Production
The episode was recorded on August 7 and August 10, 1987. Arsenio Hall and Dave Coulier recorded their lines on August 7.2
Regular voice cast includes Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Hall, Coulier, and Kath Soucie. Gene Knight provides the guest voice as Count Vostok.
This installment marks a turning point in the cast. Coulier now voices Peter Venkman, Soucie takes over Janine Melnitz, and Slimer speaks more clearly than before. Janine still has her original design here; the redesign of her appearance begins with Baby Spookums.
The title plays on Bob Dylan's single "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
The episode was produced as the Season 2 finale but aired as the last Season 1 syndicated episode; on the DVD release it is classified as Season 3. For series continuity, it fits best ahead of Baby Spookums, given Janine's design. The production slot was also swapped with "Slimer, Is That You?", a J. Michael Straczynski episode, in order to place his writing in the third season.
Plot
In the evening at the Firehouse, Slimer and the Ghostbusters wrestle a captured ghost into the Containment Unit, its stench wafting from the trap. Janine brings down a note: a Count Vostok has invited the team to his castle in Boldavia, a small country in what used to be Transylvania, and has enclosed four free Concorde tickets. The guys take the case.
The eight-hour flight includes an in-flight movie, "Nerds in Space," which Ray declares one of his favorites. Slimer shows signs of motion sickness during the journey, turning a different shade of green. After the flight, a four-hour train ride brings them to Boldavia. Vostok meets them at the train stop and drives them to his castle. An odd man watches from the bushes. At the castle, Vostok offers a prepared meal, which Slimer promptly devours, then suggests the team rest before he explains his ghost problem. Elsewhere in Boldavia, two young people, Josef and Natalia, are chased by giant bat-creatures; one passes straight through Josef. Their grandparents tell them stories about Vostok's haunted castle, and the odd man watches the creatures fly off.
The next morning Vostok is gone, having left a note that he was called away on business until evening. Ray and Peter both find they could not locate a mirror to get ready. Egon proposes they investigate on their own with the P.K.E. Meter, but a long day turns up nothing. At dinner they notice the silverware is gold rather than silver, and Peter and Egon begin to suspect Vostok is a vampire. The bat-creatures terrorize the nearby town, and a man named Franz swears revenge on Vostok.
When the creatures return, Egon's meter finally registers a reading, coming from Vostok himself. Vostok transforms into a vampiric form and destroys the creatures with eye beams, with the Ghostbusters helping. He explains that he survives on artificial blood and is being hunted by the grandson of Van Helsing, Dr. Nicholas Van Helden. Franz, meanwhile, gathers a mob and marches on the castle.
As dawn approaches, Vostok must retire to his coffin and worries about the townspeople. Egon tunes his P.K.E. Meter to a frequency painful to human ears and drives the mob back. Van Helden slips into the castle to stake Vostok, but the team disarms him; he claims the townsfolk were hypnotized and pulls a gun loaded with silver bullets. Slimer hits him in the face with a ball of slime, and Van Helden flees in his van. Ray realizes Van Helden had been using holographic projections to frighten the town. The team chases him in Vostok's car and finds his van crashed below a fallen tree, and he gives up. With the crisis over, the Ghostbusters reassure Vostok the townspeople will let bygones be bygones. Slimer spots the bat-creatures again, but it turns out to be an ordinary bat.
Characters and entities
Count Vostok is the vampire who hired the Ghostbusters. He purchased his castle in Boldavia a few years before the episode and intended it as a quiet retirement, not knowing the property came with a reputation for hauntings. He feeds on artificial blood and is described as kind and understanding. Vostok can fly, transform into a large bat creature, and discharge energy beams from his eyes. He is voiced by Gene Knight.
Dr. Nicholas Van Helden is a self-styled monster-hunter who claims descent from the Van Helsing family. He manufactured the apparent haunting using holographic projectors to stoke local fear of Vostok, enabling him to move in for a kill. He is equipped with a wooden stake and a gun loaded with silver bullets. Vostok tells the Ghostbusters that Bram Stoker based the novel Dracula on the historical feud between the Vostok family and the Van Heldens.
The bat-creatures terrorizing Boldavia are revealed to be Van Helden's holograms rather than genuine supernatural entities.
Continuity
Vostok claims to be the last of his kind, and the Ghostbusters say they have never seen a vampire before. That contradicts No One Comes to Lupusville, in which the team handled a feud between two groups of vampires, and the later episode My Left Fang, where they encounter the ghost of the vampire Count Von Blukenporken.
The episode draws openly on classic horror, naming Bram Stoker, Dracula, Van Helsing, Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, and The Rocky Horror Show. Egon notes his P.K.E. Meter is not calibrated to detect undead entities such as vampires in its default state.
Winston jokes about the "Howdy Doody" show. Peter briefly mentions his father and lists encounters with trolls, dragons, demons, and the Boogieman as past cases. Ray mentions having seen horror movies as a child, a detail that also surfaces in Ghost Fight at the O.K. Corral.
One villager delivers a meta-reference to the viewer: "You sound like you're from a cheap animated TV show."
Animation errors
Just before the cut to the Concorde, Ray's eyes momentarily lose their whites while he is speaking.
References
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 25. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1987). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Transylvanian Homesick Blues" (1987).
