"The Vampire Strikes Back"

Use the farce!

Season 1 Episode 14 (episode 14 overall)

Original broadcast date: 6 December 1988

Writers: Jimmy Hibbert, Peter Richard Reeves
Additional voices: Dr. Von Goosewing/
                              Tremendous Terence/Trev

                              Adorable Amy/Bunnies:
                              Jimmy Hibbert
                            Neville/Bunnies: David Jason
Travel location: Outer Space, Planet Kute

Castle transport visual sort of used.
Joke credit: Space Consultant: Hugh Stun


This is probably one of the most well-known episodes of the series up there with the very first one. Despite the Star Wars referencing in the title (I never understood this as a child I admit, having zero knowledge of the multi-million dollar film franchise) this episode holds up on its own as it is not overloaded with sci-fi references in lieu of actual jokes. It's definitely one of the 'required reading' episodes for newcomers to the show, I'd say.

The whole thing starts off at breakfast time with Duckula eager to open a new box of Crunchy Munchies ("They're FAB!") not so much to eat them but to collect a new token for his space helmet and goggles fund. Sadly he only has 14,998. Happily, Nanny has a spare couple of boxes in her sling. Tremendous Terence Space Helmet here we come! Now all Duckula needs is a box to send them in.

We now cut to Igor doing something religiously sinister in the basement. Duckula asks him for a box, so naturally Igor suggests a coffin (oak, mahogany, teak) but the Count insists on cardboard. In fairness, sending a coffin through the post would cost more than the helmet's even worth. Although at a 15,000 token price-tag, who knows. Igor suggests the lumber room so off we go, only for the viewer to discover that Von Goosewing has booby trapped that particular part of the castle with a shed-load of dynamite. Just how did he know that Duckula would enter that room? Or was he hoping to just hang around until he eventually did? Goosewing may be batty, but he is exhaustively researching.

Anyway, in typically contrived cartoon condition, Von Goosewing pushing his plunger (oo-err) coincides with Nanny uncorking a bottle of home made sarsaparilla, with the resultant effect of the lumber room being blasted into outer space! The lumber room is naturally located in a rocket-shaped tower so - ah, maybe that's why Goosewing chose that room. There's method in his scientific madness.

Once in outer space they start floating around due to zero gravity so I guess the door must be airtight then. Well, until Nanny stupidly opens it and gets sucked out. It's just as well, because she bumbles into an asteroid headed straight for the lumber room and breaks it, thus inadvertently saving her friends. How fortuitous! This leads to one of my favourite jokes in the episode:

Duckula: Quick! Quick Igor, she's floating closer to us!
Igor: Then we're doomed again milord.

Igor's delivery just makes this. His deadpan voice makes many things even funnier than they already are, to me.

After rescuing Nanny with a fishing net, Duckula looks to his TREMENDOUS TERENCE comic for help and amusement. In cartoon coincidence #3, when he reads about the Oids and their spaceship, what should drive by, but a spaceship. Driven by Oids. Duckula naturally panics, but more because Oids are nasty and greedy not because his comic book characters appear to actually be real people! Jimmy and David re-use thir Crow Brothers voices for the Oid brothers.

Thankfully for them, not only are the Oids apparently real, but so is TREMENDOUS - "You know what fanfares mean all the way out 'ere" - TERENCE!  himself. He shows up in his spaceship to scare the Oids away. They scream in terror and zip off back the other way while TT boards the lumber room in a nifty-looking extendable corridor-and-door contraption. I'll leave it up to the psychologists among you to make up your own suggestive observations about this sequence.

Duckula is still hankering to get his hands on TT's helmet (oo-ERR!) so TT simply takes the tokens as an exchange for a spare set he's carrying. Duckula wears this helmet immediately and will keep it on for the majority of the rest of the episode. I still get a giggle out of how Nanny mispronounces 'goggles' as 'giggles.'

In possession of said helmet Duckula now assumes he is a space hero of sorts and wants to explore planets. The nearest one being the deceptively-named Planet Kute. Even Terence isn't brave enough to go there! He does however lower the tower onto the surface with suction cups before making a Star Wars pun and zipping off. Our hero ladies and gentlemen!

Not only does this episode spoof the comic book, toyetic action hero cartoons with Tremedous Terence™ (and his helmet™), but also the cloyingly cutesy shows, both of which would have been in abundance at the time. Planet Kute itself is everything this series is not. It's sickly sweet and saccharine and comes across as the artists' dig at all the sugary Care Bears style shows that would have been the trend about the time this series was made. It's all very satirical and so over-the-top that it makes me laugh every time. Whenever someone tells you that all 80s cartoons were all about either selling toys, being cutesy, or both, direct them here. 

