Three Reasons Why Good Vampire Movies are Popular
The best vampire movies appeal to a wide audience. But why? Many of the most popular vampire movies include a healthy mix of romance, erotica, and drama.
Popular vampire movies such as Twilight, Interview with the Vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Fright Night, and Lost
Boys possess all these attributes.
The Top Vampire Movies are Romantic
Romance sells. And nothing demonstrates this more than 2008 box office hit, Twilight, which is the top-opening vampire movie of all time.
One of the most romantic scenes is the final one when Edward and Bella are slow dancing in the rotunda to the music of Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron and Wine.
Other romantic scenes in a vampire movie include:
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula when Mina is having dinner with Dracula. As she recalls the sad death of Elisabeta, Dracula turns Mina’s tears into diamonds as he says to her, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you”,
- Any scene in Interview with the Vampire where Louis appears. He personifies the romanticized view of vampires as regretful, eternally tortured souls, doomed to roam the Earth for eternity,
- The Jimmy Barnes scene at the start of Lost Boys where Michael sees Star for the first time. She sees him, she looks away, then she looks back to check if he’s still looking, which of course, he is,
- The night club scene in Fright Night when Amy stops running away and succumbs to the vampire because she can’t or doesn’t want to fight her attraction to him any longer.
The Top Vampire Movies are Erotic
Sexuality is a human attribute that almost everyone at some point in their life, can identify with. It’s this erotic and intimate aspect of the best vampire movies that makes this genre more palatable to a wider audience than standard horror films.
In a scene in Interview with the Vampire, Lestat beguiles his wanton victim and bites her seductively on the breast. Consider this vampire movies list for other memorable erotic moments:
- Bella and Edward almost losing control in Bella’s bedroom in Twilight,
- The seduction of Jonathan Harker by the three Brides of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
- The Fright Night scene where Amy awakes after being bitten by the vampire, Jerry. He looks on her lovingly and she on him adoringly, and then it’s all on after that,
- The love scene between Michael and Star in Lost Boys.
Sympathy for Vampires in Vampire Movies
Whilst the majority of us would never kill anyone, there is a part of us that sympathizes with the need of the vampire to do so. Just as we feed to stay alive, vampires must also feed.
Add to this a good storyline like the need to be reunited with a lost love, the need to seek revenge for a wrongful death, or the wish to be released from eternal torment, and vampires can almost do no wrong.
You can’t help but sympathize with the vampires in this vampire movies list:
- In 1462, Dracula’s wife, Elisabeta, commits suicide when she is tricked into thinking he has died in battle. In a fit of rage and despair after hearing that she will be damned in the eyes of the church, Dracula turns his back on the church and swears an oath to avenge her death,
- In Fright Night, Jerry the vampire pursues Amy because she resembles his long lost love. He doesn’t want to kill her. He wants to make her a vampire so they can be together forever,
- Edward doesn’t want to make Bella a vampire because he fears for her eternal soul,
We sympathize with Louis’s “lingering respect for life” as he struggles to understand this life he’s been damned to by Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, - In Lost Boys, Michael is tricked into becoming a vampire.
All the good vampire movies have a number of attributes in common. Romance, erotica, and drama feature heavily. They lift the genre far above that of standard horror.
