Dracula's Dog (1978)

Touches You

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Unearthing a tomb in Romania, a half-man/half-vampire servant to Count Dracula and Dracula's dog discover the last remnants of the family living in California and set out to make them a part of their vampiric family using whatever they can to ensure he joins them in their quest.This here turned out to be quite the enjoyable cheesefest. A large part of what makes that so endearing is the fact that there's quite a lot of encounters and confrontations that paint this one in quite a cheesy manner from the outset. The central idea at the core of the film is the fact that this one has the reanimated dog of Dracula's servant running around taking out the animals near a family vacation that contains their next ancestor comes off as simply way too silly to take seriously, yet that doesn't really detract from this one as that comes about from the beginning of the film, and it remains consistent throughout here which makes the cheesiness grow quite well. It's no surprise that the best moments involve the dog, outfitted out with glowing eyes and ludicrously over-sized fangs, the dog often looks amusingly nonplussed with what is meant to be going on around him. He is certainly one multi-talented dog, however, as he drags heavy looking coffins out of crypts, removes stakes with his teeth and provides several other highly impressive stunts that come off as very well done and give it a certain amount of menace. It also makes the action of this one quite enjoyable throughout here, with the opening encounter in the crypt where the reawakened dog takes out the lone guard reviving his handler and the excursions into the campsite attacking the family are caused by this inclusion which is what makes for a fun time. The scenes of him gathering the dog army are just as cheesy, and the scene of the vampire-puppy crawling out of the ground are even more good cheesy fun here. That serves nicely enough for the set-up at the end, as the house-siege scenes do have some quite tense moments as the ethereal howling from the dogs in the background, their frantic assaults to get in anywhere they can in the house offer rather chilling and the several attacks do build up the tension quite nicely. There is some rather nice bloodletting in the attacks as well, but otherwise, this was still just a giant cheese-fest. That is the film's main strength as well as the great flaw in here, as it all depends on how much the plot points stack up in the cheese factor. There's quite simply too many to name, from the inherent stupidity of the soldiers early on who discover the corpses, to the reanimated dogs who spend the majority of the time simply staring at others, while the servant gazes at the dog who hypnotically stares at the other dogs in the area. The ludicrous situation that the film comes to, which has the dog army invade a small barricade set-up to stop them, to the events that preceded them, are just plain cheesy, and there's no getting around them. The amount of cheese that can be absorbed from a film will be about equal to how much you can find wrong with this one, as it's the only factor that really seems off in this one, but it's still a major one.Rated R: Violence, Language and violence-against-animals.

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula starts in Romanian as the local there seems to be blowing holes in the ground for no apparent reason, while doing this seemingly random act of environmental vandalism they unearth an ancient tomb belonging to the Dracula's. They post a soldier there to guard the tomb until a further more detailed examination can be made, that night one of the coffins open & the soldier is stupid enough to remove a wooden stake from whatever it is embedded in & before he know's it a Vampire Dog named Zoltan has returned to life & bit his throat out. Zoltan then pulls the stake out of his master's remains, his name is Veidt Smith (Reggie Nalder) & is servant to Dracula who is long since dead. Feeling unwanted & lonely Veidt travels to California to find Michael Drake (Michael Pataki) who is the last living blood relative of Dracula, using the vicious Zoltan he plans to turn Drake into a Vampire like his ancestor & serve him for all eternity...Originally released as Dracula's Dog this American & Italian co-production was produced & directed by Albert Band, this Dog of a film really should be taken away & put down humanely as it's absolutely terrible & I had a hard time getting to the end. Everything about this lousy film is terrible, I had heard of the film before but thought it would be better. I don't know why but I always imagined it to be a period Gothic horror film featuring Dracula himself set in Transylvania in a big stone castle like Hammer Studios were making at their peak but I was wrong, I was very wrong as Zoltan, Hound of Dracula features Vampire Dog's & is set in some woods near Los Angeles. The idea of a Vampire biting another person & turning them into a Vampire is standard horror film stuff but a Vampire Dog that bites other Dog's turning them into Vampires is just weird & is as ridiculous & absurd as it sounds. It's hard to keep a straight face during the majority of Zoltan, Hound of Dracula with it's terrible attempts at tension & scares along with the barest of stories that drags on & on, throw into that a funny & utterly predictable twist ending (I kept saying out loud 'What about the puppy! What about the puppy!') in which a cute little puppy is meant to be scary as it has plastic fangs & glowing eyes. The character's are awful especially Drake who believes everything Inspectoir Branco tells him about Dracula & Vampires without questioning it, from bit part campers to Drake's wife & kids who disappear totally from the film about two thirds of the way through to Veidt Smith whose only motivation is to be a servant to Dracula. Hasn't this guy heard that slavery has been abolished? Why can't he just be his own man? Why can't he just enjoy his life with Zoltan his Vampire Dog? Why can't he & Zoltan just settle down somewhere in Romania & live happily ever after with some dignity & self respect? Why does he want to be a slave to Dracula? He may be evil but he has human rights too you know. I mean would Dracula even pay him a decent wage for his services? I doubt it. The guy's not much of a conversationalist either, I don't think he says anything to anyone during the whole film except Zoltan who he can talk to telepathically, seriously & Zoltan understands every word he telepathically says. At just over 80 odd minutes long Zoltan, Hound of Dracula drags & is very boring with not much going on. Also, has anyone else noticed that Michael Drake is constantly referred to as the last blood ancestor of Dracula yet he has two children of his own?Another big problem with Zoltan, Hound of Dracula is how seriously it takes itself with no attempt to ham things up a big & deliver on it's absurd title & premise. All we want is to be entertained & have a bit of fun while watching a film & Zoltan, Hound of Dracula fails miserably at this basic requirement. The direction is stiff & at times laughable, the Dog's on show are obviously tame & well trained so the attack scenes often look more like the Dog's are trying to play with people rather than rip them to shreds. Constant scenes of docile looking Dog's walking around with plastic fangs & glowing eye's is as silly as it gets. There's not much gore, a guy has his neck bitten, a few Dog's are staked through the heart & a camper is bitten by Zoltan but little else. Director Albert Band later went on to form the likes of Empire Pictures & Fullmoon Productions with his son Charles Band.Filmed on what must have been a low budget the effects, music & production values are all average at best, isn't it unusual how the Romanian army all speak perfect English & with Americn accents? The acting is not great, Oscar winner José Ferrer is slumming it while Michael Pataki looks likes he's there for the money & nothing else. Pataki also starred in the much, much better Vampire film Grave of the Vampire (1974) several years prior.Zoltan, Hound of Dracula is terrible, it really is & I found it pretty hard to make it to the end. It's a complete Dog of a film that sure be put down, it would be a mercy killing. Not recommended apart from the hilarious Vampire puppy at the end which is genuinely quite funny.

