Grave of the Vampire (1972)

The late 30s, in some US small town. A marriage proposal made at a graveyard – it’s apparently the first place the couple became…close – is rudely interrupted by a vampire (Michael Pataki) who has just dug his way out after a couple of years of coffin time.

He brutally murders the man and then drags the woman off into the open grave to rape her, leaving her alive afterwards. There’s also a subplot about a cop becoming convinced that the killer/rapist is indeed a vampire, but that not only leads nowhere but the death of the cop and includes some of the film’s worst acting, so let’s ignore this. Of course, the poor woman is now pregnant. Her baby, it turns out, doesn’t do milk but instead needs to be fed with blood.

Thirty years later, the baby has grown up and sideways into one James Eastman (William Smith), secret eater of raw meat, but like, totally sensitive. James has been hunting his vampire father for years now, but never seems to be able to quite catch up to him. Until now, that is, for bloodsucking Caleb Croft has acquired a new name and is now working as a folklore professor on the night school circuit, where he gives absurdly dramatic speeches while all his female students swoon. And James is part of his new course.

Of course, because nothing’s ever easy, our hero takes his dear time to actually making sure the professor is the vampire he is looking for, or indeed a vampire, and subplots about an aspirational vampire bride (Diane Holden) and a student who just happens to look exactly like Croft’s dead beloved (Lyn Peters) can ensue. Also, son and rapist father share the same taste in women.

John Hayes’s early 70s vampire movie, based on a script by David Chase (yes, it’s the The Sopranos creator’s second writing credit) is a bit of a frustrating experience. There are some excellent ideas here, like the portrayal of the vampire as a true monster that uses a semi-civilized veneer to hide how little he thinks of any individual human beyond of what use they could be in fulfilling his desires; and he’s all desires. It’s also the – in the early 70s not terribly common – version of a master vampire who scrupulously avoids creating other vampires and prefers to brutally slaughter his victims and then suck their corpses dry, really turning him into the ultimate egotistic monster.

While it is not exactly tasteful, turning the rapist subtext that also swirls around vampires into actual text is not a bad idea either, and certainly fits the unromantic idea of vampirism the film prefers. I’m not too sure that Pataki’s a great choice to embody most of these aspects, though. He’s not physically imposing enough to sell the physical threat – especially when his equal number is a pretty mountainous William Smith - and his shouty scenery-chewing is very amusing to watch but makes him feel like even less of the unliving horror he is supposed to be; and Pataki’s not a clever enough actor to make this seeming lack of power be the actual point of what he’s doing.

Of course, William Smith is not a great choice for his role either. He’s certainly trying to give a haunted and Byronic impression, but he’s simply not the kind of actor you buy as a guy hunting his father-monster while fighting his own dark impulses.

Hayes’s direction tends to the bland and the slow, but from time to time, he manages a worthwhile scene or two. Particularly the sequence of James’s mom feeding her baby with blood while sitting in a rocking chair, singing “All the Pretty Little Horseys” is creepy, clever and resonant, but Hayes is also good with some of Croft’s more ruthless murders. The more subtle interpersonal stuff, though, doesn’t work at all; whenever people are supposed to relate like proper human beings, actors, script and direction simply drag their feet and look embarrassed. Which is a bit of a problem when you realize how important this human drama should be for basically everything that’s going on here.

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1977)

aka Dracula’s Dog

While excavating whatever in Romania, some Soviet soldiers stumble upon the crypt of the family Dracula, all family members apparently properly staked in their coffins. Alas, during the night watch, a sleepy guard without basic folkloristic knowledge frees one of the staked undead. It’s…Zoltan, Dracula’s rather large (vampire) doggy! Well, actually, Zoltan is more the dog of old Drac’s Renfield (or in the film’s parlance, “fractional lamia”) Veidt Schmidt (Reggie Nalder). After dispatching the soldier, Zoltan awakens Schmidt, and off they trot to find themselves a new master.

For this, they need to find the last of the Dracula family, who had been secreted out of the country when he was still a small boy. He’s all grown up now, going by the name of Michael Drake (Michael Pataki) and living the life of the working rich (or as the Americans say, “upper middleclass”) together with his wife Marla (Jan Shutan), their kids Linda (Libby Chase) and Steve (John Levin), as well as a dog couple and their new pups. Michael is obviously no vampire (please insert joke about bloodsucking upper classes here), but that doesn’t mean Zoltan and Schmidt – well, mostly Zoltan – aren’t going to try to turn him into one.

It certainly offers a nice opportunity for this sort of shenanigans that the Drakes are just going off on a camping trip in their RV somewhere a bit isolated from other campers. It’s all set for our bad guys to create a tiny vampire dog army to bite Michael, instead of just grabbing him and be done with it.

Fortunately, Romanian fearless vampire hunter Inspector Branko (José Ferrer) is on the case, and might just come to provide rescue and exposition before Zoltan is finished sniffing Michael’s butt.

As you probably realized already when reading its title, Albert Band’s Zoltan, Hound of Dracula is a pretty daft movie. Or rather, it is about half of the time, for some of its ideas are actually rather interesting, if one can only get away from the basic silliness of the vampire dog, the unfortunate glowy eyes effect the dog vampires have, the unnecessarily complicated plan to vampirize Michael the bad guys have, and so on and so forth.

About half of these screwy ideas are at least rather funny, like the vampire dog army part of the villains’ master plan, or the film’s final “shock” scene that is based on that most horrifying of creatures, an adorable vampire puppy. The other half, alas, is just a bit dumb without going off either into the stratosphere of the really bizarre or managing to reach the point where you just accept the stupid bits as a normal parts of the film’s world.

On the other hand, Zoltan’s isn’t trying to be funny at all. The film shows total conviction of being Very Serious Shit, and in some scenes, this approach does pay off. Despite everything around them, most of the dog attacks are pretty well done and suspenseful, with the short siege sequence the film’s obvious high point much preferable to its actual climax. In general, Band does manage some rather moody scenes that make effective use of the outdoors locations; unfortunately, in other scenes, things bog down to mediocre TV movie levels with basically nailed on camera, adding another somewhat schizophrenic element to the film.

Reggie Nalder certainly has the right presence for his role but I find it rather difficult to take a villain all that seriously who more often than not doesn’t actually do anything but lets his dog do all the work. Dracula apparently wasn’t a man of good henchmen choices. The rest of the acting is pleasantly competent, even when the actors have to fight through dialogue that probably aims for naturalistic but lands on mildly improbable and generally bland.

Which really is Zoltan’s problem in a nutshell: it’s neither strange or plain bad enough to be enjoyed in this way, not consciously funny enough to work as a comedy, nor so consistently effective I’m ever able to completely forget how silly it is. It’s still a film worth watching at least once in one’s life, mind you, if only to compare it with Devil Dog and Monster Dog.