1960sHammer built a gorgeous sequel without Christopher Lee, and it may be better than the original. Christopher Lee, in a contract dispute, sat this one out, and Hammer built a sequel around a different vampire entirely, a charming young aristocrat…
1970sIngrid Pitt raises Hammer's adaptation of Carmilla into a melancholy gothic. There is real sorrow in the performance.
1960sMario Bava's debut is one of the most visually ravishing horror films ever made and launched Italian gothic. Bava had been a cinematographer, and it shows in every frame.
1970sCount Yorga dropped an old-world vampire into 1970 Los Angeles and got there before the rest of the genre. The film also bears the marks of its origins.
1960sChristopher Lee returns as Dracula without a single line of dialogue, and the resurrection scene is among Hammer's best. Dracula: Prince of Darkness earns its 7 by bringing Christopher Lee back to the role that made him famous and surrounding…
2020sRobert Eggers brings obsessive period craft to the third great Nosferatu, with a ferocious Lily-Rose Depp at its center. Nosferatu earns its 8 as the most beautiful and uncompromising vampire film in years, Robert Eggers bringing his obsessive period craft…
2020sA promising gothic premise about a sinister aristocratic family hiding a Dracula secret, sanded smooth for mass appeal. The film's fatal flaw is its caution.
1970sTobe Hooper made one of the finest TV horror productions ever, with a silent Nosferatu-style vampire and unforgettable scares. Salem's Lot earns its 7.5 as one of the finest pieces of television horror ever made and proof that the right…
1990sJohn Carpenter turns vampire hunting into blue-collar work and James Woods carries the whole film. Not a calling, not a tragic destiny, not a brooding romance with the dark.
Book ReviewsThe confession of the guilt-ridden Louis across two centuries, with the amoral Lestat and the doomed child Claudia. Lush and melancholic, the novel that reinvented vampire fiction, launched The Vampire Chronicles, and made the vampire a tragic, introspective figure.
Book ReviewsA murderer insists on his sanity while his telling betrays his madness, in the definitive unreliable-narrator story. In barely two thousand words Poe builds unbearable tension to the famous confession. A masterpiece of Gothic horror and a perfect compact classic,…
Book ReviewsThe unnamed second wife, haunted by the memory of the dead Rebecca and the chilling Mrs. Danvers, at the estate of Manderley. A perfectly built atmosphere of dread and a landmark of psychological suspense, with one of the most famous…
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