The films

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Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell

A plane crash, an alien blob, and the single most striking red sky in Japanese genre film. Tarantino borrowed it.

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Let's Scare Jessica to Death

A woman fresh out of a psychiatric hospital moves to a Connecticut farmhouse, and the film never confirms what is real.

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Daughters of Darkness

Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.

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Mr. Vampire

Hopping Chinese vampires, a Taoist priest, and sticky rice as a medical treatment. It invented a whole genre.

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Martin

Romero's own favourite. A vampire film in which there may be no vampire, only a disturbed boy with razor blades.

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Twins of Evil

Peter Cushing as a witch-hunter who is worse than the vampires, and the Collinson twins were Playboy's first.

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Vampire Circus

A plague-quarantined village visited by a travelling circus, and it is the strangest film Hammer made.

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Cronos

Del Toro's first film, and the vampire is a grandfather trying to stay with his granddaughter.

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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

An Iranian vampire western shot in California, in Farsi, in black and white. Nothing else looks like it.

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Lifeforce

Tobe Hooper's space-vampire epic, adapted from Colin Wilson, and it is completely insane in the best way.

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Thirst

A priest volunteers for a vaccine trial, dies, and comes back needing blood. Park Chan-wook adapting Zola.

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Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow's vampires are a violent family in a camper van. The word is never used.

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Vampyr

Dreyer shooting through gauze at a plot that barely exists. Closer to a bad dream than a film.

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What We Do in the Shadows

The funniest vampire film ever made, and the flatmate politics are observed perfectly.

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Abigail

A kidnapping that goes wrong in the most enjoyable way. Very wet, very fast, very funny.

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Renfield

Nicolas Cage plays Dracula as a toxic boss, and his familiar wants to leave the relationship. A horror comedy about codependency.

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Let the Right One In

The horror is the grooming of a lonely child by something very old, and the film is clear about it.

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Fright Night

A teenager works out his new neighbour is a vampire and no adult will believe him, so he hires a washed-up TV host.

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Horror of Dracula

Christopher Lee plays Dracula as a physical threat rather than a foreign gentleman, and it is over in 82 minutes.

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The Lost Boys

Joel Schumacher's MTV vampires in a California beach town, and it made the genre cool for a decade.

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Nosferatu

Eggers going back to Murnau rather than to Stoker. Filthy, plague-ridden, and Orlok has a moustache.

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Dracula

Stagey, slow, and it has no score at all. Lugosi's face is the entire reason it survives.

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Sinners

Coogler in 1932 Mississippi with twin Michael B. Jordans and a juke joint. Shot on 65mm and it shows.

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Nosferatu

An illegal Dracula that survived a court order to burn it. Still the best-looking vampire film.