1. Black Sunday (1960)
Sixties-era scream queen Barbara Steele (Castle of Blood) plays dual roles—a centuries old Moldavian vampire/witch princess and her virginal descendent—in this influential, supremely atmospheric cult classic from Italian horror film auteur Mario Bava (Black Sabbath). Inadvertently resurrected from the grave, 200 years after her execution, the vampire/witch Princess Asa leaves a trail of corpses in her wake as she sets out on a quest for revenge. Bava's gift for arresting, dreamlike imagery evokes both wonder and a sense of dread in Black Sunday, which is generally regarded as his masterpiece.
2. Blade II (2002)
One of the most inventive and stylish directors currently working in the horror film genre, Guillermo Del Toro (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone) brings all his considerable skill to bear on this action-packed, vastly superior sequel to the anemic Blade (1998). A glowering Wesley Snipes reprises his role as vampire hunter Blade, a half-vampire, half-human creature who forges a temporary alliance with his deadliest enemy, vampire king Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), when a mutant virus creates a new, even more powerful race of vampires that preys on humans and vampires alike.
3. Daughters of Darkness (1971)
The lesbian motif in vampire mythology has fueled the imagination of filmmakers running the artistic gamut from Danish cinema pioneer Carl Dreyer (Vampyr) to flashy hack-for-hire Tony Scott (The Hunger). Harry Kumel's Daughters of Darkness is an elegant, erotic art-house chiller starring Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad) as a vampiric Hungarian countess playing sexual games with a young married woman at a Belgian seaside resort.
4. Dracula (1931)
Contemporary viewers may find Tod Browning's slow-moving, mood-drenched adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel a bit static, but 75 years after it terrified Depression-era moviegoers, Dracula still casts a potently eerie spell, thanks to its evocative production design and Bela Lugosi's iconic performance in the title role. The Hungarian-born stage actor reprised his role as the Transylvanian bloodsucker in the surprisingly effective horror-comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
5. Fright Night (1985)
Speaking of horror-comedies, this clever blend of tongue-in-cheek humor and old-fashioned scares is an immensely satisfying popcorn flick from writer/director Tom Holland (Child's Play). When horror-movie obsessed teenager Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) learns that his next-door-neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire, he turns to the one person capable of ridding his neighborhood of this undead menace: has-been actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), the recently axed host of a local, late night horror movie show.
6. From Dusk Till Dawn (1995)
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino team up for this gore-splattered homage to grindhouse cinema that morphs from a violent crime drama to a gleefully over-the-top vampire thriller. After committing a string of bank robberies, two-bit criminal Seth Gecko (George Clooney) and his brother Richie (Tarantino) take an itinerant preacher (Harvey Keitel) and his kids hostage, only to run afoul of bloodsucking fiends when they stop at a trucker bar south of the border. Rodriguez's favorite leading lady, Salma Hayek, makes a memorable appearance as a vampire stripper by the name of Satanico Pandemonium.
7. Horror of Dracula (1958)
Although actors ranging from Jack Palance to Frank Langella have played Dracula, with wildly varying results, only tall, cadaverous Christopher Lee has managed to put his own stamp on Lugosi's signature role. In the first and best of Lee's seven Hammer Films about the bloodthirsty count, he meets his ideal screen nemesis in the skeletal-featured Peter Cushing, who portrays stake-wielding vampire killer Dr. Van Helsing.
8. Martin (1977)
Haunting and viscerally disturbing, this grittily realistic vampire film set in blue-collar Pittsburgh dispenses with most of the standard genre conventions to focus on the title character (John Amplas), a psychologically troubled 17-year-old outcast convinced that he's a vampire. Using razorblades instead of fangs, Martin embarks on a killing spree in this cult film from zombie movie maven George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead).
9. Near Dark (1987)
A roaming gang of vampires begrudgingly accepts a naïve young rancher into their fold in Kathryn Bigelow's artful, graphically violent blend of horror film and contemporary Western. Bitten by the seductive Mae (Jenny Wright), Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) fights the urge to drink blood, despite the command from gang leader Jesse (Lance Henriksen) to make his first kill—or be killed. Bill Paxton co-stars as the strutting, volatile Severen, who revels in toying with his victims when the gang descends upon the customers at a roadhouse bar.
10. The Night Stalker (1971)
Arguably the most frightening television movie ever made, The Night Stalker stars Darren McGavin as wily and tenacious reporter Carl Kolchak, who discovers that a vampire is responsible for a string of murders in Las Vegas. A creepy nail-biter that holds up well, The Night Stalker was a ratings smash that spawned both a sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), and a 1974 series.
11. Nosferatu (1922)
A landmark film in German Expressionist cinema, F.W. Murnau's loose adaptation of Dracula is a visual tour-de-force of shadows and stark camera angles that's the stuff of nightmares. A looming, wraithlike figure with a ghastly pallor and animalistic teeth and claws, the vampire Orlok (Max Schreck) leaves his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to terrorize Bremen, where he meets his downfall in the beautiful form of a young woman. Werner Herzog remade the film as Nosferatu, the Vampyre in 1979, with a perfectly cast Klaus Kinski in the title role.
12. Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
E. Elias Merhige's stylish, intellectually ambitious, and morbidly witty film poses an intriguing question: What if autocratic German film director F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) had cast a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) in the title role of Nosferatu? Uneven but nonetheless impressive, thanks to its stunning visuals and Dafoe's Oscar-nominated performance, Shadow of the Vampire infuses fresh blood into a tired genre. (No pun intended.)