Top 10 Vampire Movies of the 80s 

The movie that spawned a thousand Nic Cage memes! Vampire’s Kiss is one of those movies that is kind of so bad its good, but to be fair this is a fun movie.

It’s a wild ride where literary agent Peter falls for a seductive and hot vampire. The movie is pretty much his trip through crazy town and it’s one of the most amazing and hilarious performances by Nic Cage. The movie is a real cult favorite for many people, including myself.

1983’s The Hunger, which is the first movie directed by Tony Scott, is something of an acquired taste as some may find it a bit weird and pretentious. For me, this had to make our top 10 vampire movies of the 80s list. It’s a dark gothic romance kind of movie about a vampire love triangle.

The cast here is what sells this for me, even if people have not heard of this movie. If you tell them it’s the movie where David Bowie plays a vampire, it usually rings some bells. Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve are tremendous in this movie. The special effects on David Bowie to show his rapid aging are very well done. While most people think of him as The Goblin King from Labyrinth, David Bowie actually has some fantastic acting credits to his name, The Hunger being one of them.

As a kid, I saw A Return to Salem’s Lot before I saw the original mini-series so I have always had more love for this. Based on work from Stephen King, A Return to Salem’s Lot is the story of a man and his troubled son who move back to his hometown of Salem’s Lot – short for Jerusalem’s Lot – to try and live a normal life. This would have been a great idea, but Salem’s Lot is actually a town full of vampires!

What is neat about this take on vampires is that these vampires want to try and live a more “normal” kind of life. Don’t get me wrong, they are bloodsuckers through and through. But the mythos behind them, and what they want, does make this a rather unique kind of vampire movie. By the way, they remade/reimagined Salem’s Lot in the 2000s with Rob Lowe as the main actor and that is a pretty solid and underrated adaptation.

Next up on our top 10 vampire movies of the 80s we have Once Bitten. The biggest bit of trivia about Once Bitten is that this was the very first starring role for Jim Carrey. He plays a high school loser who ends up meeting a super hot babe at a nightclub. He falls in love, but it turns out this is a case of that age old love story. You know, a boy meets a too-good-to-be-true girl who turns out to be a vampire and needs his virgin blood!

This is a fun comedy that may not have been all that appreciated back when it was released, but these days, it has built a pretty solid following. Plus, it’s so much fun to see a very young Jim Carrey doing many of the things that would become staples in his movies in the ’90s.

While not as good as the first Fright Night, Fright Night Part II is a lot of fun and had to be on this list. This time, after a lot of therapy, Charlie thinks that Jerry was not really a vampire, but your regular run of the mill serial killer. Charlie cuts ties with Peter and tries to have a good life at college, but a group of vampires led by the hot but deadly Regine have their sights on Charlie.

I liked how there was an evil vampire group for Charlie to overcome this time as well as him suffering from the effects of vampirism himself. Once again, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall are fantastic together as Charlie and Peter, but Regine is the real star of the show here, easily one of the best vampires of the 80s and it’s not just because she is easy on the eyes either!

If you ask someone if they have seen Life Force and they say no, tell them it’s the movie about space vampires and that will jog their memory! Life Force is a movie I knew would be on my top 10 vampire movies of the 80s list for sure. What is cool about this movie is that it blends sci-fi and horror together.

The spaceship with the vampires and the alien vampire bat things are totally unique! The basics of the plot: we have these three space vampires that have come to London and they want to feed! One thing that is so much fun about Life Force is the way it dives into vampire lore as we find out that these beings may have visited Earth many times before. This is a good movie and one that any vampire fan needs to watch. Also, this has pre-Jean-Luc Picard Patrick Stewart in it!

You cannot go wrong with a movie about vampires that has Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson in it! Near Dark is such a great movie and truth be told, it could have taken the #3 spot.

This is the story of a young man called Caleb who is turned into a vampire by a beautiful woman called Mae who is part of a vampire family, led by a very old vampire called Jesse. They try to get Caleb to join and fit in, but something happens and Caleb decides to fight the vampires to save himself and his younger sister. This is the kind of movie that has a lot of great vampire action if you know what I’m saying, but at its core, Near Dark is a very good story with interesting characters and a pretty bat-poop-crazy performance from Bill Paxton!

Next up we have a movie that some may say should not be on this top 10 vampire movies of the 80s list, but I disagree. Yes, The Monster Squad is about a group of monsters causing trouble in a small town, but Dracula is their leader, so it definitely counts!

This is such a fun movie and for many kids of the 80s, this was their introduction to characters like Dracula, The Wolfman (and his “nards”), Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Creature From… Sorry, I mean the Gill Man, and more.

If you were into monster movies as a kid, it’s impossible not to live vicariously through these kids who are obsessed with monster movies. If you grew up with monster movies and have kids, The Monster Squad is the perfect movie for you to share with them.

We already talked about Fright Night Part II, but for me, 1985’s Fright Night is one of the greatest vampire movies ever made. Charlie is a very typical kid who just so happens to discover that his handsome new neighbor Jerry is a vampire.

Charlie enlists the help of a local “celebrity” called Peter Vincent to try and put a stop to Jerry. (Yes, it’s an obvious homage to Vincent Price!) While this is an 80s movie, Fright Night is the kind of film that’s timeless. Chris Sarandon plays the role of Jerry, who has to go down in history as one of the best vampires to ever be in a movie.

Not only is The Lost Boys tip top of this top 10 vampire movies of the 80s list, but I would argue that this Joel Schumaker classic is still the greatest vampire movie ever made. Brothers Sam and Michael move with their mom to the “murder capital of the world” Santa Carla and soon discover that this place is home to vampires!

Michael falls in with them and becomes one himself thanks to the charismatic David, played by Keither Sutherland. This film has the coolest vampires ever, it has The Two Corey’s (Haim and Feldman), a big buff dude playing saxophone, and it just oozes 80s style. This is an 80s movie 100 percent, but The Lost Boys does not feel dated. It stands the test of time and is just as much fun to watch today as it was back then. It even got some straight-to-DVD sequels which may not be great, but they are not the worst vampire movies you will ever see either.