A Bite at Night: The Top 10 Vampire Movies of All Time.
No. 10 -The Entire Twilight Saga.(2008-2013)
Due to popularity amongst tweens and young women everywhere, this makes the list at number 10 but just barely. It certainly does have its fan base, but the older generation is so over the entire series. Between native American- Indian werewolves (yes, all the actors had Indian blood.) and sparkling vampires battling it out, with a very unhealthy love story thrown in for good measure, the entire saga did do a decent
adaption from the books written by Stephanie Meyer that held appeal to dedicated fans. It just seems that despite being in a cloudy town where the sun doesn’t come out much, vampires just do not belong in the daylight. Let that job go to the zombies.
No. 9 – Once Bitten. (1985)
No vampire listing would be complete without that one comedy film that mixes the talent and wonders of a then unknown Jim Carrey, with blood-sucking creatures of the night. Throw in a touch of “Porky’s”, with a teenager desperate to lose his virginity and you the recipe for one laugh out loud comedy horror film with one sexy vixen of a vampire, Lauren Hutton who needs to bite a virgin not once but three times to keep her sexy youthful figure.
No. 8 – Blade (1998)
What happens when your Mother gets bitten by a vampire while giving birth to you? Well, you become Blade, of course. Born human with vampire genes, Blade spends his life as a vampire hunter to eliminate those creatures that caused the death of his Mum. Wesley Snipes went on to make two more movies in the Blade Trilogy and at comic-con in San Diego he was quoted as saying he is interested in taking on the role of Blade again.
No. 7 – From Dusk Till Dawn. (1996)
George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino take on the roles of the Gecko Brothers, bank robbers who take on hostages and cross the border into Mexico. They stumble upon a strip club/biker/trucker bar run by vampires to feed on unsuspecting patrons. When Selma Hayek, playing a sexy exotic dancer smells the blood from a wound on Tarantino, she takes a bite literally and all hell breaks loose. Interestingly, this movie pays a small homage to another movie listed below by calling the brothers Gecko which was inspired by the Frog Brothers in “Lost Boys.”
No. 6- John Carpenter’s Vampires.(1998)
James Woods as Jack Crow is the kind of vampire hunter that you do not want to mess with and he has God on his side. Literally. He gets paid by a Vatican backed group to kill vampires and has a personal vendetta after his own father turned into one and killed his mother. Taking down his own father was the start of his mission and facing the master vampire with a group is intense with violence. The movie has a western feel to it, set in the desert. Now, James Woods is one bad-ass hero in this movie but the role was originally going to be directed by another who wanted to throw Dolph Lundgren into the role. I’m sorry but I cannot manage to see He-Man as a vampire slayer.
No.5 – Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
By far this is the best adaptation of the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker that was ever brought to the screen by Francis Ford Coppola’s. The version does have one major difference that strays far from the book, Dracula is not motivated as a blood-thirsty evil creature, but is more a romantic at heart, who is trying to avenge the death of his wife in the 1600’s. Upon finding that Mina, the fiancé of Jonathon Harker, is the modern living doppelganger to his wife, he travels to London to bewitch her and make her his own.
No. 4 – Interview With A Vampire (1994)
Interview was a wonderful adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name and it really does deliver a hard bite of vampire. The difference in this movie is that the plot is detailed by a vampire (Brad Pitt) named Louis telling his life..er..death and afterlife? story to an interviewer played by Christian Slater. From his depression in life, losing his wife and family, to giving up and hoping for death, he finds Lestat who happily makes the miserable man into an even more miserable immortal that has no appetite to feed on humans if he can avoid it. Spanning centuries and having a little girl vampire for a companion, Louis, tries to make sense of his new life and find other vampires.
No. 3 -The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon me, but your teeth are in my neck (1967)
Roman Polanski made this comedy horror, originally titled Dance of the Vampires as his first in colour feature film and when marketed in the U.S., it was hailed as a campy B movie farce known only as Pardon Me, but Your Teeth Are in my Neck. The movie features a soundtrack and is set in Eastern Europe with bumbling vampire hunters as its main characters. Polanski and his future wife both co-starred in the movie. The title was later just shortened to “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”
No. 2- Lost Boys (1987)
Joel Schumacher produced this teen flick comedy/horror movie starring some very good looking vampires, (yummy Keifer Sutherland) and the cute good guys in the form of the 80’s heartthrobs known as the ” two Coreys” with a dose of Jason Patric and Jami Gertz thrown in, and you have a movie that appealed to both men and women. The movie is now hailed as a cult classic, and it remains a timeless movie that can be watched today. It is also a really good date movie for scary cuddling time. We don’t want sparkly vampires that walk in the daylight, instead please give us long-haired, mullet sporting creatures of the night any day.
No. 1 – Nosferatu (1922)
There is no way to avoid it, our love of vampires in the horror genre of movies goes back to a time when we our grandparents were still crawling on all fours. This silent film has remained to this day a classic in the vampire movies to date. Interestingly, this movie production company was sued by the Stoker family over infringement of the Dracula storyline without permission. Key characters like Mina and Harker do appear in the movie but the Count’s name is changed to Orlok. Conversely, the actual character of Nosferatu played by Max Schrek only appeared onscreen for nine minutes in the entire movie.
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