When I started pulling my ideas together for this list last week, I sent a message to my Triforce of geek culture at HowStuffWorks.com — TechStuff’s Jonathan Strickland, ScienceStuff’s Robert Lamb and editor Chanel Lee — asking if they had ideas. I had a pretty clear idea of where I wanted to go, but I wanted to know if they’d seen something I missed. Among their responses was this note from Jonathan about a movie I’d never heard of, called “Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat”:

It’s a vampire western that takes place in a town called Purgatory. Half the vampires want to live in harmony with humans and are developing a synthetic blood substitute. The other half want to live as predators, believing themselves to be superior to humans. Bruce Campbell is in it as a descendant of Van Helsing. David Carradine is Dracula. M. Emmet Walsh is in it too. It’s awesome. AWESOME.

That’s when my original list went out the window, and I went on a quest to get my hands on this movie.

David Carradine in Lionsgate Home Entertainment's "Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat." The sunglasses and hat aren't just for show. (Photo courtesy Lionsgate)

Purgatory’s abstinent vamps have a leg up on Bill Compton for one reason: There’s strength in numbers. In “True Blood,” Bill is an outlier — the local bar and grill stocks Tru Blood, but Bill is really the only vampire who comes in and drinks it. In Purgatory, though, a whole community has gone mainstream. The corner store stocks real food — but no garlic — and the cooks at the local diner serve up plates of burgers and fries in case any unsuspecting non-vampire comes along. When people show up, the vampires put on hats, coat themselves with sunscreen and pretend to be ordinary folks. Like Bill, they’ll turn people when necessary — like, for example, if you’re building their synthetic blood plant and suddenly catch on to the fact that the goop’s not going to the local hospital. And their guilt quotient is relatively low — although most of the town’s citizens gave up blood out of guilt, they’re not really dwelling on it now.

But the trouble with Purgatory’s un-bloody vampires is that they’re so focused on keeping up appearances that they wind up being pretty average. Carradine and Campbell — and the extraordinarily cheesy ’80s production values — steal the show.

NEXT: No. 2 — A vampire who won’t put up with you stealing his show.

Previously:
No. 5 — Angel and Edward Cullen (Tie)
No. 4 — Bill Compton

Keep it going (artificially):
How Artificial Blood Works
How Artificial Hearts Work
How Artificial Vision Will Work
How Artificial Sweeteners Work