21+ Sexy Vampire Movies

Out of all the movie monsters, why are vampires considered so sexy? No one ever seems to have fantasies about being ravaged by zombies, mummies, werewolves, or Frankenstein, so why are vampires so frequently associated with sex?

English professor and Bram Stoker expert Anne Stiles attempts to explain:

The sexual undercurrents are not hard to see. You have penetration, an exchange of bodily fluids. He has mesmeric powers. He is very seductive. It’s an easy, veiled way to write about sex without censorship.

But vampires weren’t always sexy. Beasts and monsters who drain humans of their life energy play a prominent role in folklore across the world, but they are usually repulsive creatures. During Europe’s Middle Ages, vampires were depicted as hideous and bloated agents of infection—hardly what one would consider attractive or seductive.

This all changed in 1819 when Lord Byron’s personal physician John William Polidori wrote a short story called “The Vampyre.” Obviously modeled on the rakish and mysterious Lord Byron himself, the story’s dashing protagonist Lord Ruthven would take women’s breath away before draining them of their blood.

The sexy-vampire trope took on a female form when the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla was published. It features a female vampire who attempts to seduce the female narrator. In one dream sequence, the narrator describes an encounter that sounds undeniably sexual:

Sometimes, there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.

With such erotic potential, it should come as no surprise that most of the sexy vampires on this list are women.

The publication of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula in 1897 cemented the idea that bloodsuckers were sexually charged beings. Count Dracula is rich, charming, and surrounded by adoring women. Many speculate that vampires—who are tortured beings capable of great evil but who also hold the promise of redemption and the capability of being a woman’s strong protector—appeal to women who like their boys bad, but not so bad that they’re irredeemable.

Here is a list of sexy vampires in movies. If you notice that it seems a bit crowded with films from the early 1970s, that’s because that era marked only a few years after strict pornography laws were lifted and an “anything goes” attitude prevailed in the arts and society in general.

The Nude Vampire (1970)

One of four sexy-vampire films by French director Jean Rollin (the others were 1968’s Le viol du vampire, 1970’s Le frisson des vampires, and 1971’s Requiem pour un vampire), The Nude Vampire focuses on a man who falls in love with a woman who is being stalked by creepy masked figures. To the man’s dismay, he realizes that his father is one of the masked figures who leads a suicide cult. The cultists all suspect that the woman is a vampire, which is why they perform experiments on her while she’s naked.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

The ravishing Ingrid Pitt, a regular of the British series of Hammer Horror films, stars as the beautiful and rich vampire Carmilla Karnstein, an obvious nod to the 1872 lesbian-vampire novel Carmilla. Set in rural Germany during the late 1700s, the film depicts Carmilla and her family as a group of debauched libertines who prey upon other rich and beautiful people—women in particular. According to Pitt, the actresses had trouble getting through many of the scenes without giggling. She says that attempting to bite her costar Kate O’Mara on the breasts led to her fake teeth falling out several times—until she was able to keep the choppers stuck in her mouth with the aid of some chewing gum she’d borrowed from a stagehand.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

A collaborative Spanish/German production from Jess Franco—described by the Vatican as “the most dangerous director in the world”—this mix of softcore porn and vampire horror centers around a hypersexual “vixen vampire” (Soledad Miranda), who loves female blood and female flesh. She lures her beautiful, innocent prey to a remote island, where she kills them. A reviewer on IMDb described it as “Loaded with symbolic language, an almost dream-like atmosphere, unusual camera angles, a fantastic score and some Franco typical lesbian soft sex,” adding that “the Spanish director created an absolute masterpiece of Europe´s early 1970s sleazy cinema.” Amazon describes it as “a mind-bending odyssey of surreal erotica and ’70s EuroHorror.” The soundtrack, Vampyros Sexadelic Dance Party, achieved a cult status of its own.

Countess Dracula (1971)

Based on the legend of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory—who lived from 1560-1614 and attempted to keep herself young by bathing in the blood of the hundreds of virgins she allegedly killed—Countess Dracula features Ingrid Pitt as Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy, a wretchedly aged woman who uses the blood of slain virgins as a Fountain of Youth. Around the 45-minute mark there’s a cameo by Elton John sitting in a pub with friends.

Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

Two young girls who wear miniskirts and occasional clown makeup wander aimlessly—and almost entirely silently—through the French countryside throughout the first half of the film, meeting dangers with retaliatory violence whenever necessary. They wind up in a haunted castle that is inhabited by a sickly vampire and his followers. About halfway through the film there is an extremely long and thematically incongruous explicit orgy scene that was reportedly inserted at the producers’ insistence.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

An older vampire (Delphine Seyrig) and her attractive young female aide (Danielle Ouimet) grow hungry for the blood of virgins due to the simple fact that in a sexually permissive society, it’s getting almost impossible to find virgins. Things grow complicated when they cross paths with a young straight couple—especially after the man, Stefan, also becomes a sexually ambiguous vampire. With an original French title of Les lèvres rouges (Lipstick on the Lips), Daughters of Darkness has been released under a staggering number of English-language titles, including Blood on the Lips, Children of the Night, Erzebeth, The Promise of Red Lips, and The Redness of the Lips.

