Diane Neal Movies

Changes greet the SVU gang at the outset of the ninth season: Munch (Richard Belzer) is put in charge of the department after Capt. Cragen (Dann Florek) is temporarily removed from duty, and Det. Lake (Adam Beach) is now a full-time member of the squad. In Alternate, the season's first episode, Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) investigate a case involving a woman (guest star Cynthia Nixon) with multiple personalities. Before long Cragen is back in command, but the themes of people taking on new roles and different personalities continue in Avatar, which focuses on the case of a missing woman who portrayed an underage prostitute in an online video game. In Undercover, Fin (Ice-T) poses as a corrections officer while Benson poses as a prison inmate and has an eye-opening new experience. Benson then finds herself in another precarious situation when she is kidnapped in the series' 200th episode, Authority. This milestone episode features guest star Robin Williams as a man with an antiauthority agenda who attempts to trick people into committing criminal acts. When Williams' character abducts Benson, he uses mind games to try to get Stabler to inflict pain on her. Stabler is also no stranger to pain this season: In Blinded, he temporarily loses his sight after suffering a head injury courtesy of a suspect. That same episode finds ADA Novak (Diane Neal) confronting a dark part of her personal history as she attempts to convict a schizophrenic artist. While Novak faces her past, Stabler worries about his family's future in Paternity, which finds his wife, Kathy (Isabel Gillies), and their unborn child in jeopardy after being hurt in a car accident. An unconventional family of homeless children are at the center of Streetwise, which features guest star Mae Whitman as the clan's pseudo-mother. Other notable Season 9 guest stars include Aidan Quinn, Erika Christensen, and Melissa Joan Hart. ~ Jennifer Sankowski, All Movie Guide

In this direct-to-video sequel to Dracula 2000, iconic vampire Dracula (Rutger Hauer) has once again escaped the clutches of Luke (Jason London) and Father Ufizzi (Jason Scott Lee), a pair of traveling vampire hunters. Luke and Ufizzi discover the undying bloodsucker has made his way back to his native Romania, and the hunters give chase. They arrive in Romania to discover the nation is caught up in a bloody civil war -- and that Dracula has kidnapped Elizabeth (Diane Neal), Luke's fiancée. Can Luke and Ufizzi finally vanquish Dracula and save Elizabeth in the midst of the chaos that sweeps the land? Produced in tandem with Dracula II: Ascension, Wes Craven Presents Dracula III: Legacy also stars Roy Scheider and Alexandra Westcourt. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The SVU unit is confronted with a murder case yielding too many suspects and too many confessions in "Tragedy," the opening episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's fifth season. Things take a truly disturbing turn a few episodes later in "Loss," wherein Assistant DA Alexandra Cabot's (Stephanie March) relentless prosecution of a murder tied in with a Colombian drug cartel results in her death -- or so it appears to the world. The next episode, "Serendipity," introduces Diane Neal as Cabot's replacement, ADA Casey Novak, who immediately develops an adversarial relationship with detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni). Novak's professional zeal is admirable, but she proves to have as many human flaws as anyone else in the series -- notably in the season finale, "Head," in which she lives to regret allowing a child molester to cop a plea and win a lighter sentence. Season five marks the series' 100th episode, "Control," about a mutilation victim who turns out to be a sexual predator and kidnapper -- leading to Benson being raked over the coals in court because she'd refused to heed the warnings of one of the predator's potential captives. Benson is also the focus of attention in "Escape"; trying to defuse a hostage situation involving an escaped convicted pedophile, the detective ends up concluding that the man was the innocent victim of widespread political and departmental corruption. In a similar vein, the SVU unit's skipper, Captain Cragen (Dann Florek), faces the grim possibility that he may have unwittingly railroaded a guiltless criminology professor on a rape-murder charge in the episode "Criminal." And like Cragen, Det. Munch (Richard Belzer) is forced to confront the demons of his own past while handling an assisted-suicide case in "Painless." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide