Happy Halloween!

All the deliciously spooky artwork above is by Abigail Larson. You can see more of her beautiful and creepy images here.

Top Five Vampire Movies of All Time

Halloween is just around the corner, which means candy, horror and lots of women parading in slutty costumes. Seriously, have you been to Party City lately? Even their 'kid friendly' costume collection includes Playboy school girl outfits and naughty French maids.

But in honor of a more 'traditional' aspect of Halloween, here are my picks for the top five best vampire flicks ever made:

5. Night Watch
Put your favorite anime or comic book in a movie then throw in the Matrix, Lord of the Rings and viola! That's Night Watch. Here's the scoop: it's the first part of a Russian trilogy that centers around the old fashioned good versus evil theme. But lines blur and good really isn't that good. The main character - the 'hero' - is an alcoholic vampire. A note to the wise: watch it in the original Russian language with subtitles. The dubbing is horrible.

4. Let the Right One In
Another foreign vampire movie but this one isn't for the squeamish. There are plenty of scenes that are graphic and bloody. But that's how a vampire movie should be! The plot centers around a young girl, a vampire, who is isolated from most of the world due to her blood-sucking urges. Then, during a visit to a wintry playground, she manages to befriend another kid. And that's when the dead bodies begin!

3. Shadow of the Vampire
What do you get when you place both John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe in a movie? True genius! Shadow of a Vampire is a fictional account of the making of Nosferatu, the first vampire movie ever made. So the film is basically a homage to Nosferatu and contains one of my favorite movie quotes:

Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving
picture. Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will
grow and recede; our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and
conceal; our light will play across living faces that laugh and
agonize; and our music will linger and finally overwhelm,
because it will have a context as certain as the grave.
We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory
...but our memory will neither blur nor fade.

2. Bram Stoker's Dracula
Simply a gorgeous film with lush colors, costumes and fangs! Gary Oldman portrays Dracula as a creature possessed by both beauty and horror. Ultimately, the film is a romance between night and day, love and madness and obsession and tenderness. It's a film that appeals to a wide audience beyond vampire lovers.

1. Nosferatu
Just because this is the FIRST on-screen depiction of a vampire and it's a film that still sends shivers down my spine. Truly a classic.


Honorable mentions: anything starring Bela Lugosi and Interview With the Vampire, which didn't make the list because Tom Cruise playing a vampire just isn't cool.