The Top 5 Vampire Movies (For People Who Don’t Like Twilight)
A long, pale face with two sunken eyes. Black and dull like those of a shark. Ghoulish pointy ears with cheeks sunken into the skull. Your mind conceives the smell of death emanating from the creature’s breath through the screen from a row of gnarled teeth.
But the worst part about him - his hands - absurdly stretched out and bony with razor-sharp talons. One paralyzing tickle from a rotten nail would be enough to shut your whole body down in fear. Grainy footage showcased the lurking presence in an uncontrollable desire for blood as the ghoul inched toward the room of his dozing guest.
I was six years old when I watched that movie. I was at my uncle’s house in L.A. for the weekend with my dad and requested to watch Nosferatu after looking through his collection of VHS tapes. Since my uncle had moved to Southern California, where the soul of Hollywood swirled around the collections of films in all homes, he naturally had a respectable hoard of obscure flicks to choose from.
So, we watched the movie. And I was forever changed. Why would my dad deny his son his first visions of terror while in the presence of adults? That said, I think my dad regretted showing me that flick. For years after that night, my dad told me that once I did fall asleep, I was sweating profusely as if I had two holes in the side of my neck and was grappling against an inevitable slow death.
From that point on, I was hooked on vampires. Lovelorn monsters who lurked in the shadows of the night and, in the case of movies like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, are linked to a group of beautiful vampire women who make a guest appearance to the thrill of the adolescent boy in all of us.
It’s not like it's slowing down. There’s always a new vampire movie coming out. Even as I write this during the summer of 2025, vampires remain remarkably popular. Sinners has been one of the hits of the summer, the recent mood piece mastery of the Robert Eggers remake of Nosferatu is now streaming, and a new Dracula movie is slated to come out later in the year. The obsession is still strong for Hollywood and beyond.
And it gets me thinking… What are my top 5 vampire movies?
Note from the writer: I don’t mess with Twilight, so I apologize in advance if it’s not listed here. THAT SAID, I am primarily attracted to the movies that many passionate fans may consider as stupid and not truly into the genre of vampire. But hey, to each their own.
Top Five Vampire Movies:
5. Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) - Leslie Nielsen is comedic gold in this Mel Brooks spoof on all things Dracula. One of the most memorable scenes is when Dracula thinks he is no longer affected by being out in the sunshine. He goes out into a park where humans in Victorian era outfits greet him kindly and hand him a piece of chicken and a glass of wine. That is until Renfield, his little sassy assistant, shows up. “Look, Renfield! Chicken! Wine!” He is unphased until his body starts smoking and realizes he has made a grave mistake only to wake up in his coffin exclaiming, “I must have had a daymere!” Stupid? Yes. Memorable? Was for me!
4. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) - Hot vamp girls (Ahem, Monica Bellucci) surrounding the unassuming “WHOA!” of Keanu Reeves. The mastery of Gary Oldman in the many shapeshifting forms the creature exhibits. The Hollywood big budget to retell an ancient story right out from under Bela Lugosi’s cape. I especially love the scene when Van Helsing and co are racing against the sun setting on their way to the castle. If you like monsters, a great sweeping score, Winona Ryder in Victorian-era dresses, and an evil laugh from Count Dracula that will make your blood curl, then this is a good flick for you.
3. Blade (1998) - We all need a bit of superhero with our vampires, don’t we? Wesley Snipes completely slays this role (pun intended) as a martial arts fighting badass of the underworld. Here we have Blade, the half-vampire battling mean full-vampires, led by Stephen Dorff, a 90’s icon in his own right. The effortlessly cool pre-tax evading Snipes showed us just how badass vampires in leather could be in this battle of good vs evil. The fight scenes are amazing, the make up excellent, and KRS-One, Mobb Deep, and Gangstarr grace the soundtrack which checked off the hip hop boxes for me.
2. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) - Because horror-based memories from childhood will never go away. Because our collective visions of the boogie man would not be what they are today if not for the contorted nightmare face of Count Orlock. The cultural relevance of Nosferatu remains firm even to this day with comics, books, and remakes of the movie always rising from the coffin to greet the welcoming darkness.
1. The Lost Boys (1987) - This movie is cool as shit. I watched this flick nonstop when I was a kid and pre-teen. Filmed in Santa Cruz where the woods meet the beaches, The Lost Boys gets an advantage from being based in an amazing location for shooting a vampire film. Similar to the movie US, scenes can go from happy beach days to dark woods in an instant. Keifer Sutherland, post Stand by Me and pre Young Guns, plays a convincing leader of a sinister gang of motorcycle riding leather-clad vampires. The scene where he makes rice in a takeout carton look like maggots to Michael Emerson (played by Jason Patric) has forever been seared into my memory. Plus, Corey Feldman (along with his brother Corey Haim!), who is in pretty much every 80s movie with young males as their target audience, is featured as one of the cool kids who hangs at the arcade who knows how to kill the vampires due to his knowledge gained from reading comic books. That plus the origins of the sweaty sax man and all the other golden pop culture moments including the main score make this one enjoyable on a universal level and still resurfaces every October as a must watch across midnight movie showings and on streaming services.
Now, these may not be your cup of blood. But perhaps you haven’t caught one of these titles. I may like goofy and ridiculous, but I know a good vampire movie when I see one!
Honorable Mentions: A Vampire in Brooklyn, What We Do In The Shadows, Vampyre, Once Bitten, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Let Me In.