10 Vampire Movies That Broke All The Rules

7. Near Dark

Two decades before Kathryn Bigelow became the first - and to date, only - woman to win the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker, she helmed this endlessly creative vampire western, following a group of travelling vampires (Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Lance Henriksen, Jenny Wright) who bring a reluctant new recruit (Adrian Pasdar) into their clan.

Both stylistically and thematically, Near Dark is a true original, stripping away the varnish associated with the vampire genre throughout the 1980s, replaced here with a grungy-yet-gorgeous aesthetic, not to forget a killer Tangerine Dream score.

It's also a uniquely tragic examination of the vampire horde as a twisted makeshift family, accentuated by the performances of Paxton, Goldstein, and Henriksen in particular.

A rare "cool" 80s movie which can still be taken completely seriously today, Near Dark matches its pulpy thrills with some genuinely thoughtful observations about the spiritual toll of "eternal" life.