fantastic film, the best ,not!! But it has its moments,my favorite is when zoltan hound of Dracula hopes out of his own dog sized coffin!!!i found this film on videocassette from local goodwill.hard shell case release from EMI .SWeet,the dog seems scary when they shine lights into its eyes,thats about the only special effect I saw hahaa,a cult classic in the making,lets see it has to be ten lines, well this was a turd of a film but gave me hope that I could create an Indy film better than this and release it.Wow, how did they ever get the green light on this turd.though the dog is a nice looking dog.I jsust cant picture a studio exec saying wow this is a truly gripping film.Was it put out asa joke?

You have to hand-it (the booby-prize) to the Bands. This was the final-film by the patriarch of this schlock-horror family, and it's hard to describe. Disaster just doesn't work here, and I think Albert Band knew he had a turkey-script, so he made-the-best of it. His 1950s psychological-thriller/horror, "I Bury the Living" is excellent, but this is...wow, pretty bad. So, when your backers (UK and Yugoslavian) don't want to pay the Bram Stoker Estate money for the rights to Dracula, what do you do? Exactly! You do a tie-in, with a story about DRACULA'S DOG. Yes, his dog. Yes, it's as absurd and ridiculous as you might imagine. There is even a scene where the dog is wearing a turtle-neck...and operating a hearse! The story--what little there is--begins with Russian (obviously Yugoslavian) soldiers dynamiting a hill. They accidentally uncover a tomb that holds Dracula's manservant (Reggie Nadler, who looks creepy out-of-makeup), and his doberman, Zoltan. Yeah, it's retarded, I know. Yes, the stupid-soldiers release the half-vampire, and vampire-dog, and the "fun" begins. A lot of the story revolves around some followers of Dracula trying to make one of his living-descendants a vampire (WTF?!). The writing is full-of-holes you could drive a semi-truck through. At this time, even Hammer knew when to give-up on Dracula, having extended it into the mid-1970s. But this film is hilariously-bad, so it is watchable for all the unintentional humor it pummels the viewer with.I'm 100%-certain that this is the ONLY film in human-history to contain a flashback scene for a vampire-dog character. I nearly fell out of my couch--could this be?! Did I really see what I thought I saw? I had to rewind my DVD-player. Yes, it was real, and there was even more hilarity. To make it short: the dog returns to America (where one goes for "success"--yeah, bullshit) with Nadler and some vampirized-dogs to sink-his-fangs into the descendant of Dracula, making him a vampire. Still, Albert Band's son has directed films that are much-worse with his excrement-mill, Full Moon. The only noteworthy thing here is that Stan Winston did some of his earliest makeup here, but doesn't get to shine much. Oh yeah, and the dog "talks" too, telepathically with the Nadler-character. Sucks, and not like a vampire, but good for some yucks. Not scary, unless you look at it as how stupid people with too-much money can be, they paid for this.