Dracula is engaged in his customary hovering menacingly over a beautiful sleeping woman when to his absolute horror she awakes prematurely. Unnerved and disoriented by the sound of a girl screaming he flees the scene, and in what I guess must be a hysterical panic turns into a bat and bites a dog of all things. That dog will go on to become the legendary Zoltan, Hound of Dracula.

And I guess is promptly staked by the locals, but many years later some Russomanian soldiers setting off dynamite in the part of Transylvania that looks just like the Hollywood hills awaken him and vampire thrall Veidt Schmidt, and the dastardly pair set off for America to locate and serve Dracula's last living relative, psychologist Mike Dracula of Los angeles.

What's its name? Soledad? Susan? Keyser Soze? This Veidt Schmidt seems to have some difficulty articulating due to his habit of perpetually sucking on the world's most sour lemon.

Anyway don't accuse me of spoiling the plot up there, as all that and really much more is explained and demostrated in detail within the first ten minutes through the use of flashbacks and bland expository dialogue like "the underground explosions have unearthed a Dracula tomb". If you're sick of trying to figure out boring mysteries and pretentious plot ambiguity here's your breath of fresh air. Trust me you will know exactly what's going on every second of this movie.

I dig the dog. In fact there's a small army of dogs, and their savage attacks are pretty much the centrepiece of the film. Okay it's mostly just dogs horsing around with lots of squirted blood, but they get in a couple good bites and like I always say, real animals are scarier looking than anything made of pixels, wigs or latex. Lots of real blood-dripping dog snouts and vicious snarling dog head closeups. They totally drugged that puppy though. Mother of god let's hope it was drugged.

And speaking of the era where canine actors really earned their Alpo, you know what happened when people drove automobiles in movies during the 1970s. Ooooh yeah, 70s drivin' to the scene theme. It starts grooving if anyone even makes the slightest move toward a vehicle. They have to drive clear from L.A. to Big Bear and some other guy drives all the way out there looking for them so get ready to snap your fingers 'til you get a blister.

Not a good movie at all. Aside from the dog shots it's all completely monotone and oddly put me in mind of one of those Disney animal movies they made a million of back then. Poor Zoltan kind of goes out with a writers ran out of ideas whimper there too. The dog knew how to jerk itself backward off a cliff like that.

It's one of those bad movies you just need to watch every so often anyway though. I've only seen it once but it's the kind of thing I feel like I've experienced dozens of times since I was a brat, all excited for the Halloween movie on local TV or bleary-eyed in front of some late late show, and that the world will be right so long as it and all of its friends like Satan's Black Wedding and Scream Blacula Scream are kept alive in our consciousness and playing somewhere out there on deep cable. You know what I'm saying soul sister?

But yeah cool vampire dog. Hope you like quite a bit of barking in your movies.