31 Best Vampire Movies Of All Time Ranked

We're not going to pretend that "Salem's Lot" isn't 3 hours long. But see here, this is a Stephen King adaptation from the guy who directed "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" five years earlier. You are strapping in for a grand ol' time! "Salem's Lot" tells of a writer (did we mention Stephen King wrote this?) returning to his hometown to pen a book about a local haunted house. Then, all the neighbors around the aforementioned house start turning up dead. Gosh, what could be happening? Maybe it rhymes with "bampire?" Come for the "Nosferatu"-esque creature effects, stay for Harry Sukman's incredible score.

• Starring: David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin
• Director: Tobe Hooper
• Year: 1979
• Runtime: 183 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Directed with bravado and a delightful lack of subtlety by Andy Warhol affiliate Paul Morrissey, "Blood for Dracula" is (and we cannot stress this enough) an absolutely wild ride that is not going to be everyone's cup of virgin's blood — uh, we mean tea. But speaking of virgin's blood, the film follows the titular Count, whose lack of blood has left him on the verge of death (well, re-death). Traveling to Italy in search of virgins, Dracula finds what appears to be a paradise in the form of the mansion of Marchese Di Fiore, who's clamoring to wed off his daughters to wealthy would-be husbands. Unfortunately for Dracula, these girls are absolutely not the pure, virginal saints their father believes them to be.

• Starring: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Juerging
• Director: Paul Morrissey
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 65%

While a wide-eyed writer avidly listens, a centuries-old, melancholic vampire named Louis recounts the tale of his mortal and undead lives. While Louis thinks the whole "immortality" thing is a massive bummer, his fellow vampire, Lestat, is having the time of his, uh, un-life. As their stormy relationship spans the ages, the duo "adopt" a young girl and respectively feud about what it means to live forever. A queer camp classic (and arguably one of the best performances of Tom Cruise's career), "Interview with the Vampire" is a delight of production design and scenery-chewing.

• Starring: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas
• Director: Neil Jordan
• Year: 1994
• Runtime: 122 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 64%

Do not dismiss this 1972 gem on the grounds of it being a TV movie. A sly beat reporter named Carl Kolchak is hot on the trail of a string of grisly murders plaguing the back alleys of the Las Vegas strip. Discovering each victim drained of blood, the wily Kolchak begins to suspect that his target is a vampire ... or at least believes he's one. When the powers that be fail to take him seriously and with the body count growing higher and higher, the reporter takes matters (and a stake) into his own hands. Written by the great Richard Matheson (the mind behind the likes of "I Am Legend"), "The Night Stalker" is a grimy, procedural terror trip that oozes 1970s sleaze (that's a good thing!). 

• Starring: Darren McGavin, Carol Lynley, Simon Oakland
• Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
• Year: 1972
• Runtime: 75 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

You would think after how long vampires have existed in pop culture that we would run out of fresh new spins on the hoar subject. And yet, there goes Jim Jarmusch, spinning a fresh, sumptuous yarn about two vampires, Adam and Eve, who've been lovers for centuries. When Adam (a goth rockstar of sorts) begins to feel especially adrift during a long-distance stint in their relationship, Eve rushes to his side. But when her troublesome sister, Ava, shows up on Adam's doorstep, problems arise. Moody, unironic, and properly romantic, "Only Lovers Left Alive" has style and substance to spare.

• Starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Anton Yelchin
• Director: Jim Jarmusch
• Year: 2013
• Runtime: 122 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

If you've ever found yourself pining for the days where vampires were vicious and genuinely terrifying (with nary a hint of romance or aristocratic grace in sight), than buckle up for "30 Days of Night," an aggressively mean-spirited and savage film that sees an isolated Alaskan town plunged into month-long darkness. With the sun out of the way, a horde of bloodthirsty vampires descends upon the townsfolk with unbridled glee, ripping through the local populace whose only hope is a husband-wife sheriff team who are in way over their heads. Then again, at least they still have their heads. Not all of the townsfolk can say that. Don't let that sour Rotten Tomatoes score fool you, this visceral flick deserves a lot more love.

• Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston
• Director: David Slade
• Year: 2007
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 51%

Now look, we hear you. All these vampires with toothy grins? Boring. Enter Canadian gore-king David Cronenberg, who's bold enough to ask the question: What if a vampire had a bloodsucking proboscis in their armpit? The result is "Rabid," the chaotic tale of a young woman who finds herself the unwitting recipient/victim of a revolutionary skin graft. The surgery leaves her with an ... unnatural protuberance. And a deep desire to use her new flesh straw to suck up people's insides. A striking vision of late 1970s Montreal, "Rabid" is a fleshy, erotically charged take on the vampire mythos.

• Starring: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver
• Director: David Cronenberg
• Year: 1977
• Runtime: 91 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76%

When Charley Brewster informs the proper authorities that his suave, sweater-loving neighbor, Jerry, is a vampire, nobody believes him. This frustration becomes especially tricky when Jerry begins threatening Charley outright, emboldened by the devilish reality that Charley's cries for help have fallen on deaf ears. 

With no one else to turn to, Charley seeks out aged horror host Peter Vincent, who Charley idolizes as an on-screen monster hunter. Things get dire when Jerry lays eyes on Charley's virginal girlfriend, Amy, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman he loved back when he was human. Goofy and goopy in all the right places, Tom Holland's practical effects-packed tale of "the boy who cried vampire" is a certified camp classic that fans of '80s cheese can't afford to pass up.

• Starring: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall
• Director: Tom Holland
• Year: 1985
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Ah, they messed up. They probably meant the other Dracula film that came out in 1931. You know? The way more popular and well-known film starring Béla Lugosi?" You are right to question us. But the fact of the matter is that the Spanish-language Dracula is the superior film. 

