LAKE OF DRACULA (1971)
Article #492 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-20-2002
Posting date: 12-13-2002

A woman encounters a vampire who she remembers from a childhood incident many years earlier.

Vampire movies are probably the most common horror theme. If I recall, Videohound has a whole book which consists of nothing but vampire movies; the fact that there are enough to fill a book says quite a bit. At any rate, out of curiosity, I made a rough count of what percentage of movies I’ve covered so far could be called vampire movies, and it comes out to roughly seven percent of them; that is actually a pretty respectable percentage.

Quite frankly, I’ve never been a particular fan of vampire movies, and I’ve always wondered why they are so common. Maybe it’s because that they are fairly easy monsters to make; just add fangs and white makeup and you have a vampire. Maybe it’s because they lend themselves to some strong metaphorical uses; I’ve heard people talk about vampires in relation to sex, drugs, and any other number of themes. There’s no doubt that the vampire concept has a wide appeal. On the other hand, the fact that there are so many also makes me wonder how many fresh ways are left to tackle the theme.

So here I am winding up to talk about LAKE OF DRACULA, another vampire movie. I kind of like it, but it may be nothing more than that it hit me in the right mood; I might have just been a little charmed to see a Japanese Dracula movie, for one thing. It doesn’t really add anything new to the vampire mix, though there are some nice touches here and there. But I know for a fact that I slept well the night before and was in a pretty easygoing mood on the day when I watched it; in other circumstances, I might have liked it less. So you might consider this one a bit of a toss-up, and someday when I give this another viewing, we’ll see how it holds up then. For now, it was a pleasant and somewhat enjoyable time-filler.