DVD Review: Kolchak, the Night Stalker (1974-75)

Introduced in two spectacularly successful TV movies, seedy, persistent, abrasive reporter Carl Kolchak was awarded his own brief hour-long 1974-1975 series. It remains a cult classic.

"Kolchak: The Night Stalker" was a simple monster-of-the-week story. None of it, as Stephen King once noted, was particularly scary. Maybe one of the strengths of the show was that even if we weren't, Kolchak was always scared, as he should have been, and Darren McGaven was a good enough actor to make Kolchak's fear believable.

Laying the Groundwork

In the TV movie that inspired the series, "The Night Stalker," the characters and situations were established. Two of them, reporter Kolchak and his long-suffering, over-accomodating editor Tony Vincenzo. Kolchak encounters Janos Skorzeny, a vampire stalking Las Vegas' beautiful people and city officials who will do anything to keep from shaking up the cash machine. Kolchak comes to realize the vampire is legit, tracks him down, and dispatches him. He proceeds to get railroaded out of town by the city fathers, the real target of Jeff Rice's original novel adapted by Richard Matheson (of the Roger Corman Edgar Alan Poe movies). On top of that, he loses his girlfriend, the delicious Carol Lynley. I'd be bummed out too.

The Night Stalker set TV movie records. A sequel, "The Night Strangler" followed quickly using the old standard of a Jack the Ripper seeking donations from unwilling females to his elixir of life, hibernating between fixes. Played by the "Six Million Dollar Man's" Richard Anderson, the Ripper lives in a house in a part of Seattle that is beneath the present-day surface of Seattle, something that actually exists although not as extravagant as suggested in the movie. Kolchak hunts him down and dispatches him and is sent packing again with Vincenzo, who had the bad luck to again wind up as Carl's editor after himself being outsted in Las Vegas after the first movie

For the record, neither of these movies is in this no-frills DVD package.

The DVD Set

But the series is here. It has all 20 of the regular-season hour-long (not counting commercial breaks) episodes. It picks up with Kolchak and Vincenzo employed by a Chicago wire service. Vincenzo continues to fight Kolchak over his wildest stories, once a week reliably focusing on monsters or UFOs or worse. The premise is weak on credibility but what are you going to do? Personally, I always thought Kolchak should've been dropped into a newsstand tabloid newspaper as resident monster hunter. Many years later, Men in Black toyed with the concept and the SciFi Channel expanded the idea into a one-season series called "The Chronicle."

The series lasted 20 episodies and made use several times of little-known ethnic creatures like the "rakshasa" of India written by Hammer Horror's Jimmy Sangster and the Louisiana bayou monster (played by Richard "Jaws" Kiel who appearances as Kolchak Critters three times) but they seemed authentic. There were also a hooker turned vampire, a werewolf on a cruise ship, invisible aliens, a zombie stalking mob members, Erik Estrada and an Aztec cult, a rampaging android, a fashionista witch, a headless biker, a humanoid tunnel lizard, and more. They even had plans for a story to lead off their second season on the Piasa Bird legend of Alton in Southern Illinois. As an Alton native and having written on the Piasa a few times, I'd like to have seen that.

Almost all episodes used a rotating series of actors as police detective handling the case, with Keenan Wynn a couple times, but also Larry (MASH) Linville, Dwayne (Dobie Gillis) Hickman, Charles (Wild, Wild West stand-in for Ross Martin) Aidman, and others.

For the old-timers, it's nice to see some of these guest stars, many now regrettably gone. In supporting roles other than as cops were the great Scatman Crothers, Jamie Farr, Jim Backus, Antonio (Huggie-Bear) Fargas, Sharon Ferrell, and others.

Bringing Back Kolchak

An attempt by CBS to ressurect the series a few years ago with what I felt was too little promotion was a failure. There was too much X-Files influence to make it work, practically no monsters, although it did have a few interesting ideas to work with. But it was a weak sequel.

If you're a Kolchak fan, this is a must-have. The butchery done to fit in increasing numbers of TV commercials has trimmed some great moments between Kolchak and Vincenzo. Those are recaptured in this digitially restored DVD set.

Check Amazon for a reduced new price, and a substantial savings for a used copy.