Directed by Enrique Tovar Ávalos and George Melford, "Drácula" is one of the rare survivors of the old-timey Hollywood habit of producing foreign-language versions of films that recycled sets, costumes, etc. Armed with the dailies from the English-language production, the Spanish-language crew routinely corrected course to create what is effectively "Dracula" 2.0. This is the revised draft of "Dracula," only in Spanish. If you (like us) can take or leave Lugosi's performance, you'll agree that this go-round is a lot more technically proficient, visually coherent, and emotionally compelling.

• Starring: Carlos Villarias, Lupita Tovar, Pablo Alvarez Rubio
• Director: George Melford, Enrique Tovar Ávalos
• Year: 1931
• Runtime: 103 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Stuffed to the gills with style and production design, Francis Ford Coppola's most explicit venture into the horror genre does Dracula proud. Sticking relatively close to Bram Stoker's text, the film follows an estate agent named Jonathan Harker (portrayed somewhat infamously by Keanu Reeves, doing his best English accent), who travels from London to Transylvania to inquire after the eccentric Count Dracula. During their encounter, Dracula catches a glimpse of Harker's fiancée, Mina, who's the spitting image of the woman he loved and lost a lifetime ago. A film that's aged like fine wine (or some wine-like bodily fluid), "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is one of the most visually impressive studio films to ever grace the big screen. Our (justified) critiques of Reeves' casting aside, horror fans will definitely enjoy the unmatched, off-the-rails spectacle!

• Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins
• Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Year: 1992
• Runtime: 123 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

Arguably the only (or at least, the most explicit) horror film from Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman, "Hour of the Wolf" tells of a tormented artist whose grip on sanity is beginning to wane. Maybe living on a remote island was a "bad call," who's to say? While his mind swims with disturbing visions, the artist and his wife begin to suspect that said visions are in fact memories planted in his mind by the sinister cult from the opposite side of the island. Far more gestural and elusive than any other film on this list, don't go in expecting names like "Harker" and "Van Helsing," let alone pointed canine fangs or goblets full of gore. Instead, expect something far more subtle and predatory — a gothic-indebted suspicion of aristocratic leeches, feeding on those around them and driving them to madness.

• Starring: Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Erland Josephson
• Director: Ingmar Bergman
• Year: 1968
• Runtime: 90 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

When you think about director Guillermo del Toro, "vampire specialist" doesn't immediately spring to mind. And yet, with two films gracing this list, suffice to say that the man has an uncanny talent for bloodsuckers. While "Blade II" is decidedly more in the Hollywood action-horror side of things, del Toro's feature-film debut, "Cronos," has a more intimate, indie energy. 

One of the core texts in the film movement known as Nuevo Cine Mexicano, "Cronos" follows a kindly antiques dealer who happens upon the Cronos device, an invention that can prolong the human lifespan at a terrible cost. Drawing compelling metaphorical connections between vampirism and addiction, "Cronos" is a heart-wrenching and thoroughly unique entry in the vampiric canon.

• Starring: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook
• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Year: 1993
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

It's not clear to us why, exactly, this masterpiece sports such an embarrassing Rotten Tomatoes score. All of those reviewers must hate hippies or something. Deepening the Hammer Horror lore and teeming with style and atmosphere, Alan Gibson's film transports Dracula to the chaotic 1970s when a gang of foolish youngins are coerced into reanimating the Count's bone-dry remains. Meanwhile, Jessica Van Helsing, the granddaughter of the famous professor who put Dracula in the ground, knows from the jump that something is afoot. And as the bodies of her friends begin to pile into the morgue, she feels compelled to fulfil her family's destiny to put Dracula back where he belongs. Namely, six feet under.

• Starring: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham
• Director: Alan Gibson
• Year: 1972
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 30%

Bet you didn't guess that the most faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's text was going to be a recorded performance of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet styled to look like a silent era film, did you? Set in the late 19th century, a mysterious outsider, Count Dracula, arrives in London where an unsuspecting socialite welcomes the stranger into her home. This proves to be a fatal mistake, and the ailing young woman is entrusted to the eminent Dr. Van Helsing, who diagnoses her with vampirism. It's up to Van Helsing (with Jonathan Harker in tow) to put a stop to the carnage. Remarkably accessible when set alongside director Guy Maddin's body of work, "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary" is notable for its casting of Chinese-Canadian Zhang Wei-Qiang as the titular Count, a move that underpins the xenophobic themes explicit in Stoker's text.

• Starring: Zhang Wei-Qiang, David Moroni, Tara Birtwhistle
• Director: Guy Maddin
• Year: 2002
• Runtime: 75 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Inarguably the vampire Western benchmark to which all other vampire Westerns must aspire, "Near Dark" marks Kathryn Bigelow's only foray into the horror genre, and boy oh boy, do we wish she'd come back. When a humble country boy meets the girl of his dreams, the last thing he expects is to be recruited by a roving gang of blood-hungry vampiric drifters. When he finds himself reluctantly indoctrinated into their black hat way of life, his moral compass kicks in when the gang sets their sights on his kid sister.

• Starring: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
• Director: Kathryn Bigelow
• Year: 1987
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

This state-sponsored mockumentary (bless you, New Zealand government) follows the daily lives of a gaggle of vampires living together in Wellington. The film focuses on their mundane struggles, from bickering over who gets to do the dishes to more serious fare like placating suspicious police officers and feuding with the local pack of werewolves. Proof that horror comedies still have plenty of bite, "What We Do in the Shadows" is a love letter to vampire films, lore, and the hellish realities of having adult roommates. 

• Starring: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh
• Director: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 86 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%