For decades, vampires have remained Hollywood’s go-to monster movie favorite, with the fanged fiends being reimagined in countless frightening flicks. Some of the entertainment industry’s most talented creators have served up some truly terrifying renditions of the iconic blood-suckers, delivering plenty of thrills and chills to devoted fans of the horror genre. From lauded directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Rodriguez to Guillermo del Toro and Quentin Tarantino, some of the most visionary filmmakers have embraced the vampire trope. Many of these pictures remain beloved cinematic staples that continue to attract new audiences.
Legendary author Stephen King is no stranger to seeing his thrilling novels be adapted, and two of his chilling vampire-themed works were given the Hollywood treatment: Salem’s Lot and The Night Flier. Both films featured nightmare-worthy vampires that have remained permanently etched into the minds of moviegoers across the world. George Clooney became a bona fide superstar when he starred alongside Tarantino in the action horror From Dusk till Dawn, facing off against a reptilian-like-vampire Salma Hayek and her undead minions in the ‘90s hit. Let’s take a peek at some of the scariest vampires in movies.
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9 The Night Flier
New Line Cinema
Based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, the underrated 1997 horror flick The Night Flier follows competing reporters Richard Dees and Katherine Blair as they team up to investigate a series of grisly murders occurring at rural airports. It doesn’t take long until the duo come to the terrifying realization that a vampire is causing the bloody massacres, so they join forces to put an end to his carnage.
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The disturbing creature goes by the alias Dwight Renfield and is downright nightmare-worthy in his true form, with his giant gaping mouth and jagged fangs, weathered skin, reptilian nose and mangy hair; it’s no surprise the blood-sucker comes from the imagination of the “King of Horror” himself.
8 From Dusk till Dawn
Miramax Films
Audiences everywhere couldn’t get enough of director Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 action horror classic From Dusk till Dawn, centering on fugitive bank robber brothers Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) as they find themselves stuck at a topless bar on the Mexican border crawling with vampires along with a family they took hostage.
Salma Hayek stole the show when she famously portrayed vampire queen Santanico Pandemonium, iconically performing a sexy table-top snake dance and spellbinding the Geckos. Despite Santanico’s initial seductive appearance, she and the saloon’s fellow patrons quickly transform into the undead and launch a vicious attack. Rodriguez based the appearance of the vampires on the Mayan and Aztec mythologies, with Santanico taking on a reptilian look with scales, snake-like eyes and sharp ears and fangs that became synonymous with the film.
7 Salem’s Lot
Warner Bros.
Stephen King once again knocked it out of the horror park when he created the grotesque vampire Kurt Barlow for his hair-raising novel Salem’s Lot, with the freaky fiend being depicted with parchment-pale skin, a penetrating yellow gaze and horrifying sharp fangs so long he cannot shut his mouth. The creepy character took on this chilling form in the 1979 miniseries and subsequent Salem’s Lot adaptations, adding to his overall fright-factor due to his lack of speaking and communicating by goosebump-inducing hisses and growls. Barlow sets out to create his very own vampire colony in the Maine town of Jerusalem City, utilizing his supernatural power-possessing human familiar Richard Straker to do his dirty work.
6 Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Columbia Pictures
The revered Francis Ford Coppola directed the 1992 Gothic horror masterpiece Bram Stoker’s Dracula, bringing the Bram Stoker classic to the silver screen yet again and depicting the iconic Count as he travels to Britain to be reunited with his long-lost love Mina. Coppola’s adaptation is a visually-stunning spectacle that brilliantly blends romance with horror, showcasing both Dracula’s tender side and devotion to Mina as well as his grisly true nature as a bloodthirsty beast.
In the absorbing picture, Dracula is portrayed by the dynamite Gary Oldman, flawlessly embodying the notorious villain in his all glory; his true, spine-tingling form includes a bat-like creature with blood-red eyes, grisly face and decrepit body.
5 Priest
Sony Pictures Releasing
Paul Bettany appeared as the eponymous warrior in the 2011 action horror picture Priest, in which the vampire-slaying character takes on the undead after his niece is kidnapped by the creatures and forces him to break his sacred vows in an effort to rescue her. Despite the film itself receiving mixed reviews from critics, there’s no denying that the design of the vampires featured are truly horrific, with the rendition presenting them as eyeless, iridescent-skinned fiends with thin, sinewy bodies and hair-raising mouths with sharp teeth. Though they are vulnerable to sunlight, the vampires possess immense strength and speed and come in various forms throughout the flick, but the sightless creatures are without-a-doubt the scariest as they viciously attack anything in their path.
4 Blade II
United Artists
Wesley Snipes reprised his role as the titular human-vampire hybrid indirector Guillermo del Toro’s 2002 superhero film Blade II, this time squaring off against a mutant group of vampires known as Reapers who wish to eradicate the world of both humans and creatures of the night. The genetically-altered monsters possess a virus that can infect both the living and the dead and bite their prey with their stomach-churning three-way jaws and leech-esque sucker tentacles.
The Reapers have an insatiable hunger that causes them to need to constantly feed, turning their victims into a horrible hybrid regardless of if they killed them or not. Del Toro was unimpressed by the romantic idea of “vampires being tortured Victorian heroes” and set out to make them scary again, achieving this goal in spectacular fashion.
3 Daybreakers
Lionsgate
Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe teamed up to save mankind in the 2009 sci-fi action horror flick Daybreakers, in which the former appears as vampire hematologist Edward Dalton who is attempting to create a blood substitute after the majority of the world’s population are turned into the undead; he is visited by former vampire “Elvis” who claims to have a cure that can turn them back to normal and save mankind.
The creatures in the freaky film come in different forms due to the blood shortage causing disturbing mutations among the newly reanimated, with the worst of the bunch looking emaciated and ghastly with their ribs protruding due to their starvation. Directors/brothers Michael and Peter Spierig set out to create the vampires with a classical aesthetic and adopted a more minimalist approach to makeup for a dominant effect.
2 30 Days of Night
Adapted from the comic book miniseries of the same name, the 2007 horror film 30 Days of Night takes place in the Alaskan town of Barrow, where its residents prepare for its annual 30-day-long polar night that will leave them in perpetual darkness for a month. Town sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Harnett) and his estranged ex-wife Stella make the terrifying discovery that Barrow’s outside communication has been sabotaged, just as a vicious band of vampires arrives.
The bloodsuckers in the winter horror picture are downright chilling, as they appear like a cross between a vampire and something demonic with their soulless black eyes and violent, feral demeanor. Their leader Marlow only adds to the terror, and the vampire’s fictional language is even more unnerving as they prowl the town in silence as they search for their latest victims.
1 Nosferatu
Prana Film
With his foreboding gaze, talon-like nails and sharp pointy teeth, the hunchback Count Orlok was fuel for nightmares when he appeared in the 1922 silent German Expressionist Horror picture Nosferatu, bringing darkness and mayhem to the fictional town of Wisborg. Though perhaps not as conventionally scary as the others on this list, Count Orlok is the first cinematic appearance of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (despite his name change) and is without-a-doubt the most eerie and unsettling out of all movie vampires.
The iconic shot in which a shadowy Orlok silently creeps up a staircase in search of his victim is ominous, as are the images of actor Max Schreck in all his eerie Nosferatu glory. The silver screen wonder and menacing character remains a highly-influential masterpiece and can still send a chill down the spine of anyone who catches a glimpse of stills from the film.
