Spooky movies! Near Dark

Now these are some vampires, people. Near Dark is a modern vampire western (no, really). A young dude meets a cute girl one evening, and she bites him on the neck and runs off. It happens. As the sun rises, the guy discovers that sunshine burns his skin. Hmmm. He finds the young girl in a merry band of homicidal vampires, including Bill Paxton as one of the craziest viciously cheery yahoos you will ever see in films. Even more wonderful is Lance Henricksen, a blood sucker who has been around since the civil war.

This movie apparently did terribly at the box office when it was released in 1987. Maybe it's the mix of western, biker and vampire genres. I'd never heard of it until I saw a clip on a Bravo Scary Movie Moments show a couple of years ago, and then was amazed at how good it was when I finally saw it. It's a great atmosphere movie, with the vampire family blacking out the windows, old-fashioned shoot 'em up gun battles, and even a creepy little vampire boy.

Best quote from the movie? "Caleb, those people back there, they wasn't normal. Normal folks, they don't spit out bullets when you shoot 'em, no sir. "