I don't like horror movies, and it's all because of The Exorcist. I watched it during college and it scared me out of my mind. For the most part, I swore off horror movies after that. There are a couple of exceptions, though. One is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which I always enjoy watching. (Funnily enough, one of my coworkers says The Shining is what made him stop watching horror movies.) The other exception is vampire movies. For whatever reason, I still enjoy watching them. Here's a list of some of the more obscure vampire movies I've watched.
We Are the Night (2010)
This is a German lesbian vampire movie. I watched it years ago, and while I don't remember much about it, it was really good. From what I recall, the music and cinematography are excellent, and the movie drives home what is lost when one becomes a vampire.
Vampire's Kiss (1988)
A young Nicolas Cage stars in this movie. I kind of love Nicolas Cage because he's so crazy, and this is one of the craziest movies of his career (he famously eats a live cockroach in this one). He plays a man who thinks he's been bitten by a vampire, and thinks he's slowly turning into one, but really he's just going insane. It's kind of sad. Parts of the movie haven't aged well (his character continually harasses his secretary), but overall I really liked it.
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
This is directed by Werner Herzog, who has made some fantastic movies in his career (e.g., Fitzcarraldo). I cannot describe, though, how bleak and depressing this movie is. If you are ever in the mood for bleak and depressing, this is the movie you MUST WATCH. A lonely Dracula leaves Transylvania and brings death and the plague and lots and lots of rats everywhere he goes. I think I liked this movie, but I'm not actually sure. It is so depressing.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
An Iranian vampire movie. It moves along at a glacial pace, but has an awesome soundtrack to make up for it. A young man falls in love with a lonely woman. What he does not know is that she's a vampire who's been terrorizing the town at night. She tries to warn him she has a darker side, but the two fall in love regardless. Gradually, the young man realizes who and what she is, and their relationship is put to the test. An excellent movie.
Ganja & Hess (1973)
I saved the best for last. With a black director (Bill Gunn) and an almost all-black cast, this offers a much different take on vampires. It is slow, meditative, and very surreal. One reviewer described this as a "scholarly" movie, and I think that fits. An anthropologist (Hess) is stabbed with an ancient knife that turns him into a vampire. As he adjusts to his new blood lust, he falls in love with a woman (Ganja) and turns her into a vampire so they can live together forever. Religion figures prominently in the movie, with several scenes at a black church. There is also a lot of emphasis on the blood references within Christianity; by the end it's almost overwhelming. I loved this movie, and kept thinking about it for weeks afterwards.