Dracula: The Series

The finale cliff-hanger. Gustav discovers a way to reclaim Klaus from the world between the living and the dead that vampires inhabit. His theory is that vampires exist outside of time--and he has found a break in time...at Lucard's castle.

Max meets Lawrence Lei, a rather Norman Bates-ish neurotic bookseller who has a peculiar interest in vampires. Gustav doesn't trust him, and Lucard finds him much too bizarre for his taste when he shows up at the castle asking to be made a vampire. Lawrence mentions that his friend Alfred won't make him a vampire either, and Lucard decides to hunt down this Alfred, whom he suspects is responsible for the recent upsurge in the area's population of inferior zombies. When Gustav's hot and steamy schnitzel arrives neither hot nor steamy, delivered by a glassy-eyed delivery boy who is destroyed by the Cross of the Magyars, Gustav tracks his origin back to Alfred as well. However, it turns out that Lawrence's friend Alfred is nothing more than an inflatable vampire doll and that Lawrence is the real vampire. Intrigued by Lawrence/Alfred's split personality, Lucard seals the bookseller in a coffin for safe keeping.

Max inadvertently frees Klaus from the Helsing family crypt where Gustav had imprisoned him, and Gustav and Lucard both must try to escape his trap. The powerful Cross of Silesia and a plastic explosive will destroy Klaus's two fathers at the same instant unless they work together to outwit him.

Having been rescued by Chris, Sophie is about to fall for him, but his old girlfriend Alexa turns up from Philadelphia. Her obnoxious American businessman father, Ted Singleton, is doing business with Lucard and makes the mistake of not taking him seriously enough. They plan a trade of Singleton's new computer chip for a briefcase of money, but Lucard takes both, and almost takes Alexa as well. Utterly ruined, Singleton has no choice but to offer himself to Lucard, who has been wanting to extend his empire into the US.

Lucard bites a young thief with a rare antigen in his blood which can kill the vampire who ingests it. The famous vampire doctor, Gabor Varney, tells him that there is only one cure--water from the Paquette Spring in the Bettange Valley. Sick and delirious, Lucard doesn't trust anyone, and insists on going to the spring himself. Once there, he discovers that the water has been polluted by one of his own factories. As Lucard lies dying, Gustav and Max arrive to finish him off. Fortunately, Varney stops them and gives Lucard a vial of the water, purified, which returns him to normal. Meanwhile, Sophie is dating a creepy young existentialist poet named Vincent, and Chris is jealous. In fact, Vincent is the thief whom Lucard bit; now a vampire himself, he attacks Chris, who spurns him with a cross but discovers that it's already too late to save Sophie.

Gustav appears on a TV talk show to debunk a zany psychic, Lana Zorro. She and her husband Lane at first seem comical, then ominous, as she proceeds to disturb Gustav by sensing personal information about his past. Meanwhile, Max is sure he's discovered the resting place of Dracula and can therefore destroy him. However, the coffin is only a decoy placed there by Lucard and in fact contains not Lucard, but Lane Zorro, nebbish vampire, who is borrowing it. When Lucard confronts the kids and the Zorros, Lana proves she is a real psychic by sending an automatic-handwriting cry for help to Gustav.

Gustav becomes curious when Lucard buys an old worthless movie theatre. While searching the theatre, he suddenly finds himself at the mercy of one of his childhood heros, the silent film era's most famous vampire-film actor, Jonas Carey. Now a real vampire, Carey has been imprisoned in the theatre for the past sixty years under the power of Lucard. Lucard has purchased the theatre to ensure that Carey's freedom doesn't last long, but Gustav helps his old hero to escape death at Lucard's hands. Later, however, Carey destroys himself as Gustav looks on.

An archeologist, Dr. Cross, uncovers the resting place of Lucard's ancient and bitter rival, Nosferatu, who tries to bring down Lucard's economic empire. Nosferatu is powerful, with the ability to disguise himself by transforming into guises as innocuous as Gustav and Max. With the assitance of Dr. Cross, he nearly destroys Lucard. But Lucard has help from an unusual source...Max.

Gustav and one of his former students, Arthur Bauer, find a rare herb and develop a formula called the quinidrine solution, which they hope will reverse the effects of a vampire's bite. When Arthur is kidnapped, Gustav allows himself to be captured by Lucard so that he can test the solution on himself and Arthur. But the formula doesn't work, because Max has confused it with his high protein energy drink and has consumed all the quinidrine. When the kids arrive to free Gustav, Max is able to fend off Lucard and his lieutenant, Klaus, by firing energy bolts at them through his fingers. They escape back to the house, where the kids quickly use their last remaining quinidrine leaf to mix up another batch of the solution for Gustav and Arthur. Gustav is saved, but Bauer chooses to reamin a vampire. He attacks Gustav, but doesn't know about the Cross of the Magyars, the house's protective talisman...which then destroys him.

When the Philadelphia bank Eileen Townsend works for transfers her to Europe, she takes her sons (teen-age Chris and 10-year-old Max) to stay with her uncle Gustav Helsing. Gustav's passions in life are schnitzel, polka music and, we will come to find out, hunting Dracula, who is living nearby as businessman Alexander Lucard. Also living with Gustav is teen-age Sophie Metternich, who impresses Chris. Max is also obsessed with vampires, and not knowing about Gustav's quest, he misreads several signs and becomes convinced that Gustav is a vampire. With his mother away on an assignment, Max goes to the only other adult he knows, the businessman his mother had introduced him to at a reception the previous day, Alexander Lucard. At Lucard's urging, Max lures Chris and Sophie to Lucard's castle. Upon their arrival, Lucard reveals his true nature. Max and Chris get away, but Sophie is left in Dracula's clutches. Unable to reach Gustav, Chris and Max return to the castle to rescue Sophie.