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Transylvanian Homesick Blues is an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. Count Vostok sends the Ghostbusters four Concorde tickets and asks them to travel to Boldavia to rid his castle of a ghost. Once the team arrives and cannot find a single mirror in the place, they start to suspect that things are not what they seem.1
The episode was written by Michael Reaves and first aired on December 11, 1987. It carries production number 140012.2
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The episode was recorded on August 7 and August 10, 1987. Arsenio Hall and Dave Coulier recorded their lines on August 7.2
This installment marks a turning point in the cast. Coulier now voices Peter Venkman, Kath 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. For series continuity, it fits best ahead of Baby Spookums, given Janine's design.
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 flight runs eight hours, followed by a four-hour train ride 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.
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. In the story, Vostok claims Stoker based Dracula on the feud between his family and the Van Heldens. Slimer is shown to be capable of motion sickness, which turns him a different shade of green, and Egon notes his P.K.E. Meter is not calibrated to detect undead entities such as vampires.
