There are many different kinds of vampire movies that have touched base with countless genres, whether it’s horror, romance, action, fantasy, comedy, and everything in between. For her breakout feature Near Dark, future Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow opted to head down the neo-Western route, and the end result was a bloodsucking classic.
The filmmaker’s first feature in the six years since her similarly leather-clad and broody The Loveless (which was co-directed by Eric Montgomery) followed Adrian Pasdar’s Caleb Colton, a modern-day cowboy who falls in with Jenny Wright’s beautiful stranger at a bar.
As you’d imagine, their budding relationship gets complicated real quick when she turns him into a vampire, effectively forcing Caleb to abandon his family and hit the road with Wright’s May and her undead posse, which includes James Cameron favorites Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein.
Cut much angst, lust, bursts of vampiric violence, and no shortage of raw animal magnetism, all of which saw Near Dark amass a huge cult following, even if it tanked at the box office by failing to even recoup its measly $5 million budget from theaters. There must be something in the water, though, because it’s become a Top 10 streaming success 35 years later.
As per FlixPatrol, Near Dark is flying high as the third most-watched title among iTunes customers in the United Kingdom, while it’s one spot higher in second among the Irish contingent. It’s one of the best vampire movies you rarely hear people talk about these days, and it’s definitely one of the sexiest, too.
