Dracula’s Dog (1978)

Dull and silly, Dracula’s Dog—sometimes known as Zoltan: Hound of Dracula—lives down to its ridiculous title. Although the film has a fair amount of visual polish given its shoestring budget, the script is so unrelentingly brainless that the movie elicits boredom more than any other reaction. In the goofy opening scene, Russian soldiers excavating a cave discover a crypt bearing the family name “Dracula,” and a coffin spills from the crypt. For no discernible reason, a soldier opens the coffin, discovers a figure with a stake through its heart, removes the stake, and then watches as the figure reconstitutes into a Doberman with vampire fangs. The dog kills the soldier, pulls another coffin from a crypt, and removes the stake from the figure in that coffin, reconstituting half-human/half-vampire henchman Veidt Smith (Reggie Nalder).. Instead of reviving their old master, Veidt and the dog decamp to Los Angeles, where they seek out Michael Drake (Michael Pataki), last survivor of the Dracula family line. Does any of this make sense? No, and neither does the “plan” of stealing Michael’s blood for some nefarious purpose. Much of the picture comprises drab scenes of Veidt watching Michael enjoy a camping trip with his family, and then telepathically commanding the dog to make mischief once the sun goes down each night. Even with the occasional scene of the dog chomping onto the neck of a human or another dog, this picture is numblingly boring, especially because the rinky-dink musical score is such an assault on the ears. Compounding these problems, it’s embarrassing to watch the great José Ferrer trudge through idiotic subplot scenes while portraying a Van Helsing-type pursuer.  

Dracula’s Dog: LAME