Conveniently, Vampire the Masquerade draws so extensively from the entirety of vampire pop-culture and mythology that the categories of this video map almost perfectly to the various clans in the setting.

Having Bobby try for an interruption at mention of worm slurping was a good one

I commented too soon, Bunnicula owns. "The Celery Stalks at Midnight" is such a banger of a book title.

Thanks for pointing out that Carmilla predates Dracula. Also, Varney the Vampire was a thing.

The fact that Blackula may contain the first example of the vampire reincarnation romance trope is both incredible and significantly ups its horniness points

I would watch a two-hour video of Mildred discussing Forever Knight. The entire thing was on Hulu when I was in college and I was OBSESSED.

Please drop everything and turn this into a 100% Forever Knight channel immediately! The world needs that sort of positivity in these dark times.

Point of order: Ravenloft the original DnD module that introduced Strahd was released in 1983, three years before Castlevania.

I desperately, desperately need the full length video analyzing Count Duckula's fuckability

Only Lovers Left Alive seems like it has some good contenders. They're pretty hot, pretty threatening, and have great vampire vibes. I'd personally put them real high, but I might be biased bc I love Jim Jarmusch.

I love John Carpenter's vampires. And also kind of love the wacky idea that Master Vampires are just immortal and invincible at night, with only sunlight being their weakness, a thing they know so you are mostly boned.

Honestly, you should check out Adventure Time - they have some damn good vampires (albeit, they don't show up that much until the Stakes miniseries.)

I've had such a stressful day and a new Scaredy Cats video on my special interest is absolutely just what I needed. I'm glad you exist.

I came for Mil-Dread's analysis of the titular vampire in "The Night Flier", but am left bereft. Truly, the most terror inducing thing is the longing.

you know, i once heard a youtuber rant about maven of the eventide and how her content pool was "so limited" because she only chose to review vampire media. and it's like... dracula is one of the most represented characters in movies, you could make a career out of him alone.

The Vampire: the Masquerade vampires are honestly absolutely top tier. Horniness ranges from human-but-messed-up to full on cenobite. Vibes are all the way up there, with really cool powers and all sorts of folklore pulled in and over the top melodramatic nonsense as a focus. Scariness goes from WWDITS up to raging blood god from before the flood. True Blood, WWDITS, and Underworld + The Crow at minimum

Forever Knight deserves A+ tier for Lucien LaCroix alone.

I think the vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade are the best vampires, because they offer a diversity of vampire "types" (bloodlines) that all share a unified, consistent mythology (they all ultimately descend from Caine, as in "Cain & Abel," who was cursed with the 'mark' of vampirism as punishment for his fratricide, then went on to found the first city). I mean, they've got: - Anarchist punk vampires (the Brujah bloodline) - Capitalist vampires (the Ventrue) - Artsy-fartsy vampires (the Toreador) - Wizard vampires (the Tremere) - Ugly vampires (the Nosferatu) - Even uglier vampires (the Samedi) - Completely insane vampires (the Malkavians) - Werewolfy vampires (the Gangrel, my personal faves) - Middle Eastern vampires (the Assamites) - Mafioso necromancer vampires (the Giovanni) - Flesh-sculpting vampires (the Tzimisce - this was Vlad Tepes'/Dracula's bloodline in the game's mythology) - Roma vampires (the Ravnos) - Egyptian vampires (the Setites) - Devil-worshiping vampires (the Baali) - Three-eyed vampire psychic healers (the Salubri) - Many, many more bloodlines... All of these different types of vampires are presented with complex, elaborate, and interwoven histories, social and political structures, philosophies, and attitudes to human society. They also coexist in a Gothic-Punk World of Darkness together with Werewolves, Wizards, Ghosts, Faeries, Mummies, and other unusual beings, all with their own equally elaborate and detailed societies, cultures, histories, and variants (among the World of Darkness' faeries, for example, one can find Pookas, Nockers, Eshu, Satyrs, Redcaps, Sluagh, and Trolls). I don't think there's any other modern vampire mythology that even comes close. "What We Do In The Shadows" is great, though!

OMG I love Forever Knight so much and look forward to your potential discussions of it.

Nicolas Cage in the movie Renfield did a great Dracula parody, but he doesn't exactly have a whole lot of screen time. It's basically an over the top performance that fits right in with the plot, with a lot of blood and gore. Funny as hell. Everyone should check it out.

