Transylvania, January 1918
Indy's first encounter with the supernatural -- unless it's all just a story Old Indy is making up to scare some trick-or-treaters.
If you're watching the Masks of Evil edit you get to see SPF jump in age from 30-ish to 20-ish when the bridging sequence ends and Indy arrives in (Ahh...) Venice. Something is afoot in remote Romania, where General Targo is plotting succession... or worse. Ruh-roh. Indy and Colonel Waters are sent to find out what has happened to a German P.O.W. camp. Along the way they note that the Austrian border is no longer guarded -- the war is coming to an end soon. Picking up allies along the way... takes its time. A slow burn, or just a drag? Once they have the bruiser, the doctor, and the knife thrower, they make it to the camp which appears occupied by jovial Allied and Germans. But is all as it seems? Jinkies!
In the castle, they encounter... well, now it just turns into a bit of a house of horrors, with impalement, lightning, heat, cold, and blood. Zoinks! Then they meet Targo, whom all the "campers" happily follow. There's some betrayal and then it goes full on torture room until it's down to Indy and the knife thrower vs. Targo. Targo does some slight of hand (seriously, watch him pour the drink; never noticed that before...), things look bad for Indy, then he is rescued. Targo is down! Or is he? Jeepers! A final battle with a flaming sky reminiscent of 90's video games, and then they put a stake in it. Spoilers - the POWs were dead the whole time.
It's a really thin episode on rails. The soundtrack is Curt Sobel's sole contribution for the series; he leans a bit heavily on a variant of the YIJ fanfare theme, but it does a decent job of building tension. Some of the visuals - like the impaled bodies, disfigured spies, and rooms of horror - are quite well done, and I really do like the look of Targo/Vlad. Other bits, like the flaming sky and the explosion/smoke at the end are pretty cheesy. But at least it's a unique take on things, unlike the next episode...
Up next: Istanbul, September 1918, which is edited to precede Transylvania in the movie version. Indy something something spy something something city something something love interest something something oops she's dead. I think. They kinda blur together. At least we're almost out of this goddamn war if we can make it through 2018 without starting numero three-o in the real world. We've got to make it to Peacock's Eye, at least, people!