Naturally Igor is suspicious and disgusted whereas Nanny thinks it's all lovely. Duckula reserves judgement, but is eventually worn down by the planet's apparent spokesperson and her entourage of....cute bunnies. Urgh! When it comes to cuteness, a little goes a long way so when Adorable Amy decides to sprinkle them all with conformity correction Happy Dust they (apart from Nanny) feel enough is enough and head back to the spaceship lumber room.

Duckula: (almost singing) ..and cuddly and wonderful and lovely and scrummy and sweet and I don't think I can take much more of this!

Sadly, there's no mad vampire hunter to get them explosively airborne this time, so uncorking the sarsaparilla bottles only jolts the tower up and down a couple of times. Luckily this is still a cartoon show, so the castle's travelling mechanism still works for only part of the castle. Being this cartoon show though, it's not perfect. The tower lands back in the castle alright - upside-down and in the dining room. But at least they're home! Unfortunately, so is one of the cutesy bunnies, who instantly transforms their gloomy old castle into a enchantingly sweet-looking fairy tale palace so cloying that it even makes the narrator sick! The ending's a real capper and Barry Clayton's reading just makes it perfect.

Come on Igor. Convince Nanny to prepare some rabbit stew.

Fun stuff and cheeky satire all round. If you only see a small helping of episodes of this series, I'd recommend this be among them. Animation's up to it's usual characteristic high points too and the backgrounds on Planet Kute stick out especially, when compared to the show's usual art style - whether you like cute stuff or not!







Music
"Heavy Dramatic Link No.2" (Ivor Slaney) Title card. 
"Stealth By Night" (track 24) (Dick Walter) Off to the lumber room.
"Whodunit No.1" (Ivor Slaney) Goosewing can't hear himself speak.
"Berlin" (John Leach) Goosewing counting down. 
"Gastaus Polka link" (John Leach) Goosewing jumps for joy.
"Smouldering Fury" (Trevor Duncan) Gravity cuts out.
"Intense Danger" (James Clark) "Igor we're in space!"/"Yes, of course! The clock!"
"Reveal (A)" (Paddy Kingsland track 1) Fanfare in space.
"A Matter of Urgency" (Ivor Slaney) Saved by Tremendous Terence.
"Tomorrow, the World" (King Palmer track 30) TT lands the trio on the planet.
"Reveal (B)" (Paddy Kingsland track 2) Terence zooms off. 
"Whodunit No.2" (Ivor Slaney) Duckula and co. are left on the planet.

"Furry Friends" (Anthony Hobson) Meeting the bunnies/bunny in castle.
"Magical Effect" (Paddy Kingsland track 27) Happy dust!/Bunny cute-ifies the castle.

"Playmates" (John Hyde)Tour of planet Kute. (UK viewers may recogonize it from "Button Moon.")

Pans and backgrounds

"WE'RE REALLY GLAD YOU'RE HERE BECUASE...WE LOVE YOU!"

Sorry about the colour changes.

Part of the lumber room wall is on an overlay to cover the characters as they emerge.

How very pure. Almost like it's from a different show altogether! Only the black sky adds a bit of menace.

Wonder if those clouds were the ones we saw in 'Duck and the Broccoli Stalk'?

A spread from the comic. Great art. Looks just like Tremendous Terence himself!

Clipped together close view.

That caption though!

I also own a cel and drawing from this episode.

Trivia

The Shirley Temple as it appears in the joke book.

• Duckula himself appears in the title card. Music used is the same as the title of  "Dr. Von Goosewing's Invisible Ray."
• 2nd and last episode to have the word vampire in the title. 
• The title is a pun on 'The Empire Strikes Back', a Star Wars film. It is also the name of an episode of Hanna-Barbera's 'Fonzie and the Happy Days Gang', of all things.
• Episode does not start on a scream but ends on one.
• Duckula actually hates the cereal Crunchy Munchies and Nanny prefers the box. Maybe that's why she serves him it in "Ducknapped."
• The tagline on the cereal box "They're fab!" may be a reference to Tony the Tiger's "They're great!" 
• The painting on the wall features a very human-looking skeleton. Another also shows a woman with her pet dog. It is seen in several other episodes too.
• You can get a Tremendous Terence helmet and goggles for 15,000 Crunchy Munchy tokens. Duckula manages to count his tokens with little effort. This could be a joke on how apparently one way to get a vampire off your tail is to spill some rice. They will be compelled to count every grain. Why not? The Count Von Count probably would!

  

  Captain Comet, a Terence clone from the comic.