I'm reminded why I love Mildread so much when they just casually drop Romero's "Martin" in casually during a joke. Love Mildread's love for horror cinema and even the stuff most folks never care to watch or have heard of 😍😍🖤🖤

I do think you would enjoy Adventure Time vampires. The "Stakes" special is worth a watch.

Thank you so much for your excellent work. You are a truly a unique and seemingly deeply authentic creator who just loves spooky stuff and empathic cognitive thought. I really appreciate your refreshing and excellent contributions. Hope you have a lovely thinning of the veil and are watching something spooky!

This inspired me to finally knock Shiki off my to-watch list just to see how it stacks up to this metric. Also, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is top tier; sexy, scary, and the vibes are a bit unconventional, but definitely off-the-charts. If you want modern vampires, but something more serious and melancholic than WWDitS, here's a category: Goth Vampires. You could probably put fold these in with Anne Rice, but it would also include The Hunger, Only Lovers Left Alive, Kiss of the Damned, and maybe The Lost Boys and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night as well, come to think of it.

I quite liked the vampires in UK Being Human. There's a whole thing in the first season where, for the first bit, the main character vampire's basically harmless. Then, at the season finale, something happens and he goes all proper horror movie monster doing a proper horror movie assault, and the juxtaposition really ramps up the scary factor for me. I also don't really remember anything about the show, but I do remember that, and also that the guy's master was terrifying.

There's still room for soooooo many more vampires. Alucard from Hellsing for instance (I feel he's distinct enough from the other Draculas) or Asterion from Baldur's Gate 3 for instance. (For next year's 4 hour long video.)

I watched this literally minutes after finishing Strahd Must Die 3: Strahd in Space! Strahd Must Die is a series of one-shots where you boss rush Strahd in 4 real-life hours or less (I've played all three as of like an hour ago). If the time runs out, you lose. I'm also in a CoS campaign at the moment, but it's still in the early stages so I can't comment on whether he fits well into a long-term campaign or not, but he fills the role of one-shot BBEG _very_ well. I definitely recommend the one-shots, they were quite fun and did a good job of giving the players a fair chance without deflating Strahd's menace. Horror DND is a very interesting space to navigate from a game design perspective - how do you make the monsters _threatening_ enough to be scary without also making them very lethal or a chore to fight? Answers vary, of course, it's a cursed design problem (heh). The goals in tension with one another are [make the game fair] and [make the game genuinely scary, i.e. threatening]. There's no single right answer to that, of course. Any solution is necessarily going to be a trade-off between those goals. The bluntest way to navigate that is just to remove one of the goals - either your party plays a high-lethality campaign where a TPK and losing the campaign is a very strong possibility, or you decide that being actually scary isn't a priority, maybe it's more of a campy campaign, or it just uses the aesthetics of horror without the _stakes_ of horror. And there all sorts of ways to walk in between. I saw a video about how to run good horror in DND a long time ago, and I can't for the life of me remember who made it, but the author essentially presented an alternate style of DND with different goals and affordances, it was really cool, I promise.

1) "Bunicula" was also my favorite book as a child. I wrote to the author, and he actually wrote back! 2) "I don't want them to get me; they're too vaguely European." Perfection. 3) I am a scientist, and although I am not a scientist of vampires, I can confirm that your tier list is 100% scientifically accurate.

Adventure Time had fun vampires.

I was also obsessed with Forever Knight as a kid, glad to be reminded of it

Gotta give it up for sapphic vampire Marceline from Adventure Time and whatever the boy version of sapphic is for Marshall Lee from Fionna & Cake

"It should get old, but it's Matt Berry" is a pretty good summation of Matt Berry's comedic career.

Legacy of Kain is very cool, amazing writing. Or at least the Soul Reaver/Defiance trilogy is. Definitely give it a go if you get a chance.

crossing my fingers for Marceline or The Vampire King to get mentioned

Well, since you asked: You missed all the various archetypes of non-Jojo anime vampires. Your Vampire Hunters D, your Hellsing eldritch monstrosities dressed like Carmen Sandiego and those generic ones that look like waifu dolls wearing inappropriate costumes...

The Megan Follows narrated version of Carmella is amazing and one of those things that can remind a person that you and your little friends didn't invent being gay.

