The Guardian's chief film critic Peter Bradshaw named it one of the greatest films of all time. Tokyo Story. Paths of Glory. Raging Bull. Andrei Rublev. Singin' in the Rain. And this 82-minute black-and-white vampire movie that grossed $302,393.

Christopher Walken was offered the male role. He took the one written for a female actor instead, leaving dialog unchanged. Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, and Michael Imperioli all appear four years before The Sopranos.

THE ADDICTION (1995) follows Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor), a philosophy PhD student at NYU. She is dragged into an alley one night and bitten by a vampire.

Vampirism here is heroin. Kathleen suffers agonizing withdrawal when she doesn't feed, collects and injects blood by syringe, draws others into her dependency.

Nicholas St. John wrote The Addiction. He and director Abel Ferrara grew up together in Peekskill, NY, and collaborated for more than twenty years. After their next project he stopped writing, and he has not given an interview since.

Buried in the credits, as associate producer: Antony Blinken, the future United States Secretary of State.