• Nanny uses her sling as a storage area again.This time for the cereal.
• Von Goosewing is not seen in his regular deerstalker hat in this episode. The only other episode where this happens is "Around the World in a Total Daze."
• VG makes no reference to Heinrich. He's too busy talking to himself! 
• Goosewing vampire-destroying plan of choice:  A WHOPPING GREAT HUGE PILE OF EXPLOSIVES. Subtle! 
• Goosewing uses a TNT plunger. Victor (also Jimmy Hibbert) would do the same in the intro theme to his series.
• 1st use of the lumber room. It reappears in "The Return of the Curse..." 
• Technically they do find a cardboard box. It's storing the bottles. But of course, by then it's too late.
• Cosgrove-Hall seems to have a thing for sarsaparilla. There's bottles of it in this episode, Duckula orders some in "Ghostly Gold", Hugo orders the same measure (two fingers) in "Cowboys and Indiscipline" and the name of the Stink Brothers' favourite bar in 'Avenger Penguins' is "The Stinkin' Sarsaparilla." The drink is used again in the V&H episode "Stone Me!" where once again it is extremely potent.
• When Duckula says "Beware the Oids of Mars!" he's spoofing the quote "Beware the Ides of March" from Shakespeare's 'Julius Caeser'. Appropriately, given the outer space theme, the quote is uttered in the Star Trek episode "The Conscience of the King"
• Duckula describes a 2-headed Oid in his comic, but it looks more like it has 1 head. We don't see it all at once, so it could just as easily have two. 
• Terence named his ship after Shirley Temple, a Hollywood child star, singer, dancer and businesswoman, which is interesting as Adorable Amy seems to be a spoof of her. The ship appears in the Count Duckula Joke Book too.
• 1st appearance of Tremendous Terence and the Oids.   
• Duckula and Neville (both David Jason) are both green.
• TT is the 2nd Jimmy Hibbert character to use binoculars after Ruffles in "No Sax Please We're Egyptian." Next will be Goosewing in "Arctic Circles."
• Terence's line of "May the fourth be with you!" is a Star Wars nod. Avenger Penguins would also do a few of these.
• 2 of Jimmy's new characters have alliterative names. Tremdous Terence and Adorable Amy. They're also polar opposites in his vocal range and character type. 
• Duckula does his alliteration bit again. "Smart, snappy, snazzy and say what's that out there?"
• 1st use of the 'Come/This way, men - and me!' joke.
• Duckula will reprise his role as Daring Duckula in his daydream in "A Christmas Quacker."
• Planet Kute will reappear in the Avenger Penguins episode "Nightmare at Teatime", appropriately, as Mr. Doom's nightmare.
• The Kute Bunnies will also reappear in "The Zombie Awakes" as Igor's nightmare.
• A Kute Surprise, should anyone wish to get diabetes, is made from honey, ice cream, raspberry jelly, marshmallows, maple syrup, chocolate sauce, fudge ripple, cherry cola, whipped cream and maraschino cherries with a side order of three different sorts of sugar and saccharine topping.
• The Happy Dust has no effect on Duckula. Perhaps vampires, being pure evil, are immune? Or maybe he's cute enough anyway!
• Igor can tell that it's dawn in Transylvania by observing the stars.
• The joke credit is a reference to the Houston Space Center.
• This episode was released on VHS in 1988 along with 'Hardluck Hotel' and 'Dear Diary'
  
• Also, the episode was adapted into a story book, along with "Jungle Duck" and illustrated by Vincent James, who also did the storyboarding for this episode. Here are a couple of his storyboard pages. Credit and thanks to Laura Howell.
  
  
• First episode to have a joke credit and the 1988 copyright logo. The spiders in the end credits now go over Brian and Mark's names rather than cutting away to a plain red backdrop.
• It was also 'adapted' into a not-the-best computer game. (see below) I've never played it, but it is apparently very poor.

  

  On the +side, the art is by Vin James.

   

 








 Goofs and nitpicks 

• When Igor says 'little nose' his beak doesn't move. It is meant to be covered by the comic Duckula holds. 
• Lumber room door hinges change sides for a couple of quick shots. Mostly it's consistent though.
• When Neville talks, a brief shot shows Trev mouthing. It seems like a last minute cover for the 'cheap warm wine' joke. No alcohol references for you!
• Colour errors: Nanny's collar and the bunnies' muzzles for a brief shot each. Mild layering error as they walk.
• When Duckula uncorks all the bottles, he seems to have recorked most of them again.
• The entire tie-in computer game is one giant goof!
  
  
  
  
  
  UPDATE: Thanks to Jez Hall on Twitter, I can now share what appears to be development work for a TREMENDOUS TERENCE spin-off show. Like Gaston and Pierre, Terence appears to have had a species upgrade (at least in some artwork) and CatPig (who would eventually wind up in 'Avenger Penguins') seems present as well. Art by Andy Roper.