Vampires have long-fascinated mainstream culture; as a result, they have inspired thousands of motion pictures across almost a century's worth of cinema - to seriously mixed results. The genre goes all the way back to the earliest days of cinema, while a revival in the late '50 - courtesy of Britain's own Hammer Horror studio - eventually drove the sub-genre towards oversaturation in the late '80s. Nevertheless, due to tongue-in-cheek reinventions like Vampire's Kiss and Fright Night, this lull was relatively short-lived. Generally, vampire films remain somewhat divisive, mainly because they tend to differ so much in quality and often lapse into accidental parody. For every classic of the genre, there's usually a dozen terrible releases: Vampires Suck, Dracula 2000 and Bloodrayne are all notably lacklustre efforts. In more recent years, the Twilight series has brought negative connotations to the vampire, but - as always - the genre survived the mauling. So why vampires? What is it that continues to draw us? Maybe it's the idea of a vampire's bloodlust that plays into our primal instincts? And then of course there's their frequent association with sex that makes them ripe for cinematic representation. As a result they have continued to dominate as a cultural obsession - most notably in cinema, perhaps, because vampires - mysterious, blood-thirsty and frequently erotic - seem destined for the big screen. There are countless vampire films out there, though just a handful are worth actually seeing before you die: here are 20 notable works that cinephiles should check out immediately, all of which - in their unique ways - have ensured this as one of horror's best sub-genres...
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
