Renfield (2023)

“Stop Serving. Start Living.”

Directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War)
Starring Nicholas Hoult (Dark Phoenix), Awkwafina (Raya and the Last Dragon), Ben Schwartz (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Last Knights), Brandon Scott Jones (Isn’t It Romantic), Adrian Martinez (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) and Nicolas Cage (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent)

Robert Montague Renfield (Hoult) is the long-suffering familiar of Dracula (Cage), responsible for running errands, fighting off daytime vampire hunter attacks with his bug-fuelled superpowers and bringing the master food when he has drawn too much attention and forced them to flee to a new city after said daytime vampire hunter attacks have reduced Dracula to a crispy wreck. In the early 21st century, this has brought them to New Orleans, where Renfield attends a 12-step programme, led by Mark (Jones), for people in bad relationships and tries to feed Dracula the group members’ terrible exes.

Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

“Protect the bloodline” or “Every bloodline must end” which feels like they aren’t sure what the film is about

Directed by Anna Foerster
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Lara Pulver, Tobias Menzies, Bradley James, Clementine Nicholson and Charles Dance

With the vampire covens on the verge of annihilation in the face of the Lycan onslaught, the remaining vampires suddenly really care about the fact that Selene (Beckinsale) killed the elder Viktor (Bill Nighy) back in the first movie, while the Lycans want the blood of her daughter, Eve, in order to become super-hybrids. Erstwhile ally David (Theo James), brings an offer of amnesty from the Eastern Coven, who want her to train their Death Dealers to be less shit. She accepts, but is betrayed by the elder Semira (Pulver) and her goon Varga (Bradley James) who want to drain her superblood, before being saved by David and his father Thomas (Dance), who sacrifices himself to get the other two away from the coven.

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

“Drac’s pack is back.”

Directed by Genddy Tartakovsky
Starring Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Mel Brooks

Dracula (Sandler) oversees the marriage of his daughter Mavis (Gomez) and her human boyfriend Johnny (Samberg), opening the Hotel Transylvania to non-monsters with the aid of buddies Frank (James), Wayne (Buscemi), Griffin (Spade) and Murray (Key) (Frankenstein’s monster, a werewolf, the Invisible Man and a mummy.) Not long after, Mavis announces her pregnancy, and soon the family is joined by Dennis (Asher Blinkoff).

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

It’s remarkable how little Michael Sheen looks like Michael Sheen in this picture; more a gracile Russell Crowe than a seriously ripped Simon Pegg.

“Every War Has a Beginning.”

Directed by Patrick Tatopoulos
Starring Michael Sheen, Rhona Mitra and Bill Nighy

In ye olde Transylwherever (I’d say at least five centuries south of Captain Kronos, but it’s hard to say for sure,) the war between the savage werewolves and the corsetry-pioneering vampires wages on, despite the captivity of William, the first werewolf. Then the birth of an apparently human child to a captive werewolf leads to the creation of a new breed of immortal; the shapeshifting werewolves known as Lycans.

Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974)

This may be the most awesomely bad poster ever.

“The only man alive feared by the walking dead!”
This is blatant false advertising; they’ve clearly never heard of him.

Directed by Brian Clemens
Starring Horst Janson, Caroline Munro, John Cater and Wanda Ventham

A small village in Transylwherever is plagued by a rash of early onset old age, so local physician Doctor Marcus (John Carson) calls on the aid of his old army buddy, the often shirtless Captain Kronos (Janson). Kronos and his friend, the hunchbacked Professor Hieronymus Grost (Cater), arrive with all speed – stopping only to rescue a girl named Carla (Munro) sentenced to the stocks for dancing on a Sunday – and begin an investigation with toads, bells and herbal cigarettes, for they are vampire hunters. Professional vampire hunters.

Crimson Throne (2013) aka Crimson Winter

Okay; so this cover is somewhat misleading.

“Princes and Vampires Rise Together… Now it’s Time for Blood.”

Directed by Brian Ferriter
Starring Brian Ferriter, Nick Milodragovic and Kailey Michael Portsmouth

Elric (Ferriter), a prince among vampires, chooses to fight alongside his fellow Frenchmen in the Crusades, and later in the Hundred Years War, seeking to fulfill an animal-based prophecy about a lion, a wolf and a falcon that will bring peace between vampires and humans… And then some students (primarily Milodragovic and Portsmouth as engaged couple Dylan and Roxanne) head into rural Montana to do some research into elk mortality.

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

Never mind the dialogue, check out the corsetry.

“Vengeance Returns”

Directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James and India Eisley

Following directly from the end of the previous movie, we open with a narrated montage to get rid of Scott Speedman’s character and accelerate the plot into the future, because fuck continuity; am I right?

Anyway, humanity finds out about the Lycans and the vampires and a purge begins under a militarised medical establishment led by Dr Jacob Lane (Rea). Selene (Beckinsale) and Michael are blown up and she wakes upside down in a cryonic tank twelve years later, collects her combat catsuit, battle corset and eight inch assault heels from a cupboard right beside the tank and murders her way out of the building to look for Michael. Instead, she finds a vampire named David (James) and a girl named Eve (Eisley) who turns out to be a hybrid, and her daughter.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Admittedly, it lacks the subtle depth and melancholic introspection of Only Lovers Left Alive…

“Some interviews with some vampires.”

Directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement
Starring Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement (you may notice a pattern here; they also wrote it), Rhys Darby, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stu Rutherford, Jonathan Brugh, and Ben Fransham

In a dingy house in Wellington, four vampires have a flat share: Viago (Waititi) is a 16th century dandy, Vladislav (Clement) is a former Transylvanian warlord, Deacon (Brugh) is the 180-year old rebel bad boy of the group, and Petyr (Fransham) is Deacon’s 8,000-year old progenitor, a taciturn monster who lives in the cellar and looks like Count Orlock in Nosferatu. Their quiet lives of slightly sad dissipation among New Zealand’s vampire community are thrown into disarray, first when they become the subjects of a documentary film crew, and then when Petyr turns one of their victims, Nick (Gonzalez-Macuer).

Underworld: Evolution (2006)

“My God. Brother, what have you done?”

Directed by Len Wiseman
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Derek Jacobi and Tony Curran

After the events of Underworld, Selene (Beckinsale) and Michael (Speedman) go into hiding in the wilds of Caucasistan*, hunted not by the now-defunct vampire establishment but by the last elder, Markus Corvinus (Curran), first vampire, winged hybrid, and wearer of some seriously samurai loon pants.

Daybreakers (2009)

This movie contains no actual ‘blood wars’. It is at best a blood skirmish.

“Let the Blood Wars Begin”

Directed by Michael and Peter Spierg
Starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and Claudia Karvan

Beginning in 2009, a plague has swept across the globe, converting the majority of the world’s population into vampires. Humanity is a rapidly dwindling resource. Synthetic blood seen as the only alternative to starvation and devolution into monstrous, vampire-eating ‘subsiders’, but a few human survivors and their vampire sympathisers plan to find a different solution; a cure.