ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA
Meet Brian, geni-thrall of Drew Barrymore
Also known as Dracula's Dog (a title that pracically begs to be mocked), this is a mostly silly, sometimes effective twist on the vampire movie from Albert Band.
Michael Pataki stars as Mike Dracula (no, really), the last descendant of the Dracula we all know and love, who has moved to the States to live a normal life. (how his kids have thusfar escaped being taunted to death by their classmates, I din't know) But two thralls of Dracula - the ferocious pooch Zoltan and Zoltan's keeper - have recently been excavated in Transylvania, and some silly bastard took out the stakes in their hearts. (this is the vampire belief my buddy Warren subscribes to. Even if you remove the stake a thousand years from now, they'll still come back. What a pain in the ass.)
These guys are like those S&M chicks - they just can't even get up in the morning without having a master tell them to, so they jaunt on over to America to get themselves a master, and you'd better believe they haven't got their sights set on Arsenio Hall. Mike Dracula and family have packed up to go camping in this RV that's the size of a Star Destroyer, and thus the fun begins.
Features a few "howlers" of dialogue (I kill me) - like "If word of this gets out, the countryside will be terrorized!" Or how about one scene where Zoltan's keeper sees his dog's recently aquired strange, vampiric behavior, so he goes to this tall guy with white hair and a red-satin-lined cape, in Transylvania, and asks "What did you do to my dog?"
Zoltan himself is this unbelievably muscled pooch, the breed of which I can't quite make out. He looks vicious as hell on his own (and not like the yawning pup on the cover), but when he attacks people, it's never convincing because he's so obviously playing. However, there are a couple of good "we're under siege by killer dogs" scenes.
Not too bad overall, but nothing to sport a woody over. Jose Ferrer appears as a Transylvaian inspector, and has a great voice. Certainly better than the last movie I saw that started with a Z. (Zombie Nightmare. Shudder.)