Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The Least Sexy Vampires of All Time

Sure, Robert Pattinson is hot. We get it. Kellan Lutz is, too. Sure. With the overabundance of sexy vampires in the Twilight movies and in shows like True Blood (yeah, yeah, Alexander Skarsgard), there seems to be a complete bias against those on the other end of the handsome spectrum. To combat the proliferation of "Sexiest Vampires" lists online, we sought the help of vampire expert Meredith Woerner, author of Vampire Taxonomy: Identifying and Interacting with the Modern-Day Bloodsucker and blogger for sci-fi site io9.com, to unearth the fanged men and women who aren't so easy on the eyes. Here, your guide to the famously unattractive vampires ... at least compared to R-Patz. Read more: Least Sexy Movie Vampires - Pictures of Ugly Vampires in Film - Marie Claire

Jamie Campbell Bower, The Twilight Saga
Despite the fact that there have already been three movies in the film franchise, it's not easy to find a mildly unattractive vampire in the lot. Woerner only offered up the Volturi, namely the white-haired Caius Volturi, from 2009's New Moon. Not only does his skin tone blend too seamlessly with his locks, but his red eyes are an embarrassment next to Edward Cullen's. Plus, unlike his super-power-wielding Volturi brethren, Caius has no known special power, which doesn't bode well with the ladies.


Bill Paxton, Near Dark
Paxton may have started out as a sexy vampire — complete with leather motorcycle jacket and Ray-Bans — in this 1987 flick (which happened to be written and directed by recent Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow), but Woerner says, "by the end, his character Severen looked more like a member of the walking dead" than the cute guy from Twister. "A vicious battle took massive chunks of Severen's face off," she explains. "Because this particular vampire didn't heal as swiftly as some of the more modern vamps, he was forced to spend the rest of the movie without half of his face."


Allan Hyde, True Blood
Much like the Twilight caliber of cuteness, Woerner says the HBO series sets the bar high for fanged hotness. So although Hyde's character, the 2,000-year-old inked-up Godric, isn't repulsive by any means, he sired the hot-tastic Alexander Skarsgard. Let's be honest: Anyone standing next to that fine piece of immortal ass just pales in comparison.


Corey Feldman, Bordello of Blood
The '80s golden boy had already starred in the cult vampire hit The Lost Boys by the time he signed on to play Caleb Verdoux in the 1996 flick about a brothel for bloodsuckers, but he still hadn't learned how to up his sexiness the second time around, Woerner notes. If it wasn't the burned skin and missing front teeth that put the nail in the coffin of potential hotness, it was the nose ring and side burns.


David Arquette, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Before Buffy became a hit TV show filled with super-hot '90s-era vampires like Spike and Angel, Courteney Cox's hubby starred in the 1992 movie version. Woerner's interpretation? "His character, Benny, changed from a lazy friend of Luke Perry's to a white-faced, pointy-eared bloodsucker who can hover above the ground and claw at your bedroom window." Hot.


David Bowie, The Hunger
The normally hot rocker and actress Catherine Deneuve made an exceptionally gorgeous vampire pair in this 1983 flick. "Unfortunately for Bowie, his human blood stream was not able to survive after being mixed with Catherine's vampiric qualities," Woerner notes. "After living with Deneuve for a few years in a timeless party of blood and shower sex, Bowie begins to age … rapidly." Eventually he turns into a dusty corpse and, though still alive, spends his days trapped in a coffin in the attic. So, in addition to not looking so nice, he probably doesn't smell good, either.


Eddie Murphy, Vampire from Brooklyn
Woerner chalks up Murphy's inclusion in this list as yet another sufferer of the angry uglies. When you got on his nerves in this 1995 Wes Craven comedy, people got "a face full of a yellow-eyed, bumpy-foreheaded demon."


Gary Oldman, Dracula
"While Winona Ryder may have preferred him in his much more human shell, Gary Oldman took on several disgusting forms in Bram Stoker's Dracula," Woerner says of the 1992 film — in which he also rocked quite the widow's peak in all of his wigs. "He went from a wolf man to a bat creature to a dog-faced monster who cried black tears in one week alone."


Gerard Butler, Dracula 2000
The Scottish actor may have been an unstoppable sex magnet as the title character of this 2000 film, but "when he showed his true colors things got ugly," Woerner says of Butler, who was shirtless and having sex for most of the movie. "Not really ugly, but just kind of scary."


Grace Jones, Vamp
Although the Jamaican-American singer and model played a vampire queen in this 1986 film, Woerner added her to this list likely because she too closely resembled the demonic clown from Stephen King's It.


Isabel Lucas, Daybreakers
The Australian soap opera star is probably best known for her model-worthy looks, but in the 2009 movie about a plague that transformed almost every human into a vampire, she doesn't fare as well. Although this particular shot isn't Lucas herself, "let's just say, the hungrier she got, the more similar these two became," Woerner says.

Josh Hartnett, 30 Days of Night
He is clearly hot enough to have dated the likes of Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, but in this 2007 movie about an Alaskan town that's attacked by a bloodthirsty gang of vampires, he shows a different side. "After injecting himself with the dark vampire blood, he starts to immediately change from the cute boy next door into a black-eyed, claw-handed demon with monster strength and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth," says Woerner, adding that you have to see the film to get the full effect.


Kiefer Sutherland, The Lost Boys
"Don't let the '80s 'do fool you," Woerner insists. "Kiefer could be pretty hot when he wanted to be, until you got him angry." The modern-day Jack Bauer starred as David (alongside the Coreys, Corey Feldman — who also makes this list — and the late Corey Haim) in this 1987 vampire party flick. "When pissed, David would break out the yellow fever vampiric eye along with the fairly common rumpled vampire brow, making him look like a pale Hell beast."


Luke Goss, Blade II
According to Woerner, this 2002 sequel introduced a new kind of vampire: a vampire hybrid. Sadly, mixing up vampire DNA doesn't give you the glittery Twilight effect one might have hoped. In the case of Goss and his hybrid pals, "it caused them to lose their hair and what little skin color they had, and it also allowed them to snap their jaws wide open like some sort of insect," Woerner says. "It is terrifying."


Max Schreck, Nosferatu
The character, Count Orlok, from this classic 1922 black and white vampire film, is celebrated as one of the most terrifying vamps of all time. "It was a combination of the manner in which he walked, lurched, and clawed across the screen along with his beady little eyes and a mouth full of mangled fangs that helped this monster leave his mark as one of the scariest to ever grace the silver screen," Woerner says.


Nicolas Cage, Vampire's Kiss
The action star had an encounter with a neck-biter in this 1988 film, but "No one really knows if Cage's character, Peter Loew, was ever actually bitten by a vampire," Woerner admits. "What we do know was that he believed it and went from high-level, power-suit-wearing executive to crazed club kid killer who slept under his overturned couch and wore giant plastic costume fangs."

Parker Posey, Blade: Trinity
Woerner can't help but think the indie actress "looks badass" (not to mention her pearly whites looking downright perfect) in the 2004 flick, but her curlicue bangs could definitely use some reconsideration before she makes it to vampire sex symbol status.


Reggie Nalder, Salem's Lot
Whether fans like it or not, this vampire in the 1979 TV miniseries carried on the tradition of the Nosferatu-style frontal fangs, says Woerner. "Pair that with his blue-skin, puss-colored eyes, and bat-wing ears and you've got one ugly monster."


Tom Cruise, Interview with the Vampire
Sure, Jerry Maguire spent the majority of his screen time in Anne Rice's screenplay-turned-blockbuster dressed in frilly jackets with long, flowing blond hair. Could be considered mildly sexy, depending on one's taste. But when Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst try to kill him by slicing him open and throwing him in a swamp, his character, Lestat, "fed off the blood of the alligators, snakes, and all the putrid life of the Mississippi," Woerner says of this scene (not pictured) from the 1994 flick. "This turned him into a hideous, and slightly green, monster for a brief moment or two."

Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire
If Max Schreck from Nosferatu made the list, Dafoe — who played Max Schreck in a 2000 movie about the method-acting-to-the-extreme making of Nosferatu — must as well, Woerner says.