I love it when a parody of a genre is itself at or near the pinnacle of the genre

I cannot tell you how happy I was to see Forever Knight on this list. My aunt used to literally tape it on VHS and mail them to me as a kid so I could watch. Same with Dark Shadows. ....Oh. A lot of things suddenly make a lot more sense about me now.

I think Count von Count is a real vampire, he's just hiding in plain sight

I wish you'd had vampire hunter D or Hellsing on the list.

Carmilla is one of the stories in the scariest book ever written, "In A Glass Darkly" (an anthology book) by Joseph Sheridan Lefanu. Read it immediately. The whole book.

Oh my GODS! I loved Forever Knight. Please do an episode on that classic!

I have a soft spot for Vamp. I'm glad that it is on your list. It's a bit 80's campy so align your expectations accordingly. If for nothing else it's worth it for the performances of Grace Jones and the late Billy Drago.

Surprised you didn't at least mention Marceline the Vampire Queen

I watched "Fresh" last night and it's excellent! I would love to see a Mil-Dread take on it in a future video!

Currently playing a curse of strahd campaign and you have given me some key information that i believe my dm would've withheld

Kind of would have liked to hear thoughts on Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time. I know she really just drinks the color red but her vampire powers come from actual vampires that atleast seem undead amd definitely drink blood. I enjoy your content btw!

I feel like Lucy Westenra deserves a category of her own and her tier should be AB+ because she got a lot of blood transfusions from a lot of different people in a time before we even knew about blood types so that's probably her blood type

I would love to hear your take on Hellsing, the manga about a Dracula who joins the vampire hunter side, and it has a lot of anime as fuck vampires in that one. Hellsing Ultimate specifically is a well animated adaptation, but mostly id like hear what you think of Hellsing Abridged, which is a halloween staple at my house, where I rewarch Team Four Stars comedic masterpiece each year for spooky season. Alucard is technically a dracula, but he feels like a different enough character than your classic dracula that he coild have been a seperate character on your list.

As someone who played a lot of Vampire: the Masquerade, I'd say it's in a tier of its own. Vampires in that setting are everything a vampire could be, often at the same time, even if its contradictory. But it's also best to ignoring everything that came after the original line concluded since the world literally ended with every single type of possible apocalypse happening at once.

Somewhere in a closet is a pile of vhs tapes I used to record Forever Knight, which aired past my bedtime. I cannot express how excited I am for a FK episode!

The thing with _Vampire the Masquerade_ is that several/most/probably all clans in the game world are versions of vampire types that you did individually rank there. Most obviously the Nosferatu clan is of the Nosferatu variety. Another clan is definitively based on Anne Rice _Vampire Cronicles_ vibes, but don't ask me what that clan's name is! Might be Ventru? That's my best guess, and I won't look it up. Some clan is based on _Lost Boys_ vibes. No idea what they're called, and I can't even make a guess on that one. So when you're ranking types of vampires, it doesn't really make sense to award those of VtM a single rating. If you have to, then they're mid tier by design, because they're intended to be covering all bases which aberages out to mid. And ranking the different VtM vampires individually would be redundant, because all of them are just meant to capture and codify something else of which the original should be ranked instead. Now, types of vampires you regrettably failed to address: The Fades - they technically match your criteria. They're blending spectre, vampire, and zombie; with vampire being very understated, but it's still there. The vampire emoji: 🧛🧛🏻🧛🏼🧛🏽🧛🏾🧛🏿 🧛‍♀️🧛🏻‍♀️🧛🏼‍♀️🧛🏽‍♀️🧛🏾‍♀️🧛🏿‍♀️ 🧛‍♂️🧛🏻‍♂️🧛🏼‍♂️🧛🏽‍♂️🧛🏾‍♂️🧛🏿‍♂️ The vampires from the _Poltergeist: The Legacy_ two parter _Darkness Falls / Light of Day_ - who preserved secret ancient knowledge of alchemy and such, and who don't have a reflection but use their mesmerism ability to make the vampire hunter _think_ they saw them in the mirror. - They're Draculas, yes, but really clever ones, really trying to do something new with the concept without actually changing the concept itself. I love how they assemble on a table everything that's supposed to work against vampires, because they had no idea which of those things would actually work, so better have all of them. No ancient tome and no seasoned vampire hunter to give them the rundown of how vampires in that universe work. They also didn't just go with the assumption that the first three things everybody knows about vampires from pop culture must be totally true. The Legacy would have the most perfect explanation for why they don't need to first figure things out about vampires. But they instead incorporated the true fact that vampire lore is varied and if you had to deal with something that you somehow knew and believed to be a vampire, that wouldn't be straightforward at all.

