Lake of Dracula

Plot

A young girl named Akiko walks loses her dog when walking along a beach. She follows the dog to a European mansion, where an old man stares at her as she chases after the dog inside. Akiko finds herself in front of a dead woman at a piano and then meets the vampire (Mori Kishida). 18 years later, Akiko (Midori Fujita) is living near a lake. Still haunted by what has happened to her which she believes was a dream. Akiko is friends with a boat operator Kusaku, who had received a strange package which turns out to be a white coffin. Kusaku complains to the shipping agent and returns to find the coffin empty and is then attacked by the same vampire Akiko saw years earlier.

Akiko is then visited by her boyfriend Doctor Takashi Saki (Osahide Takahashi) whom Akiko's sister Natsuko (Sanae Emi) is also in love with. Takashi Saki is called to the hospital when a woman with two bite holes in her neck is turned in. After he leaves both Akiko's dog and Natsuko go missing. Akiko searches for them and finds her dog and finds it dead in a field with Kusaku near by. Kusaku attacks her which leads to a chase where Akiko is knocked out by a branch. Kusaku takes her back to his home. As Akiko awakens, she sees a vampire just about to bite down on her neck, but is interrupted by two fisherman enquiring about a boat, which makes the vampire and Kusaku retreat. At the hospital, Saki's patient is beckoned from her bed by the vampire. Saki spots her but she falls down a stairway killing herself. Meanwhile, under the vampire's curse, Natsuko returns to Akiko's home with the vampire himself. Akiko attempts to hide in the closet while the returning Saki is attacked in his car by Kusaku. The car crashes and the two battle with Saki being victorious after Kusaku expires. After Saki returns home, both Akiko and Saki find Natsuko dying on a beach. With her drying breath, Natsuko begs for her corpse to be burned. Saki and Akiko take her to the hospital for an autopsy.

At the hospital, Natsuko is being prepared in a morgue when Natsuko rises from the dead and hypnotizes Akiko. Akiko then remembers the incident with the vampire from her youth as actually happening and that the incident made her the favourite daughter of both their parents. Along with Saki, Akiko decides to return to the mansion from the past where they find a diary of the old man who lived there, stating that he fled from Europe to Japan as he was a descendent of Count Dracula. That old man himself was never a vampire, but his son had succumbed to vampirism. The two are then attacked by the vampire and Natsuko. The vampire corners Maki on a balcony, but the old man from her dream grabs the vampires pant leg which causes him to slip onto a tall steel spike. Natsuku collapses and enters a natural death.

Production

Lake of Dracula was the second of three vampire films made by Toho studios in the 1970s. The others being The Vampire Doll (1970) and followed by Evil of Dracula (1975).

Release

Lake of Dracula was released on June 16, 1971 in Japan where it was distributed by Toho. The film was released in a subtitled format in the United States in August 1973. It was dubbed into English and given a television release in 1980 in the United States by United Productions of America under the title of The Lake of Dracula. In television prints of the film, the ending involving the vampire disintegrating is removed. The television version is cut to 79 minutes.

Reception

Fredric Milstein of the Los Angeles Times called the film "superficial, unsubtle, humorless yet stylishly horrific, appealingly gruesome and exciting. Rokuro Nishigaki's camera provides lots of atmosphere-loving, as it does, shimmering lakescapes, Martian-like skies and all things tangled branches can hide." In his book Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Stuart Galbraith IV referred to the film as an "acceptable, if unexceptional film" and that "the story is generally routine, but the Eastern locale and attempt (slight as it is) to add a little dimension to its main characters make this somewhat above average for the genre."