A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhanger is hoped to incentivize the audience to return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma.
Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series.
The Tomb of Dracula is an American horror comic book series published by Marvel Comics from April 1972 to August 1979. The 70-issue series featured a group of vampire hunters who fought Count Dracula and other supernatural menaces. On rare occasions, Dracula would work with these vampire hunters against a common threat or battle other supernatural threats on his own, but more often than not, he was the antagonist rather than protagonist. In addition to his supernatural battles in this series, Marvel's Dracula often served as a supervillain to other characters in the Marvel Universe, battling the likes of Blade the Vampire Slayer, Spider-Man, the Werewolf, the X-Men, Howard the Duck, and the licensed Robert E. Howard character Solomon Kane.
Count Orlok, commonly but erroneously known as Nosferatu, is a fictional character who appears in the silent film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) and in its remake Nosferatu (2024), which is based on Bram Stoker's character Count Dracula.
Touching Evil is a British television drama serial following the exploits of a crack squad on the Organised & Serial Crime Unit, a rapid response police force that serves the entire country.
Commando Cody is the hero in two 12-chapter science fiction serials made by Republic Pictures, played by George Wallace in Radar Men from the Moon (1952) and Judd Holdren in Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953).
The Curse of Fenric is the third serial of the 26th season of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 25 October to 15 November 1989.
Michael Nouri is an American screen and stage actor. He is best known for his television roles, including Dr. Neil Roberts on The O.C., Phil Grey on Damages, Caleb Cortlandt on All My Children, Eli David in NCIS, and Bob Schwartz on Yellowstone. He is also known for his starring roles in the films Flashdance (1983) and The Hidden (1987), and has appeared in several Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including the original production of Victor/Victoria. He is a Saturn Award and Daytime Emmy Award nominee.
Barbara Shelley was an English film and television actress. She appeared in more than a hundred films and television series. She was particularly known for her work in horror films, notably Village of the Damned; Dracula, Prince of Darkness; Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit.
"Buffy vs. Dracula" is the season 5 premiere of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode aired on September 26, 2000 on The WB.
Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe is a 1953 twelve-chapter movie serial from Republic Pictures, which began life as a proposed syndicated television series. It consists of twelve 25-minute sequential episodes directed by Harry Keller, Franklin Adreon, and Fred C. Brannon. It stars Judd Holdren, Aline Towne, Gregory Gaye, William Schallert, Richard Crane, and Craig Kelly.
The Phantom Empire is a 1935 American Western serial film directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason and starring Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, and Betsy King Ross. This 12-chapter Mascot Pictures serial combined the Western, musical and science-fiction genres. The duration of the first episode is 30 minutes, while that of the rest is about 20 minutes. The serial film is about a singing cowboy who stumbles upon an ancient subterranean civilization living beneath his own ranch that becomes corrupted by unscrupulous greedy speculators from the surface. In 1940, a 70-minute feature film edited from the serial was released under the titles Radio Ranch or Men with Steel Faces. This was Gene Autry's first starring role, playing himself as a singing cowboy. It is considered to be the first science-fiction Western.
Susan Anton is an American actress and singer with a career spanning over 35 years in various entertainment fields, including television, film, theater, and concert venues. Her debut film, "Golden Girl," earned her a Golden Globe nomination, leading to a contract with NBC for her variety show, "Presenting Susan Anton." Later, ABC signed her for the drama series "Cliffhangers."
Rudolf Martin is a German actor working mainly in the United States. He first appeared in off-Broadway productions and then moved on to extensive TV and film work. He has made guest appearances on numerous hit television series and recently started working in Germany as well. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
David de Keyser was an English actor and narrator.
Count Dracula is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. He is considered the prototypical and archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by some to have been inspired by the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler, who was also known as Vlad Dracula, and by Sir Henry Irving, an actor for whom Stoker was a personal assistant.
The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television and documentaries predominantly explore the character of Dracula as he was first portrayed in film, with only a few adapting Stoker's original narrative more closely. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including include the characters clothing, mannerisms, physical features hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be in a home away from Europe.
The Return of Chandu is a 1934 American 12-episode fantasy film serial based on the radio series Chandu the Magician. It was produced by Sol Lesser and directed by Ray Taylor, and starred Béla Lugosi as Frank Chandler. The serial was originally released to be booked by theaters in any one of three ways: as a conventional serial of twelve weekly chapters of equal running times; as a 60-minute feature film comprising the first four episodes, to be followed by the remaining 8 episodes in weekly serial format; or as a stand-alone feature comprising the first four chapters. In 1935, the remaining 8 episodes of the serial were also edited into a second feature film, of 65 minute length, released as Chandu on the Magic Island. This serial marked one of the few times that Lugosi played a protagonist rather than an antagonist: in fact, Lugosi had played Roxor, the main villain, in the 1932 film Chandu the Magician.
"Curse of the Mutants" is a comics storyline that ran in books published by the American company Marvel Comics from July 2010 to May 2011. The arc centers on a human bomb exploding in San Francisco's Union Square, covering dozens in vampire-converting blood. It then becomes the mission of the X-Men to track down Dracula's son Xarus, now "Lord of the Vampires", even if that means enlisting vampire-hunter Blade.
A serial film,film serial, movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed. Usually, each serial involves a single set of characters, protagonistic and antagonistic, involved in a single story, which has been edited into chapters after the fashion of serial fiction and the episodes cannot be shown out of order or as a single or a random collection of short subjects.
