I picked up the dvd of the Complete Kolchak series. There were only 20 episodes of the short lived 1974 supernatural series. Two original made for tv movies preceded the series and 2 more tv movies were cobbled together from unconnected episodes. The two original tv movies came out on dvd from Anchor Bay in 1998 and again in 2004 from MGM. I have a copy of the MGM edition which is still available. I just looked and it's 11 bucks on Amazon. There was a 2005 tv series that revived the character. I have not seen it. I have looked at some of the Kolchak comics in the past but never bought any. I didn't care for the art very much.
The Night Stalker was first broadcast January of 1972. It was the highest rated tv movie at the time. We find Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin, in Las Vegas working for Simon Oakland. Carl's a reporter and Simon is the managing editor. Carl's got a great story to tell but the cops won't let him. Even if they did, he speculates into his Sony tape recorder, who would believe him. Seems a vampire killed all those showgirls and drained all their blood. Who wouldn't believe that? At first Carl; but he's soon convinced as he comes in contact with Mister Bitey. Once he's convinced, Carl has a hard time getting the police, or Simon, to believe him. Once he's convinced them, it's even harder to get them to admit what they saw. Carol Lynley played Carl's girlfriend in the first movie, he was single in everything else. She was a showgirl and way too good for Carl. Things come to a nasty flame soaked end. The Las Vegas police keep the story in Vegas and kick Carl out. His girlfriend does a fade and he never sees her again. Eventually he moved on, to the sequel.
The Night Strangler, with a new script by Richard Matheson, finds Carl in Seattle working for Simon Oakland again. That guy sure likes yelling and Carl is a guy who needs to get yelled at. Thy are a great team, both as actors and characters. This time there's been a series of exotic dancers who've been strangled and blood stolen from their bodies. Ewww! Carl beats the bushes and flushs a century old killer with an elixer of youth made from the bodily fluids of his victims. In the 36 years since that movie debuted I've seen way too many villians with the same elixer.
The movie used Seattle's Underground City as part of it's locations. It's kind of a creepy place, so it works quite well. There was a bigger roster of guest stars with Jo Ann Pflug, Wally Cox, Al Lewis, Margaret Hamilton and John Carradine all making an appearance. The movie proved popular and the planned third movie was changed into a tv series. There's a good bit of humor in both the movies and the tv series. McGavin is entertaining as the somewhat shady and annoying Kolchak. He's not above a bit of lying to get the story, and if he has to break the law, well, it was for a good reason. The character came from an unfinished Jeff Rice novel that was adapted by Richard Matheson. Matheson was a big contributor to movies and tv. The series gave Bob Gale, writer of Back To The Future and Used Cars fame, his first professional writing credit. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, was the story editor on the tv series and he's credited with adding a lot of the quirky humor.
I saw the dvd on Amazon for 18 bucks and picked it up. It's back up to $27 as I write this. Sometimes a guy just lucks out. It's been out since 2005 but nowadays I try to wait for the price to fall. Mostly they do. There have been a lot of low priced tv dvd sets the last year or two. Yay, for the recession? Carl, now working for Simon Oakland in Chicago, comes up against a different monster each week. There was a vampire, a werewolf, a mummy, a zombie, a headless motorcyclist, some spirits, Native American and hindu legends, a killer android, an invisible alien, a caveman and a lizard critter. Oh, I almost forgot Helen of Troy and Jack the Ripper make an appearance. It had everything way before X-Files and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. X-Files producer Chris Carter is a fan of the series and he asked McGavin to appear on his series as Kolchak. McGavin said no but did appear several times as a retired FBI agent who had been interested in the weird stuff.
That's Jack Grinnage as Ron Updike, fellow reporter, Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchack, and an old favorite of mine, Simon Oakland as Tony Vincenzo. Ruth McDevitt and Carol Ann Susi round out the cast as occasionally appearing INS staff. That was the news agency that Tony and Carl wound up at after the second tv movie where they were seen leaving town in a station wagon. Carl drove a 1965 yellow Mustang in the tv series. There were lots of great character actors for guest stars. Way too many to list. That's part of the appeal to these old tv shows, seeing all the charactor actors that I grew up watching. I always like a good character actor.
The monster make-ups were not always the best but most of them weren't too bad. I can forgive flaws in one area when other areas make up for it. Being a monster fan the series appealed to me when it was originally broadcast and it still has a good bit of charm. I was sad to see it cancelled back in 1975. According to the Wikipedia McGavin grew tired of the monster of the week and asked to leave the series. ABC was ok with that as the series ratings were falling. Most of the shows are ok, but it had a clearly defined formula that got a bit stale while watching the shows so close together. Still I enjoyed watching the series and was glad I picked it up. The movies are worth picking up, I think the Matheson scripts put them a cut above the tv series. I've seen them 3 times since I bought them and still enjoyed them. I enjoyed the tv series enough to watch them again. Who knows when. Others might want to check them out on NetFlix or BlockBuster.
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