as minor variations on Dracula. Abel Ferrara's The Addiction is one of the rare exceptions, and it deserves credit for presenting a well-thought-out treatise on what it might mean to really be a vampire in contemporary America. Beyond this framework, Ferrara is actually exploring the problem of evil and humanity's attraction/repulsion (i.e., addiction) to it. While that is an interesting idea and admirable goal, the film presents its arguments in a fairly pretentious and sometimes irritating manner. The conventions inherent in the genre also prevent a believable exploration of these themes. In addition, the excessive goriness that is appropriate to the tale will scare off many, while most aficionados of horror movies will be bored by the between-bites philosophical debates. Lili Taylor turns in another impressive performance. She goes from victim to victimizer, innocent to monster, with convincing ease, and maintains audience sympathy almost throughout. Christopher Walken is authoritative and other-worldly, simultaneously exotic and mundane. Although the lighting is at times so dark as to actively obscure the images onscreen, most of the black-and-white photography -- alternately grungy and stark -- is stunning. It also makes the blood appear to have the color and consistency of thick black syrup, an appropriately gruesome effect. Ultimately unsuccessful, The Addiction is still a vampire movie unlike any other. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Fredro Star - Black; Frank Aquilino - Delivery Man; Kathryn Erbe - Anthropology Student; Michael Imperioli - Missionary; Chuck Jeffreys - Bartender; Leroy Johnson - Homeless Victim; Kevin Scullin - Featured Victim; Nicholas de Cegli - Cabby; Jamel "Redrum" Simmons - Black's Friend; Susan Mitchell - Featured Victim; Fredro Starr - Black; Jay Julien - Dean; Eddie Conna - Waiter; Fred Williams - Homeless Victim; Heather Bracken - nurse; Michael Fella - Cop; Robert W. Castle - Priest/Narrator; Nancy Ellen Anzalone - Dress Victim; Christian Campanella - Featured Victim; Lisa Casillo - Mary; Avron Coleman - Cellist; Anthony Giangrando - Featured Victim; Mary Ann Hannon - Featured Victim; Dr. Louis A. Katz - Doctor; John Vincent McEvily - Featured Victim; Bianca Pratt - Featured Victim
Credit
Beth Curtis - Art Director, Antony Blinken - Associate Producer, Marla Hansen - Associate Producer, Marla Hanson - Associate Producer, Meredith Jacobson - Casting, Anthony Redman - Consultant/advisor, John P. McIntyre - Consultant/advisor, Melissa M. Marr - Coordinator, Olivia Pi-Sunyer - Coordinator, Melinda Eschelman - Costume Designer, Melinda Eshelman - Costume Designer, Bianca Pratt - Costume Designer, Amanda Pratt - Costume Designer, Glen Trotiner - First Assistant Director, Randy Fletcher - First Assistant Director, Dean Garvin - First Assistant Director, Evan Labb - First Assistant Director, Abel Ferrara - Director, Mayin Lo - Editor, Preston Holmes - Executive Producer, Russell Simmons - Executive Producer, Wayne Herndon - Hair Styles, Alex Corven - Location Manager, Alex Corven Caronia - Location Manager, Margot E. Lulick - Line Producer, Joe Delia - Composer (Music Score), Robert Tax - Musical Direction/Supervision, Patricia Regan - Makeup, Charles Lagola - Production Designer, Ken Kelsch - Cinematographer, Preston Holmes - Producer, Russell Simmons - Producer, Denis Hann - Producer, Fernando Sulichin - Producer, Robert Larrea - Production Sound, Sara Baldoechi - Set Designer, Robert Larrea - Sound Mixer, Ray Karpicki - Sound Editor, Hector Cordero - Sound Editor, Phil Neilson - Stunts Coordinator, Margot E. Lulick - Unit Production Manager, Andrew Ramsey - Unit Production Manager, Ken Kelsch - Screenwriter, Nicholas St. John - Screenwriter, Carmen Ashurst - Executive in Charge of Production, James Flatto - Music Editor, Mel Zelniker - Re-Recording Mixer, Simone Lageoles - Script Supervisor, Ray Karpicki - Supervising Sound Editor, Sara Baldoechi - Set Decorator, Mary Prlain - Set Decorator, REI Media Group - Title Design
Kathleen Conklin (Taylor), a young philosophy student at New York University, is attacked by a woman (Annabella Sciorra), who tells her "order me to go away" and, when the frightened Kathleen is unable to do so, bites her neck and drinks her blood. Kathleen develops several of the traditional symptoms of vampirism, including aversion to daylight, but the film's main focus is on her moral degradation. The film opens with a narrative of the My Lai massacre, and the vampires repeatedly resort to the strategy of blaming their victims for not being strong enough to resist them. As one of Kathleen's victims weeps incredulously over the damage, Kathleen coldly informs her: "It's not my actions but your astonishment that needs examination here." At her graduation party, she says "I'd like to share a little bit of what I've learned" and savages the neck of the nearest person, precipitating a bloody, chaotic vampire orgy. Eventually Kathleen meets Peina (Walken), who claims to have conquered his addiction and recommends that she read William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. In an ambiguous finale, Kathleen is again confronted with the woman who first bit her, who stops her suicide attempt and quotes R. C. Sproul to her. But Conklin resists, receives absolution from a Catholicpriest, and is shown walking away from a grave with her own name on it, in broad daylight....
Awards
Film was nominated 'Best Film' award in Berlin International Film Festival, 1995.[1]Lili Taylor won Best Foreign Actress Sant Jordi Award. Film also received Best Actress (Taylor), Best Film (Abel Ferrara) and Special Mention Award for outstanding acting performance of Academy Award-winner actor Christopher Walken in Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema. The film was also nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and won Critics Award in Mystfest and was also nominated for Best Film[2]. The film has received high praise from the critic Peter Bradshaw, who named it as one of his top ten favourite films in a 2002 Sight and Sound poll.[3]