Lust for a Vampire (1971)

This is the second in a trilogy of Hammer Films based on the 1872 novel Carmilla—the first was 1970’s The Vampire Lovers, and the third was 1971’s Twins of Evil. Set in the 1830s, the Karnstein family uses the blood of a virgin to resurrect the beautiful Mircalla. The film was rated R in the United States for violence, gore, and frequent nudity involving lesbian themes, which were especially daring for the time. The legendary horror actor Peter Cushing was originally cast as Giles Barton but had to back out in order to care for his ailing wife. Ralph Bates replaced him and would eventually describe Lust for a Vampire as “one of the worst films ever made.”

Daughter of Dracula (1972)

Luisa Karlstein (Britt Nichols) is summoned by her dying mother to visit the Karlstein Castle. In her last moments, Luisa’s mother informs her that the family is composed entirely of vampires. When Count Karlstein bites Luisa, she also becomes a vampire. For some reason, as the corpses start to mount, so does the frequency of topless, wine-sipping lesbians taking baths together and engaging in explicit sex.

The Blood-Splattered Bride (1972)

Yet another lesbian-vampire saga based on the 1872 novel Carmilla, The Blood-Splattered Bride (original title La novia ensangrentada) features a frigid newlywed woman who is tormented by visions of Mircalla Karnstein, a vampiress who slew her husband on her wedding night centuries ago. As fate would have it, she discovers her true sexuality after being seduced by a female vampire. 

Vampire’s Ecstasy (1973)

Three young girls visit a castle to attend the reading of a will by the Baroness. They quickly are drawn into a world of explicit and extended lesbian vampire orgies that are all intended to resurrect the murdered leader of the lustful naked female vampires. Directed by softcore porn pioneer Joe Sarno, Vampire’s Ecstasy was originally released in German as Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern (The Curse of the Black Sisters) and in an alternate English version as The Devil’s Plaything. 

Female Vampire (1973)

Written and directed by legendary horror director Jess Franco, Female Vampire was shot in three different versions: a straight horror film, a horror film with sex, and a hardcore porno version. Originally titled The Bare Breasted Countess, it stars Lina Romay as Countess Irina von Karlstein, a mute vampiress who is able to transform into a bat at will. The film’s innovation is that this vampire doesn’t need to suck blood to survive—instead, she drains the life out of men by swallowing their semen.

Vampyres (1974)

Two beautiful and decadent rich Englishwomen named Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) lure and sometimes even kidnap male passersby into their rural mansion for orgies involving copious amounts of sex, then stab their victims to death while drinking their blood. Sex and violence interweave with oddly peaceful dream sequences. A remake that was also called Vampyres was released in 2015. 

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1974)

A bisexual American artist’s van breaks down during a vicious thunderstorm in rural Mexico. One night while staying in an abandoned house with a man she met along the way, she reminisces about killing a US official the previous night and drinking his blood. She begins killing and drinking the blood of local villagers. As is typical of lesbian-vampire movies of the time, two naked women will eventually slip into a bubble bath together and sip wine—but that doesn’t mean one of them won’t slit the other’s throat.

Blood for Dracula (1974)

Also released as Andy Warhol’s Dracula, this hyper-sexed glam take on the vampire legend features Warhol stalwarts Paul Morrissey as the director and Joe D’Alessandro as a studly Marxist handyman. Udo Kier, who lost 20 pounds for the title role within a week and was reportedly so frail on the first day of shooting that he could barely stand, plays a sickly Count Dracula who travels from Transylvania to Italy in the 1920s hoping to find more virgins in the staunchly Catholic country than he was able to find in his decadent homeland. 

Love at First Bite (1979)

One of the most profitable independent films ever made, Love at First Bite is a comedy that finds super-tanned leading man George Hamilton as a beleaguered Count Dracula who has been expelled from communist Romania and has moved to New York in the hopes of finding a nice girl to settle down with. Things start to go awry when his coffin is mistakenly sent to a black church in Harlem. The film’s tagline was “Your favorite pain in the neck is about to bite your funny bone!”

The Hunger (1983)

Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are a vampire couple who murder their prey not by biting their jugular veins and sucking their blood, but by slashing their throats with an Ankh pendant attached to a blade. But despite their desperate efforts to remain young, Miriam and John find themselves rapidly aging. They become embroiled in a steamy love triangle with Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a female researcher who specializes in sleep and aging. 

