JP Nunez
I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it multiple times again: I love vampires. Other than kaiju, they’re my favorite monster species of all time, and one of the best things about them is their versatility. Sure, there are enough Dracula remakes and rip-offs to keep you occupied for what seems like an undead eternity, but there are also plenty of unconventional vampire movies that deviate from the standard Transylvanian template.
Sometimes the bloodsuckers themselves are unique, and other times the stories are what set these films apart. But either way, when you sit down to watch one of them, it’ll be an experience unlike just about anything else the subgenre has to offer. You might even say that unconventional vampire movies are the lifeblood of the subgenre.
They keep it from becoming stale and falling into the same overused tropes over and over again (take note, zombies!), and if you’re on the prowl for one of these films, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve compiled a list of five of my favorite unconventional vampire movies you need to check out, so without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Black Sunday
Let’s start with the 1960 classic Black Sunday. It was the feature directorial debut of the great Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, and it takes a very unusual approach to vampire lore. It’s so unconventional I don’t even have this movie in the vampire section of my Blu-ray collection. The story centers around a witch named Asa who rises from her grave to fulfill a curse she enacted at her death, so I put this film in my witch section.
But if that’s the case, why would I include Black Sunday in a list of unconventional vampire movies? It’s actually pretty simple. This woman isn’t just a witch. The film explicitly calls her a vampire in its opening scene, and when she comes back to life, she has to drink human blood to regain her strength. In other words, Asa is a weird sort of vampire/witch hybrid, and the story combines elements of both subgenres.
It’s a surprising mix, but unsurprisingly, Bava finds a way to make it work. He was known for creating sumptuous visual feasts just about every time he stepped into the director’s chair, and Black Sunday is a shining example of that world-class talent. It’s an absolute masterclass in gothic style and atmosphere, so this is more than just one of the most unconventional vampire movies ever made. It’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced.
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
Next up, we have Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, a vampire film that’s more psychological than supernatural. In the movie, Jessica is just released from a mental hospital, and when she moves into a new home with her husband, she starts to question her sanity all over again. See, when the couple arrives at the house, they find the place occupied by a mysterious squatter named Emily, and Jessica soon comes to believe that Emily is a vampire who has the entire town in her thrall. But is that really the case, or is this just another one of the fragile woman’s paranoid delusions?
We never find out, so if unreliable narrators and narrative ambiguity aren’t your thing, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death will probably just frustrate you to no end. But if you enjoy stories that leave you scratching your head long after the credits begin to roll, this is the vampire film for you. It puts you in Jessica’s shoes and forces you to watch these events from her perspective, so you simply never know if what you’re seeing is real or not. Both options are totally plausible, and that uncertainty will make you second-guess yourself almost as much as Jessica does. It’s the kind of psychological mindf*ck we rarely get from this subgenre. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death more than earns its status as one of the most unconventional vampire movies of all time.
Martin
If Let’s Scare Jessica to Death wasn’t unique enough for you, try giving George Romero’s Martin a watch. It’s a drama horror about a young man who thinks he’s a vampire, and much like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, we never definitively learn if he’s a genuine monster or just mentally ill. However, unlike the last film we looked at, this one plays very fast and loose with the vampire mythology we all know and love.
One of Martin’s constant refrains throughout the movie is “There isn’t any magic,” so he lacks many of the typical attributes we often associate with vampires. For example, he can’t turn into a bat, and things like sunlight and garlic don’t affect him. He doesn’t even have fangs, so to drink people’s blood, he has to drug them and cut their veins open with a razor.
If you’ve never seen Martin before, you might suspect that all those changes to the traditional vampire lore would make for a bland viewing experience, but in the hands of a master like George Romero, they actually make the film better. They help give it the biting and heartbreaking social commentary we’ve come to expect from the guy who made Dawn of the Dead, so this isn’t just one of the most unconventional vampire movies most people have never seen. It’s one of the best horror films of all time, and it just might be the best movie George Romero ever made.
Cronos
Next up, we have Cronos, the feature directorial debut of Guillermo del Toro. It’s about a man named Jesús Gris who stumbles upon a mysterious scarab-shaped device made by a reclusive alchemist hundreds of years ago, and the thing slowly turns him into a vampire. But in typical del Toro fashion, this guy is unlike any vampire you’ve ever seen before. Sure, he drinks blood and has an aversion to sunlight, but beyond those barebones basics, he’s about as far from the stereotypical Dracula template as you can get.
For example, Jesús doesn’t develop fangs, he never hurts anyone unless they try to hurt him or the people he loves first, and he can’t turn other people into vampires (because he himself wasn’t turned that way). What’s more, even though this guy is a monster, he’s not the villain of the story. Instead, the bad guys here are a pair of regular human beings who are way more monstrous than this vampire could ever be, and they’ll stop at nothing to achieve the youthfulness and immortality Jesús has gained completely by accident.
They make for an incredibly compelling inversion of the typical vampire formula, so not only is Jesús totally different from any other bloodsucker ever put on screen, but Cronos as a whole is unlike anything else this subgenre has ever produced. It’s hands down one of the most unconventional vampire movies of all time, and it was an auspicious debut for one of the best genre filmmakers of the last few decades.
Let the Right One In
Last but not least, we have Let the Right One In, arguably the best vampire film of this millennium. It’s about a young boy named Oskar who befriends Eli, a girl he thinks is around his age, but he soon finds out that there’s more to her than meets the eye. Eli is a vampire, and she’s actually much older than him. The girl simply doesn’t age, so these two form a most unlikely pair.
But despite that apparent mismatch, Let the Right One In tells a surprisingly beautiful story of love and acceptance. See, Oskar is bullied a lot at school, so he’s kind of an outsider. And since Eli isn’t even human, she definitely doesn’t fit in with “normal” society either. They’re both outcasts, but they find in each other the camaraderie they so desperately need.
That being said, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Even though Let the Right One In is a drama horror that focuses more on story than scares, it still has some genuinely horrific moments. Most notably, there’s a scene at the very end of the movie that’s legitimately one of the most brutal vampire attacks I’ve ever seen on screen. It admittedly doesn’t show us all the gory details, but somehow, that restraint actually makes the scene even more intense.
It’s the cherry on top of this masterpiece of the subgenre, so Let the Right One In is pretty much the perfect blend of beauty and brutality. Seriously, this is one of the best vampire movies ever made, unconventional or not, so if you’re a horror fan and you haven’t seen it, you need to remedy that. Right now.
