Vampiress TV Review: "Cliffhangers"

                                                                     Season 1

"The Curse of Dracula aka Dracula 79"

Cliffhangers was a TV show that aired only 10 episodes on NBC in 1979.  The premise was a one hour program that would feature 1 episode of a short serial every 20 minutes.  One was about a crime solving journalist and one was a sci fi western hybrid.  The one I'm covering here is the horror themed serial "The Curse of Dracula"

 The premise of this short was a woman named Mary along with her boyfriend Kurt Von Helsing were hunting Dracula.  Their issue with Dracula being that Kurt is obviously of the same bloodline as Abraham Van Helsing and Mary was the daughter of one of Dracula's victims.  

They find out Dracula is a night school professor so Mary sits in on one of his lectures.  After the Class Mary confronts him about her mother and his response regarding her was more of a long lost love than that of someone he victimized. He then talks about how she reminds him of her and pretty much falls for her to the point of obsession the rest of the series. 

For the remainder of the show Dracula tries to turn Mary and make her his newest bride while Kurt tries to stop him.  Our first female vampires of the series are introduced in the episode "Demons of the Dark" as it's revealed that Dracula has bitten and turned three students in his class that he uses for the remainder of the show as hench people.  One a guy named Darryl who is killed off pretty quickly actually and also a girl named Christine.

The third student Antoinette has a much larger role than the other two students as she is infatuated with Dracula to an obsessive degree and is very much jealous of the attention he gives Mary.  This results in her plotting to kill Mary behind his back in hopes that once she's gone he'll love her.  

Unlike your average "Dracula has brides already but is obsessed with someone else" stories he does actually succeed in partially turning Mary and she does get a few fang out moments where she fights the urge to bite Kurt.  Especially when they're trying to cure her through treating her with holy water once an hour that results in her losing it.  

It's during the point where she's turning that we're introduced to her mother Amanda played by soap opera legend Louise Sorel who is shown to not have died as her daughter thought but was turned into a vampire by Dracula and was in hiding while planning a way to kill Dracula herself.  She makes herself known once she sees that Dracula has targeted her daughter the same way she was and tries to help her fight her vampire urges before she completely turned. 

 
Final Opinion:  This was a fantastic Dracula based series that I have fond memories of seeing on reruns in the 90's that I can't recommend enough.  Sorel as a vampire is unforgettable and the first scene where Mary fangs out is super hot as she sees Kurts exposed neck and hears his heartbeat and begins to breath heavy as her fangs slowly start to appear before Amanda makes her first appearance also fangs blaring to stop her from feeding on him.   I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5.