Near Dark (1987)

Near Dark is a very sexy vampire western about a small-town man who gets bitten by a beautiful vampire and joins her tribe of traveling bloodsuckers. This is Academy Award for Best Director winner Katheryn Bigelow’s solo directorial debut. You can tell the film was directed by a woman because she is able to create so much passion and sex appeal from the leads without sexualizing their bodies or showing overt sex scenes.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

In a take on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, which itself was a take on the real-life Romanian butcher Vlad the Impaler of the 1400s, Gary Oldman stars as Count Dracula, who returns home after conquering the Turks to discover that his wife has committed suicide. According to a local priest, there is no saving Dracula’s wife from hell. Dracula vows vengeance against the sort of God who would torture his wife forever. Actor Keanu Reeves was singled out by critics for a wooden performance featuring an inept attempt at an English accent.

Embrace of the Vampire (1995)

In her first nude role, Alyssa Milano stars as Charlotte, a virginal college freshman of high ethics with a nice boyfriend who finds herself tempted by dreams of a dark, handsome vampire who sweeps her off her feet. Charlotte realizes that her boyfriend is good for her and the vampire would be bad for her, but she finds herself inevitably drawn into a vortex of lust and blood.

Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)

Eddie Murphy stars in this absurd comedy as Maximillian. As the “new vampire in Brooklyn,” his love interest is Angela Bassett, a policewoman. The script was cowritten by Eddie Murphy and his brother Charlie.

Blade (1998)

In the first movie of the Blade franchise, Wesley Snipes stars as a half-human/half-vampire who seeks to save the planet from destruction at the hands of a vampire Armageddon. Although there is no explicit sex in the film, blades are phallic, and Wesley Snipes walks around shirtless through much of the movie, flexing his massive pecs. According to a review at SFGate, “As Blade, Snipes looks great. What an outfit: black leather coat, leather vest, black sunglasses, Grace Jones hairstyle.”

Queen of the Damned (2002)

Based loosely on the 1988 Anne Rice novel of the same name—the third in her Vampire Chronicles trilogy—Queen of the Damned stars Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, who is awakened from decades of sleep by the loud thumping of a hard rock band. He quickly becomes the band’s lead singer and does not hide the fact that he is a vampire—but by revealing the secret of the existence of vampires, he enrages all the other vampires, who vow to kill him. They are led by the vampire queen Akasha (Aaliyah in her last role before her premature death), who takes a liking to Letstat and forms an unlikely alliance with him.

Kiss of the Damned (2013)

A Connecticut screenwriter falls in love with a woman before she tells him that she is a vampire who survives on the blood of animals. When he doesn’t believe her, she instructs him to chain her down so she can reveal her true beastly form. But when she does, he is not repelled—instead, he asks her to bite him so he can join the tribe. Written and directed by Xan Cassavettes, daughter of legendary filmmaker John Cassavettes.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Set in the Middle East—a fictional Iranian ghost town called “Bad City”—but filmed in central California, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a dark, shadowy, black-and-white 2014 offering that has been called “The first Iranian vampire Western.” It is also undoubtedly the first film in history where a Muslim woman is a vampire who uses her chador as a cape.

Night Teeth (2021)

A Netflix movie, Night Teeth tells the story of a vampire revolution told through the eyes of a human named Benny who was completely unaware of the existence of vampires before he became the driver for a pair of beautiful vampire assassins for the night. They toy with Benny as they travel through Los Angeles killing vampire leaders and hoping to take the city for themselves and their friend/lover, Viktor. Megan Fox has a small role as one of the vampire rulers.

More Sexy Vampire Movies

• Blood and Roses (1960) … In this classic by director Roger Vadim, a woman finds herself torn between two lovers—until she suddenly finds herself tearing out people’s throats with her teeth.
• Fright Night (1985) … The new kid next door turns out to be a vampire and serial killer.
• The Lost Boys (1987) … A pair of brothers move into a new town, only to discover it’s filled with vampires.
• Vampire’s Kiss (1989) … A book editor has a one-night-stand where he gets bitten in the neck, convincing him that he’s become a vampire.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) … In the movie that launched a TV franchise, a ditzy cheerleader finds herself tasked with saving the world from vampires.
• Interview with the Vampire (1994) … Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt starred in this sexually charged vampire legend that comedian Norm Macdonald called “not gay enough.”
• From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) … Two criminals attempt to hide in a truck stop, unaware that vampires are also hiding there.
• Underworld (2003) … A female vampire warrior who is doing battle with werewolves falls in love with a human that the werewolves are targeting.
• Ultraviolet (2006) … A beautiful female has a virus that gives her superhuman powers that she hopes to use to save a young boy.
• Twilight Saga (2008 – 2012) … The five-movie series starring Robert Pattison as a lovably vulnerable vampire.
• Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) … Estranged vampire lovers reunite after several centuries, only to have the female vampire’s younger sister threaten the entire arrangement.
• Erotic Vampires of Beverly Hills (2015) … Basically a softcore porno vampire movie involving the “Dracula” family, who move into Beverly Hills and start killing people in the midst of having lots and lots of sex.