Cronos (1993)
Guillermo del Toro reroutes the vampire myth through a clockwork device in his startling 1993 debut. The fascination with antique machinery.
Genre: Vampire
The oldest monster that still works. Vampire fiction is about hunger, power, and the terrible economics of living forever, and these stories take the fangs seriously.
HorrorNosferatu (1922)
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu invented vampire cinema and still frightens a century later. The estate sued anyway and won, and a court ordered every copy destroyed.
DramaOnly Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Not the thrill of immortality, not the hunt, not the gothic romance. What it offers instead is two ancient lovers, the crumbling cities they haunt, and the slow pleasure of their company.
ComedyWhat We Do in the Shadows (2014)
What We Do in the Shadows earns its 8.5 by finding a joke the vampire genre had somehow left lying on the ground for a century. What if immortal creatures of the night still had to argue about whose turn…
HorrorThe Hunger (1983)
The film looks extraordinary. The Hunger earns its 6.5 the way a fashion shoot earns a magazine cover.
HorrorMartin (1977)
Martin earns its 8 by asking a question that quietly dismantles the entire vampire genre. What if there is no such thing as a vampire, only a disturbed young man who believes he is one?
HorrorShadow of the Vampire (2000)
What if the actor in Nosferatu was a real vampire? The conceit is irresistible.
DramaThirst (2009)
Religious tragedy meets erotic horror, reviewed at Master of Worlds. Few directors would even attempt this combination.
HorrorVampyr (1932)
Characters appear and vanish. Vampyr earns its 8 as the strangest, dreamiest, and most genuinely uncanny vampire film ever made, a 1932 work by the Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer that abandons plot and logic in favor of pure nightmare.
HorrorDracula (1958)
Hammer's 1958 Dracula made the vampire physical, sexual, and bloody. Christopher Lee plays Dracula, and the performance redefined the role.
ComedyThe Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Roman Polanski's affectionate Hammer parody is more gorgeous gothic fairy tale than laugh-out-loud comedy. The Fearless Vampire Killers earns its 6.5 as a beautiful, uneven oddity, a horror comedy that is more interested in atmosphere than in jokes and lands…
DramaNosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Werner Herzog remakes Murnau as a tragedy, and Klaus Kinski's Dracula is the genre's saddest monster. The vampire here is not merely frightening.