This week, the hotly-anticipated Twilight hits theaters. The film,
starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in the tale of young vampires in
love, got us thinking: blood suckers are sexy. Thus, we thought we’d present a
compendium of some of the hottest vampires in big-screen history!
Six years after Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt surprised Anne Rice fans with a
commercially-successful adaptation of the author’s novel Interview with
the Vampire, Warner Bros. rushed into production on a follow-up, skipping
Interview’s direct sequel The Vampire Lestat in favor of shooting a
revamped version of Rice’s sexier third book; the result was 2002’s Queen
of the Damned, a critical and commercial failure that drew comparisons to
the Goth-pop music videos streamed on MTV. Despite all this, Queen of the
Damned featured a central performance by the late R&B star Aaliyah (the
victim of a tragic airplane crash six months before the film’s release) that
remains one of the sexiest, if utterly camp-tastic, vampire portrayals put to
celluloid. Scantily clad and golden-eyed as the Egyptian vampire queen Akasha
— the oldest and most powerful of all vampires on earth — Aaliyah slithered
her way through Queen with the lithe poise of a dancer, and memorably
joined Stuart Townsend’s Lestat in a rose petal-strewn bath that still has us
steamed. Damned to the ranks of rotten on the Tomatometer? Yes. Queen of the
sexiest vampire movies in history? Undoubtedly.
As if Kate Beckinsale needed to do anything more than slink into a black
leather bodysuit, her Selene in 2003’s Underworld possesses
superhuman strength, packs major firepower, and has a taste for blood — the
ultimate lethal, sexy succubus. The only thing that could make this vampire
sexier? Her steamy forbidden romance with one Michael Corvinus (Scott Speedman),
the human-turned-werewolf who happens to be the newfound enemy of her people.
That the camera in both Underworld and its 2006 sequel, Underworld:
Evolution, near-fetishizes Selene’s every move doesn’t hurt (director Len
Wiseman begun dating his star halfway through filming on Underworld
and married her in 2004). While the next Underworld installment, Rise
of the Lycans, will go Beckinsale-less — it’s a prequel story starring
Rhona Mitra and Michael Sheen, Beckinsale’s real-life ex — look for her
hugely anticipated return to the vampire lady assassin role in a rumored
fourth Underworld film.
This gangster/vampire hybrid from John Landis failed to excite the critics,
who found it to be an uneasy marriage between supernatural and crime drama
tropes, with an excess of gore. However, there’s a good reason to see it: Anne
Parillaud, who plays a Pittsburgh blood-sucker that gets in over her head when
she fails in the contract killing of a crime boss, who becomes one of the
undead himself. Parillaud, hot off a supporting role in La Femme Nikita,
didn’t quite crack the American market with Innocent Blood, but her
performance as a sex-and-blood crazed vampire turned some genre fans’ heads.
Long on atmosphere but short on plot, Tony Scott’s debut, The Hunger,
is still remembered for Catherine Deneuve’s performance as of the sexiest
vampires in movie history. Deneuve stars as Miriam Blaylock, who looks
terrific given the fact that she’s been feasting on human blood since the days
of King Tut. John (David Bowie), her longtime companion, is on death’s door,
aging decades in hours. He turns to an attractive young doctor named Sarah
Roberts (Susan Sarandon) who is baffled by his condition; when she turns up at
John’s house, Miriam is waiting, and decides Sarah might make a suitable
replacement. Critics felt that the love scene between Deneuve and Sarandon was
one of the few reasons to see The Hunger, but for many, that’s reason
enough. Plus, The Hunger provided young Goths with one of their most
treasured love songs — “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus.
A classic of Eurotrash exploitation cinema, Vampyros Lesbos has a
classy veneer that belies its seedy subject matter. Vampyros stars
the beautiful Soledad Miranda in one of her last roles (she died in 1970 in an
auto accident) as Nadine, a vampire that haunts the dreams of American lawyer
Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Stromberg), who is tasked with handling Nadine’s
inheritance. Linda is both attracted to Nadine and scared of her — after all,
she is a sexy vampire. In retooling Bram Stoker’s short story Dracula’s
Guest for the psychedelic era, director Jesus Franco concocted a
brightly-colored soft-core fantasyland, with cheesy freak-out camera work,
beautiful Turkish locales, and a sitar-mad, way-too-funky soundtrack that
Quentin Tarantino memorably cribbed for a key scene in Jackie Brown.
In terms of both eroticism and scares, Vampyros Lesbos might seem
tame by today’s standards, but it’s still pretty hot.
Critics were split on Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s bestselling vampire chronicle, but there was one demographic that was thoroughly impressed: the ladies. Starring Tom Cruise at the height of his powers, and Brad Pitt on the way up, Interview with the Vampire was, for the fairer gender, a gothic nightmare and a dream come true all at once. Cruise played Lestat, the merciless bloodsucker who leads despondent Louis (Pitt) to the dark side; Louis is conflicted, but later decides to sink his teeth into his new lifestyle, bringing a young girl (played by Kirsten Dunst) along for the ride. If some found the violence to be a little much, that didn’t stop Interview posters from lining the walls of female dorm rooms across the country.
In Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, George Clooney and
co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino play a pair of bank-robbing brothers on the
run from the law. While cooling their heels in a boarder gin house (the name
of which is unprintable in a family website), the brothers gaze lovingly upon
the exotically-monikered Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek), the bar’s main
attraction. She’s something to behold: a dancer who’s minimally clothed, save
for a giant snake, she’s also got a taste for blood — which she shares with
the rest of the establishment’s employees. From Dusk Till Dawn was a
breakout role for Hayek, and it’s not hard to see why: she makes sharp teeth
look hot, and brings new meaning to the term “snake charmer.”
Joel Schumacher’s 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys had more than a few
magic elements going for it: a gang of modern-day punk vamps, a hunky
21-year-old Jason Patric (or, if you prefer, a hunky 21-year-old Kiefer
Sutherland), and the two Coreys! The comedy-horror tale of brothers (Corey
Haim and Patric) who stumble upon a network of vampires in a seaside
California town benefited from its teen idol cast — which included actress
Jami Gertz in her hottie heyday — as much as it did from the
eternally-quotable Frog brothers (played by Jamie Newlander and Corey
Feldman). But Patric’s tortured, drool-worthy performance as the half-vampire
Michael (not to mention his sweltering love scene with Gertz’ Star) earned him
a spot on our Tiger Beat-plastered walls — and made us think we wouldn’t mind
drinking a little vampire blood wine ourselves.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola’s sensuous vampire flick,
makes a key point about the Count: It’s not the worst gig in the world. Sure,
you have to suck blood, live in the dark, and avoid garlic, but there’s hardly
a shortage of female companionship. In BSD, Dracula (Gary Oldman) is
hot for Mina (Winona Ryder) and Lucy (Sadie Frost), but when he’s not ravaging
innocents, he’s got three hot wives waiting at home — among them Monica
Bellucci, who made her English language debut here. Despite their
vivaciousness, however, the brides come with a downside: they’re always
nagging the poor count to get them more blood.
If you’re new to the world of Twilight and could use a quick primer
on the major players, check out our Twilight Character Guide here. For
a rundown of star Robert Pattinson’s five favorite movies, click here. And for
the complete Total Recall archives, click here.
Finally, here’s a vampire with a face only his (presumably thousand-year-old)
mother could love:
