These Suck!

Five terrible vampire movies you've never watched

Without fail, the promise of a vampire appearing in a film is enough to lure me to a cinema. It might not be an expensive cinema (big up Peckhamplex), but I will be seated ready to watch, learn and frankly, pray.

No other mythical creature is as open to adaptation as a vampire, with a veritable selection of attributes that artists can pick and mix to forge their own interpretation. Do their vampires sleep in coffins? Do they sleep at all? Are they averse to garlic, sunlight or religious symbols? Can they turn into bats, wolves, or mist?

Such versatility means that in film, vampires can be used in everything from meditations on sin and drug addiction, like in Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, or presenting your opinion on the Shakespeare authorship question, like in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.

Both are great vampire films. Unfortunately, I will not be discussing them, but rather, in my quest to find the perfect vampire film, some of the worst I have ever seen.

Embrace of the Vampire (1995)

Long before Harry Styles had a little go at acting, Spandau Ballet Bassist and star of Celebrity Gogglebox, Martin Kemp, appeared in a direct-to-video film, Embrace of the Vampire, as the titular vampire.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make it more than ten minutes into this film because of the vampire’s striking resemblance to Martin Kemp. I kept waiting for him to make a pithy comment about Strictly Come Dancing or bring out his son Roman for some bland chatter. Bela Lugosi would never!