Tag: Kolchak: The Night Stalker

The Night Strangler …1973 film

This is the second TV movie about Kolchak. This time, Kolchak is run out of Vegas, still unemployed and in that beat-up suit and straw hat, and somehow still covering the weirdest stories on earth. He lands in Seattle, and right on cue, women start turning up strangled in the city’s underground ruins. Their corpses? Bone dry. No blood. No explanation. Déjà vu, but not quite. I’m not going to give away what it was, but it wasn’t what you expected. 

It’s a clever move, leaving Vegas and swapping it for Seattle’s underbelly. Parts of 19th-century buildings were left after the great Seattle fire of 1889. The movie makes excellent use of these underground tunnels, where Victorian storefronts and old streets sit buried beneath the modern city. The atmosphere here is claustrophobic and perfect for a monster that hides in plain sight.

The Night Strangler was the follow-up that proved Kolchak wasn’t a one-hit wonder. Dan Curtis, who had already scared TV audiences with Dark Shadows, stepped in to direct again, and Carl Kolchak had room to breathe and dig into another supernatural mystery. Also, the humor intertwined in this movie keeps it moving at a good pace. 

Darren McGavin is, once again, the glue that holds the whole thing together. His Kolchak is pushy, sloppy, and never takes “no comment” for an answer. Every scene is like a tennis match between his energy and Simon Oakland’s rage as editor Tony Vincenzo. Honestly, those two could’ve been dropped into a sitcom about running a failing Chicago newspaper, and it still would’ve been gold.

While The Night Strangler didn’t quite capture the lightning-in-a-bottle impact of the original Night Stalker, it proved there was more than enough life in this story to warrant more. The movie’s success led directly to the short-lived but cult-favorite TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker in 1974. Looking back, The Night Strangler remains a strong second chapter anchored by McGavin’s great performance.

The Full Movie

The Night Stalker … 1972 Film

Before we dive into the TV show, we will cover the two movies that lead up to Season 1. You don’t often see an actor embody a character like Darren McGavin; he IS Carl Kolchak. 

Alright, let’s dim the lights, cue up some eerie harpsichord, and head back to 1972, when ABC aired a made-for-TV movie that changed the whole game for supernatural thrillers on television. I’ve seen this described as a noir-horror movie, and that hits the mark. The movie moves at a good pace. You see action right away, and the story doesn’t stall. Mixed in with the thrills is the humor of Kolchak, and that mixes well in the two movies and the TV series. 

People were dropping all over Las Vegas with bite marks and loss of blood. Carl Kolchak was a rumpled shirt reporter who would not give up on the truth. He finds clues, and the police shoo him away. He is a thorn in their side, and his boss, Tony Vincenzo, played by Simon Oakland, suffers daily. Although Kolchak is telling the truth, Vincenzo is very hesitant to OK stories to print about a real vampire. 

The thing about The Night Stalker is it hasn’t lost its punch. The pacing is different from modern movies, but with the seedy Vegas strip, the sterile hospital halls, and the dusty police files, it feels real. And because it feels real, when the vampire strikes, it’s genuinely unsettling. It’s not gothic castles and bats flapping in the fog. It’s neon lights and the smell of asphalt in the air. That contrast is what makes the horror work.

Carol Lynley plays Kolchak’s girlfriend, and I remember her from the Poseidon Adventure. Claude Akins and Larry Linville are also featured in this movie. This is not your typical TV movie; its quality was better than many horror movies I’ve seen around that time. Kolchak’s character draws you in. It is as if he walked in from a 1940s noir movie. 

When The Night Stalker aired on January 11, 1972, it pulled in a staggering 48 share of the audience, which translates to more than half of all TVs in America being tuned to McGavin chasing a vampire around Vegas. It became the most-watched TV movie up to that point. People weren’t used to seeing something this dark and this scary on their living room screens.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker …coming soon

I guess this is like a trailer or a commercial for coming attractions. I’m going to tackle this series in a few weeks, with each episode getting a post. There are only 20 episodes plus two movies, so this won’t be a year and a half of The Twilight Zone or Star Trek like I did a few years back. I hope some of you readers are fans. It was totally different for its time and really for now. We will follow Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) as he chases monsters in the seventies. 

Music posts will not be interrupted…this will be on Thursday, and I may sneak one in earlier in the week if possible. I hope you will enjoy it. I’m going to write up a few before I start posting. Also, Thanks to Lisa, who brought up this series when I told her I was watching The Night Gallery. I have watched this series over the years, but I don’t know the episodes as well as I do The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, so this will be a fun learning experience for me. I had watched The Twilight Zone and Star Trek so much that I didn’t need to research many of them when I covered their episodes. 

I hope you will enjoy them. I will start them sometime in September. Also, I think most of the episodes are on YouTube. 

Here is a fan-made trailer of the TV movie that spawned the show. 

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