Highly recommend the Soul Reaver games! The dialogue and atmosphere are superb~

It's great to see you again! Always a treat when you post.

You are a joy to listen to yet again! Super entertaining and funny. Your writing and delivery, plus your trademark humor.

I must admit i was disappointed that the Adventure Time vampires did not get a rating. Granted, that may have been airing at a time you weren't watching cartoons so I do get it, but would have been fun

Call of the Night might be an interesting one for you to check out, considering how surprisingly in-depth it manages to get with its vampiric lore

6:18 The Tabletop RPG Vampire the Masquerade has an entire linage of deformed vampires called "Nosferatu".

Absolutely hilarious and objectively spot-on rankings. Pure gold, Mil.

I absolutely love the 30 days of night vampires. I loved the movie too. I have no idea how it wasn’t a good movie…the story was solid as hell. The vamps are super unique in their hierarchy, way they talk, their look, and their blood thirst savagery was second to none.

As a lover of the spooky medias whose watching of horror medias consists almost entirely of watching Scaredy Cats with my hands over my eyes, I recognize and appreciate your unspoken distinction.

The shot and chaser of having Jojo mentioned and then immediately discarded. I needed that

Matt/Mil-Dread/Thought Slime has blessed ALL of our candy baskets this year with this little treat of a video.

Personally, I find that all the vampires that proudly fought for the Confederacy are always in the discarded trash pile when I rank them. Edit: Also, those who may not have been a Greycoat but are/were slave owners. Edit Edit: Also, I would not do Lestat. But I'm ace, so...I wouldn't do anyone.

Oh boy, if the film version of Let the Right One In made you deeply uncomfortable with the abuse subtext, the novel is *way* more direct about what Håkan's deal was before meeting Eli, and it's very upsetting and unsettling-or, to use Neil Gaiman's term, upsettling. That said, if we remove the horniness category and replace it with, I dunno, vampiric charisma or speaking to the universal human need for connection or something, I think Eli ranks quite high both as an actual character and as an absolute nightmare creature. Like she brutally murders the shit out of several people while remaining consistently sympathetic. But I'm biased because that novel is probably my favourite piece of mainstream-ish vampire fiction, so maybe count me out on those grounds. Also, shoutout to the vampires from Tim Powers' novel The Stress of Her Regard, which several people have argued did the whole sparkly sexy vampire thing a decade-plus before Twilight to decidedly creepier effect, but which I cannot vouch for firsthand; the half-vampire protagonist's full-blooded family in Thomas Ligotti's short story "The Lost Art of Twilight", who are functionally a metaphor for the romanticisation and reality of depression and consequently incredibly scary but are only really "onscreen" for the last few pages of a fairly brief story; and the clan of motherly vampires in Conrad Williams' "Outfangthief", who are super freaky but decidedly less freaky than the story's main antagonist, who is horrifying and gross in a decidedly human way, lending the whole thing a "Clive Barker's 'The Hellbound Heart' but not the fun kind of weird-horny" energy.

HELL YES MILDO GOT THEIR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL ON TIME!!! GOOD JOB

Oh, Mildred, please do more videos that include Forever Knight. I used to watch it on the Sci-fy channel at about the same age and still unironically love it so much. Also, kudos for the Lacroix picture used in the ranking. I'm gonna hush now before I keep info-dumping. (I've already deleted stuff twice. Lol.)

As a fellow Canadian I cannot believe that I have not seen Forever Knight or ever even heard anyone talk about it. It seemed right up my alley. I have started watching it since this video went live and I am enjoying it quite a bit.

You're seriously missing out with the Legacy of Kain series. It's some of the best writing in any form of popular media, much less just videogames. A lot of philosophy and lore that is just top tier.

since it wasn`t mentioned, actual vampires in jojo, boring, terrible, sometimes terrifyingly weird, pilar man on the other hand are a+ vampires, so thirsty they created the actual vampires just to eat them because it is better than eating a lot of living things one by one

How did i not not know Mildred had a second channel?! Subed!

