5 - Near Dark

4 - Nosferatu

3 - Nightwatch

2 - Nosferatu the Vampire

1 - Dracula

                            The freaks come out at night

We could have put any number of mainstream vampire movies up here - The Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Blade, etc. - but really, these are better movies. Plus, they're creepier, and since we're not talking about the Top Five Movies About Florists, I think creepy is a good component.

That's not to say the Blade movies or Underworld or the Frank Langella Dracula aren't worthwhile. A lot of them are. But I think I've got valid reasons for all of these. Before we get to the list, other top nominees included Shadow of the Vampire, From Dusk Till Dawn, Vampire Hunter D, The Hunger, Fearless Vampire Killers, Fright Night, Lifeforce, and the truly bad Bordello of Blood. Oh, and the just as bad Van Helsing got one vote.

I knew that probably three of my top five would make the cut regardless, so it really came down to inventive storytelling to round out the list. Near Dark is exactly that, taking the vampire movie a different direction. For starters, it's a pack of vampires rather than a solo bloodsucker, and it's set in the midwest, which is kind of new. Plus, our main character is turned into a vampire after he's seduced by a girl he meets in a bar and her kiss is, well, more than he bargained for. I'd like a remake of this, actually.

The original Nosferatu (pictured) is almost 90 years old now. Can you imagine looking at that face in 1922? I mean, we've been conditioned by horror movies for so long that it's not too bad. Oh, sure, he shouldn't use that should on his eHarmony profile, but I've seen worse creatures of the night. But Max Schreck became the beastly Nosferatu, and there was a long period of time when you couldn't even get the film on video. I think it first came out in the early 1990s. By then, it had lost its potency as a horror movie, and the version was not very clean or well-preserved, but it's impossible to imagine horror movies without this first haunting image.

Night Watch brings us that inventive storytelling again, with Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov taking a novel by Sergei Lukyanenko and inventing this completely distinctive universe for his vampire movie. And really, that's the sort of thing we should ask of filmmakers more often: Take us somewhere we can't see in another movie. In this case, it's an alternate modern-day Moscow, where vampires walk at night as forces of evil, but their numbers and influence are controlled by the forces of good that rule the day. In fact, its purpose is to keep balance between both sides.

Spawned the slightly inferior and much more confusing sequel, Day Watch, and you can guess what that's about.

How is Nosferatu the Vampire different or any better than Nosferatu? Think of our list as a kind of first ballot hall of fame group. Some get in because you can't keep them out - like Nosferatu - and some get in because they're legitimately that good in their category. Nosferatu the Vampire is a pretty terrific vampire movie, but a lot of people haven't seen it because it's a foreign film, released at a time when we didn't get a lot of foreign films in America, certainly not on the yet-to-exist home video market.

What's unusual about director Werner Herzog's approach is that he appears interested in making a modern shot-for-shot version of F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu, but then there are times when this is completely its own entity, at least as far as the moodiness and performances go. Speaking of performances, give it up to Klaus Kinski here as the chrome domed Nosferatu. He might be the most convincing film vampire I've ever seen. Plus, Isabelle Adjani. Yeah...

Is putting Dracula at the top of this list a cop-out? Really? I dunno. Maybe it is. But it's a good film, particularly by the standards set at the time, and I'll go one further and say that the Dracula story has never been done better. And since Dracula is the vampire we think of, I'm putting it at number one. This is as much a tip of the hat to Tod Browning, one of the great directors of that era, who would be the Guillermo del Toro of the 1930s. Yes, Freaks is a classic in its own right - for very peculiar reasons - but Browning's Dracula was, is, and will be for a long while the vampire movie of record.

Because it's Thanksgiving next week, we've made it one of our Top Five Weekends Off. Don't worry; we'll return in two weeks with another list, focusing on the new release Cadillac Records, an ensemble musical about the rise of the blues label Chess Records back in the 1950s. The film has a really good cast, including Beyonce as Etta James, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, and Jeffrey Wright (my sleeper pick for this one) as Muddy Waters. Adrien Brody plays label executive Leonard Chess.

So, keying off that, let's go with The Top Five Musical Biopics. I'll save you from needing to ask: Hell yes, spoofs count. Right off the top of my head, I can think of four Oscar-winning performances from musical biopics in the last 30 years. No wait, make it five. With a sixth nominee, no less. And they've been making these things forever.

Shoot us an e-mail with your votes for The Top Five Musical Biopics and you could win The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor on DVD. If you're local (meaning Phoenix) then you could choose tickets to see Frost/Nixon instead. The Big Picture premiere of that film is December 11th. Perhaps you're asking what The Mummy has to do with musical biopics, but I believe that whole Mummy franchise is based on the life of Cher, isn't it?

Whichever prize you're angling for, please include your mailing address, and you'll have until Thursday night December 4th at 10pm Pacific to get us your lists.