The Dry Spell
15. The Exorcist (1973). I was 11 years old when this came out and I was absolutely forbidden to see it. Then one night when I was in college, I couldn’t sleep, turned on HBO about midnight and caught The Exorcist just as it was starting. I decided to watch it till I got sleepy. I watched the whole thing and didn’t get to sleep till about an hour before I had to get up for class. It’s a very frightening movie, particularly if you believe demons are real.
16. The Wicker Man (1973). There’s nothing supernatural in The Wicker Man. But its portrayal of a village where Pagan beliefs and practices are seen as normal and ordinary is delightful – even if we’re a little uneasy with the ending. The 2012 sequel The Wicker Tree isn’t in the same league, and the 2006 Nicholas Cage remake is an unwatchable disaster.
17. Dracula (1979). When Frank Langella starred in a Broadway revival of Dracula, a film adaptation was inevitable. It has a great cast (including Sir Lawrence Olivier as Van Helsing) but one of the most befuddling scripts I’ve ever seen. It omitted the opening scenes in Transylvania, swapped Mina and Lucy’s characters and made them the children of Van Helsing and Seward, respectively. And it has such a washed-out look to it you sometimes think you’re watching a black and white movie. None of that mattered in 1979. I was 17 years old and Frank Langella’s Dracula was everything I wanted to be.
18. The Hunger (1983). Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. Bauhaus and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” The ankh necklace concealing a razor for vampires who don’t have fangs but who live forever… with a horrifying twist.
The Current Era
19. The Lost Boys (1987). Vampires as punk rock teenagers on motorcycles. “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”
20. Nightlife (1989). This is a made-for-basic cable movie that deserves far more attention than it gets. Maryam d’Abo is a vampire who buried herself for 100 years to get away from her abusive ex, played by Ben Cross. She runs into a doctor who introduces her to modern medicine, which doesn’t appeal to her ex. Comedy with a dark edge, it’s one of the first vampire movies with a happy ending for the vampires.
21. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). When I saw the promotional pictures of Gary Oldman as Dracula, I was furious. Everybody knows Dracula wears a tux and a cape and is classically elegant, even Christopher Lee’s monstrous version. I saw it opening weekend anyway, and by the end of the opening scene with Vlad the Impaler slinging his sword into the cross and drinking the blood, I was hooked.
This isn’t a perfect adaptation of Stoker’s novel, but it’s a lot closer than most. The actors are age-appropriate, it doesn’t omit Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood, and it’s Harker who makes the journey to Transylvania, not Renfield. And the film is visually amazing. This movie is rapidly overtaking Lugosi’s Dracula for “most frequently watched” in my viewing history.
22. Interview With the Vampire (1994). I read Interview when it first came out, and several more in the series before Anne Rice jumped the shark. I was not happy with the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat. He did OK, though. Brad Pitt was much better as Louis, and 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst was brilliant and horrifying as Claudia.
23. The Craft (1996). I was three years into my attempt to study Wicca when The Craft came out, so it was on my must-see list. I loved the first two-thirds of the movie and hated the final third. When I first saw it, and for years afterwards, I said “Nancy had a cosmic smackdown coming, but she didn’t deserve that.” After a lot more years of magical practice, I now say “Nancy didn’t deserve that, but when you don’t respect spiritual forces, these things happen.”
24. The Blair Witch Project (1999). This movie is the exception to the list – it’s not one I watch over and over again. But it was fascinating to watch the first time, even knowing that it wasn’t really found footage. It proves the old saying that if you want to scare people, show less, not more. What you can’t see is always scarier than what you can see.
25. The Mummy (1999). This was Universal’s attempt to reboot their classic monsters series. At first I was turned off by the humor and romance, but the movie was just so much fun I couldn’t help but like it. It was sexy, magical, and the Egyptology was pretty good for Hollywood. The 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns was even better, but 2008’s Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was a disappointment, and not just because of the absence of Rachel Weisz.
26. Sleepy Hollow (1999). Johnny Depp as a thoroughly modern investigator sent to figure out what’s behind the murder victims who’ve been found beheaded in post Revolutionary War upstate New York. Turns out there are many secrets in Sleepy Hollow.
27. Underworld (2003). Vampires and werewolves for the 21st century, complete with machine guns and a heavy metal soundtrack. And Kate Beckinsale as Selene, a vampire “death dealer” completely loyal to the elder vampire who turned her… until she learns he hasn’t been completely honest about the death of her human family. Underworld Evolution (2006) was just as good, but the prequel Rise of the Lycans (2009) wasn’t. 2012’s Awakening took the series in a new direction, and another installment (Blood Wars) is due in January.
28. Van Helsing (2004). Writer/director Stephen Sommers followed up his successful Mummy movies with this attempt to turn vampire hunter Van Helsing into an action hero. Despite Hugh Jackman in the title role, it did poorly at the box office and plans for sequels were canceled.
29. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed this Spanish-language story of a young girl in Franco’s Spain who escapes into fairy tales to deal with the brutality of her stepfather and their living conditions. She meets a real fairy who offers her a way to escape, for a price. Is it real, or is it all in her imagination?
30. Let Me In (2010). The is an American remake of the Swedish Let the Right One In from 2008. A young boy who is bullied makes friends with an odd young girl who moves in next door and who never comes out in the daytime.
31. Dark Shadows (2012). This list wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Dark Shadows, the gothic soap opera that ran daily from 1966 to 1971 and got me hooked on vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, and haunted houses. NBC remade it for prime time in 1991, but it only lasted 13 episodes. The movie was more comedy than horror, but when watched for what it was, it was quite enjoyable – especially the scenes with Barnabas (Johnny Depp) and Angelique (Eva Green). It’s set in 1972 and the soundtrack nails the period, despite the inclusion of a couple of songs that hadn’t been recorded yet.
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