All of her life, Akiko (Midori Fujita) has been haunted by a dream in which, as a little girl, she followed her dog into an abandoned house and ran into a pale man (Mori Kishida) who had golden eyes and fangs for teeth.  Even living a somewhat idyllic life on the shores of a lovely lake and dating a handsome young doctor (Osahide Takahashi), Akiko cannot shake the feeling that what she has been telling herself was a dream may have actually happened to her.

One day, a large crate is sent to a nearby boat operator.  When the man opens the crate, he discovers that it contains a coffin.  Can you guess what’s in that coffin?  Soon strange things are happening all around town.  Bodies start to show up at the hospital with bite marks on their necks.  Akiko’s dog disappears and the formerly friendly boat operator suddenly starts to act in an aggressive manner.  Even worse, Akiko’s sister, Natsuko (Sanae Emi), vanishes.  Akiko comes to believe that it is somehow all linked to her dream, which might not have been a dream at all.  She and her boyfriend head back to her hometown, searching for the house from her dreams so that they may finally find out the truth about the pale man with the golden eyes and fangs and…. well, I don’t know why exactly they think they have to find out the truth.  It’s pretty obvious that he’s a vampire, right?  I mean, the fangs were kind of a dead giveaway.

When I came across the 1971 film, Lake of Dracula, on Tubi, my initial response was to say, “Oh, cool!  A Japanese Dracula film!  I wonder what that’s going to be like!”  Having watched the film, I can say that, along with being a Japanese Dracula film, Lake of Dracula is also an extremely conventional vampire film.  This is one of those films where it’s so obvious from the start that the villain is a vampire that you can’t help but get a bit annoyed at the other characters for not figuring it out as quickly as you did.  While I’m not really sure if the vampire in the film is meant to be the Dracula (and, despite the title, I’m actually pretty sure that he’s not), the character is obviously a vampire and, beyond the golden eyes, this film doesn’t really bring anything new to the vampire mythos.  If you’re hoping that this film will feature the hopping vampires that made films like Kung Fu Zombie so memorable, you’re destined to be disappointed.

That said, it’s a lovely film to look at, full of vibrant colors and properly ominous shadows and the golden eyes are definitely a memorable effect.  The film is full of nicely creepy locations, with the house from Akiko’s dream being exactly the type of place that would inspire a lifetime full of nightmares.  It’s a conventional film but it’s full of genuine melancholy and a good deal of ominous atmosphere, all of which keeps the film watchable even if it never quite takes the viewer by surprise.