Another awesome video. I don't watch a lot of English content, but every now and then I love to spend an evening gorging on contenido inglés (yes, that does just mean "English content" in Spanish, but it sounded better than literally just repeating the words "English content" again). Always look forward to catching up with some Scaredy Cats. Gracias por todo el contenido padrísimo, compa 👍🏻

The Strain barely got a mention😔. They are very low on horniness and mid on vibes, but those wormies are pretty scary! Also not undead arguably. Anyway this comment is for the algorithm, great vid!

Highly recommend the film "Strigoi" it's that eastern folklore sort where a vamp is just more annoying than scary. Vibe is like if The Big Labowski was a vampire movie

i watched "the addiction" directed by abel ferrara recently and that movie honestly has some pretty good vamps. solid recommend.

I'm just glad My Babbysitter is a Vampire got a mention. Top notch video for that alone. No notes.

I think you're discounting vampire dairies style vampires a little easily. at least the first few seasons have some really fun bits of vampire lore with the "can't enter unless invited."

Starting to realize " I saw John Carpenter's Vampires... in a theater" is more of a humble brag than I imagined

Absolute perfection, as per usual. You knocked it out of the park again, Mil-dread. Happy Halloween.

The blood vessels joke from the Bunnicula joke book was pretty clever ngl.

_Near Dark_ is like an anti-Dracula/Lestat, it strips away all the romantic myth and mystery and just leaves the vamps with a miserable and empty non-life.

Im currently reading Fledgling by Octavia Butler and thats some vampires i would like to give a shout-out to. Its a very horny, surprisingly poly setup for vampires with an intersection with race thats written by a prolific sci-fi author. Haven't finished it yet but its really good so far!! (warning and slight spoiler though!!: The main character is a young vampire which means they are like in their 50's but are the size of a human child. Even typing this it feels gross and truthly i think it would be especially awful in a visual medium but i will say in a book its not as much as an issue. Its still weird and i dont like that aspect of the book but i think the book is still worth a read so far. Sorry for the ramble but i felt i should warn people so they know what theyre getting into 😅)

The Carmilla novel legitimately reads like it was written by a 19 year old girl, which I think is great from a vibes perspective. Can recommend. Carmilla turns into a giant cat when she feeds, it's great.

I gasped giggling and covered my mouth when Forever Knight came on screen. We watched that as teens in the late 90s. Foundational.

I love the Legacy of Kain games so much, but they're so hard to recommend to people. It's a great story and a unique vampire mythos across a handful of games that are all... Just okay at best.

Feels like you could have thrown in a couple seconds of Akasha while you were talking about Lestats. For the horniness. 😢

Another delightfully spooky video! Thank you for blessing us this Hallowed Eve.

You acknowledged Legacy of Kain. That's all I could ask for. My number one vampire fiction.

Forever Knight!!! I watched that like a decade ago, and I'm obsessed too!

One of my favorite ever videos on scaredy cats. Saving this video as a to watch list

This is perhaps the most entertaining thing you've put out. It just feels like you had a ton of fun being a big ol goof.

I had to stop the video and look up Forever Knight. And it's perfect!

I am so happy you mentioned Bunnicula

Radu, from the 'Subspecies' franchise is my personal favourite. I'd say he fits into the Dracula type vampire.

I'm not sure how niche this is, but the Necroscope series of books has some pretty great vamps - their scariness is off the charts for the same reason their vibes go in all directions - they change over the course of their unlife, with the most ancient vampires ranging from feral, furry, hulking, beclawed monstrosities, to eldritch, barely recognizable as ever been human, nightmarish abominations Their horniness is also a major factor of the books, hell, a point is made that throughout an infinite lifespan your sexual tastes can get WEIRD and they turn their human lovers and concubines, both willing and enthralled, into abominable weird things just for the sake of weird vampiric sex Also, it's weird to me hearing people consider Jiangshi as vampire-adjacent since as reanimated corpses controlled by a spellcaster through seals with specifc commands, they feel much closer to Voodoo Zombies than Vampires

In the 90s our small VFX studio was approached to help animate a syndicated show called "VAN-PIRES". It was so stupid I hoped we'd get the gig. Then the producers were offended that we wouldn't work for free ("just think of the exposure you're turning down!") If you encounter it, might be worth a hate-watch with friends.

This video serves a tangible useful purpose and I'm glad it finally exists. I needed it. THANK YOU.

Mr. Burns! He's the only vampire who asks you to wash your neck in advance.

I’ve been obsessed with interview for a while, and I chocked when “lestats” was third on the list

Gotta read Carmilla. Super short and compelling enough to finish in a sitting or two.