Man's best friend is now man's worst fiend...

There's More To The Legend Than Meets... The Throat!

When soldiers foolishly remove a stake from a mysterious Transylvanian grave, they release a vampire dog belonging to the Dracula clan. Also freed is Veidt-Smit (Reggie Nalder), an old servant of the Count himself, not quite a vampire, but immortal all the same: he can work in the daylight. Together, the blood-sucking dog and he go to the U.S. in search of Michael Drake (Michael Pataki), who is the last of the Dracula family line and who has no notion that there is anything strange in his family tree. Meanwhile, they are being followed by a Transylvanian vampire-hunter, Inspector Branco (Jose Ferrer)

A Russian road crew accidentally blasts open a subterranean crypt, and the captain of the road crew, 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 hound Zoltan.

Zoltan opens another coffin shaken loose from the crypt, this one holding the body of an innkeeper, Nalder, who once owned the crypt. Zoltan removes the stake from the innkeeper's chest, reanimating the innkeeper. The movie cuts to a flashback of a village in Russia 200 years prior.

The dog of an innkeeper saves a woman from being bitten by a bat, Dracula in disguise. Furious over losing his meal to a dog, Dracula bites the woman's savior, turning the dog into a vampire. Now a vampire, the dog turns on its owner, turning the innkeeper into a vampire as well.

Back in the present, it appears that Dracula has only one surviving descendant, Michael Drake, a mild-mannered psychiatrist, played by Michael Pataki, who decides to take his wife and children (who are, technically, also Dracula's descendants) on a vacation in his Winnebago, hoping to spend some quality time with his family out in the national forest.
Still loyal to the Dracula family, the two vampires travel to the United States, shipping themselves via boat to California. Eventually, Zoltan and company find themselves in the same forest as Michael and his family.

Other campers, vacationing with their dogs, discover that their pets are being killed by a strange beast. The deceased animals soon reanimate into vampiric dogs, the minions of Zoltan. Zoltan is killed in the final scene, but a vampire puppy escapes destruction.

Release Date: May 1978

Distrib: Dimension Pictures