THE LAKE VAMPIRE

A film by Carl Zitelmann
(El vampiro del lago, Venezuela, 2018, In Spanish with English subtitles)

Desperate to find a subject for his next novel, Ernesto Navarro follows the tracks of a mysterious killer who decapitates his victims without leaving a trace. The investigation leads him to Jeremías Morales, a retired police detective who came across a similar case back in the 1970s. Morales was in charge of the strange case of Zacarías Ortega, a man obsessed with drinking blood and becoming immortal. Without realizing it, Navarro is dragged into a perverse game that began many years earlier and from which Morales has never been able to escape.

The Lake Vampire is a crime thriller based on the novel “A Vampire in Maracaibo” by Venezuelan author Norberto José Olivar. The story is inspired by the real life case of Zacarías Ortega, one of Venezuela’s most notorious serial killers. Ortega, a man accused of practicing witchcraft, used to drug his victims then cut their throats and drink their blood. In 1975, when Ortega was captured and detained, he confessed he committed all his crimes to honor an alleged pact with the devil, who made him immortal. True to the spirit of the book, the story of the film moves between facts and superstition.

Opens Friday, September 27
Laemmle Glendale — Buy Tickets