Sightlines · reception

How Near Dark was received

1987 · Kathryn Bigelow · Near Dark on Sightlines

The arc

It died quietly in 1987 — released in the shadow of The Lost Boys and orphaned when its studio, De Laurentiis's DEG, collapsed into bankruptcy. Decades of word-of-mouth later, it's routinely called the best vampire film of the '80s and the proof Bigelow was great from the start.

What’s debated

The eternal 1987 face-off: film fans love to argue Near Dark vs. The Lost Boys, with cinephiles insisting the flop was always the better vampire movie.

Its footprint

The roadhouse bar scene — Bill Paxton's Severen strutting through 'finger-lickin' good' — is the clip everyone shares, a fixture of 'greatest horror scenes' lists; the film is also famous for never once saying the word 'vampire.'

Where it stands

A capital-C cult object: the 'you must have seen this' deep cut of both the vampire genre and the Kathryn Bigelow filmography, kept alive partly by its long stretches out of print.

Did you know? Bigelow stocked her vampire clan with three actors fresh off James Cameron's Aliens — Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein.