Dracula's Dog is a 1977 American horror film starring Michael Pataki and José Ferrer. It revolves around a dog who is turned into a vampire by a member of the Dracula family, who is also a vampire. The film's screenplay was the basis for the paperback novel Hounds of Dracula by Ken Johnson, which was re-titled Dracula's Dog upon the film's release in the United States. In the United Kingdom, the novel was titled Dracula's Dog only.
Plot
The Romanian army accidentally blasts open a subterranean crypt, and the army captain, fearing looters and criminals, stations a guard near the site. Late in the night, an earthquake shakes loose one of the coffins, which slides down and lands at the feet of the confused guard. Curious as to what has fallen before him, the guard opens the coffin and discovers the body of a dog, impaled by a stake. He removes the stake, which revives the vampiric Doberman Pinscher Zoltan. After slaying the guard and drinking his blood, Zoltan opens another coffin shaken loose from the crypt, this one holding the body of his master, an innkeeper named Veidt Smit, who once owned the crypt. Zoltan removes the stake from the innkeeper's chest, re-animating the innkeeper. The movie cuts to a flashback of a village in Romania in 1670, over 300 years ago. The dog of an innkeeper saves a woman from being bitten by Count Igor Dracula. Furious over losing his meal to a dog, Dracula, in bat form, bites the woman's savior, turning the dog into a vampire. Then Dracula, with the dog by his side, turns on his owner, turning the innkeeper into a creature called a "fractional lamia" and thus turns him into a slave of the Dracula family. Back in the present, it appears that the Dracula family has only one surviving descendant, Michael Drake, a psychiatrist, who decides to take his wife, Marla and their two children, Linda and Steve , as well as their two German Shepherd Dogs, Samson and Annie, and their two puppies, on a vacation in the family's Winnebago camper, hoping to spend some quality time with his family and their pets out in a national forest. Still loyal to the Draculas, the vampire dog and his master travel to the United States, shipping themselves via boat to Los Angeles, California in order to make Michael their new master. Eventually, Zoltan and Smit find themselves in the same forest as Michael, his family and their dogs. Other campers, vacationing with their dogs, discover that their pets are being killed by a strange beast. The deceased animals soon reanimate into vampire dogs, the minions of Zoltan. Zoltan is killed in the final scene, but a vampire German Shepherd puppy escapes destruction.
/HBO and United Home Video released it on VHS as Zoltan...Hound of Dracula and Dracula's Dog, respectively. Anchor Bay Entertainment released it on DVD as Zoltan...Hound of Dracula on August 20, 2002.
Reception
reports 17% of six surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3.6/10. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called it the nadir of vampire films. TV Guide rated it 1/5 stars and called the film's premise "ludicrous". Adam Tyner of DVD Talk rated it 2/5 stars and wrote that the film is too inept to be scary, though it is fun to mock. Writing in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant call it "surprising dull" but complimented the dogs. Welch Everman wrote in Cult Horror Movies that the film "could have been a pretty effective and frightening movie" but failed to live up to its potential.
