10 Best Vampire Horror Movies You've Never Heard Of

Black Sunday, directed by the great Italian auteur Mario Bava, opens with a curse and a sacrifice, and from there follows a vampiric witch (Barbara Steele) who returns from the dead on a vengeful mission from which none of her enemies can escape.

Featuring some of the most arresting scenes you could find in a vampire film, anchored throughout by Steele's captivating performance, Black Sunday is Gothic horror at its finest, superbly mounted with exquisitely composed set pieces and a screeching, almost torturous score.

Though it sifts through numerous cliché when watched through modern eyes, Black Sunday's doomed love story, ultimately tragic villain and malevolent melodrama still feels urgent and unsettling to this day. It might be time, not unlike the resurrected vampire at its centre, to dig it back up.