Kolchak: The Night Stalker

I was in junior high when this show premiered and I remember how funny and creepy it was. Darren McGavin, no matter what role he was in, was and still is, an excellent actor. He absolutely made the world weary Carl Kolchak believable. I loved the scenes with him and Simon Oakland as boss Tony Vincenzo. Kolchak always had a great comeback line when Vincenzo was outraged and appalled by Kolchak's supernatural interests. This show was cancelled way too soon, it was just hitting it's stride. Granted, some of the episodes were silly and the costumes (especially the Werewolf costume) were goofy, but some of the episodes were really scary and extremely well written. I wish they had made more of the episodes. My personal favorite is "Horror in the Heights", this one combined horror with social commentary about antisemitism and the plight of poor senior citizens. Ahead of it's time. If you are young and have never seen any of these wonderful shows, go to Ebay or Amazon and you can buy them. Well worth the money.

After the immense success of the made for t.v. movies "The Night Stalker" and "The Night Strangler", A.B.C. decided to finally make the adventures of everyones' favorite monster hunter Carl Kolchak into a weekly series. Unfortunately, it only lasted one season. Too bad though. This had to be one of the smartest series ever written for television. It was definitely a perfect mix of both horror and comedy as it placed the a regular guy like Kolchak in several unbelievable situations. Kolchak would begin by writing on stories on what he would think would be an ordinary murder and wind up finding the killer is either a werewolf or a vampire. Darrin McGavin was perfect in the role and Simon Oakland was great as his editor Vincenzo. Too bad that this show was up against the juggernaut that was the Friday night line up that was over on N.B.C.. In fact the night that it premiered, Friday September 13, 1974, was also the same night that another smartly written show premiered, "The Rockford Files".

I was just looking over the new series made for ABC TV. Good god. I was just contemplating what a new series would be like, and then I find it...and I guessed right; watered down, fancy boy crud.

The old series of Night Stalker was a zeitgeist, about being a regular guy, trying to find the truth, which was always hidden by authorities. Much like the times, it had a soul that went to the heart of public feelings, while working in the frame genre of horror/suspense. But, instead of writing to connect the public to their inner feelings about society wrapped in entertainment, the new series is about black and white working together, hot and fancy, to find less then archetypal mysteries. Kolchak brought a pulpy sense of reality to light, and portrayed the seedy side of life without being moralistic. It was Columbo of the supernatural. It didn't create fanciful immorality, like the goth culture today, and it didn't put searing political statements all over. It tried to entertain. And it did. Hence the popularity through the years. Anyone, like myself, who saw this in their childhood remembers it today.

The new series is destined to be another watered down bastardization of brilliant TV.

Absolutely at the top of the TV horror tree. Up there with THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS. Whats happenening these days? "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch", "Buffy?" "Charmed?"...Jeez, give me a break!

Darren McGavin absolutely made this his own - one of the most under-rated actors in history. His verbals with boss Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) were legendary. You KNEW Vincenzo loved him like a brother! Each week a new monster/creature of the night and each week, crucifix, silver bullet or just plain insult, Kolchak had the "beast of the week" under wraps before you could say "Bela Lugosi". You just KNEW it was safe to go outside again.

OK, so it tended towards the "campy" sometimes? sheesh, this was 1974 for God's sakes! This show ruled and if you are unfortunate enough to be less than 40, then bad luck!

Kolchak was vastly under-appreciated in its day. In fact, I don't think I knew anyone else that watched the show in its first run - or at least would admit to watching it. Canceled after only twenty episodes in a Friday night time slot, it was pretty much forgotten until twenty years later when its basic format became the inspiration for the X-Files. Kolchak was a reporter on the trail of the supernatural. Like murders following Jessica Fletcher in "Murder She Wrote", the stories would sometimes find Kolchak rather than Kolchak always chasing the story. What made this series different from TV shows prior to it was that the government was shown to be suppressing attempts by Kolchak to get at the truth in just about every instance. This was a first in TV shows, and is possibly attributable to the fact that this show premiered about a month after Watergate blew wide open and the president was forced to resign. Although there are many similarities between this show and The X-Files, Carl Kolchak was no Fox Mulder in appearance or style. Like Peter Falk's Columbo, Kolchak wore crumpled attire and had an annoying way about him, but he did get results. Also, each episode of Kolchak was pretty much self-contained. There was no long-running story arc, such as Mulder's search for the truth in what he believed to be the alien abduction of his sister driving him to look for proof of alien existence. If you like shows about the supernatural and you can handle a little 1970's nostalgia and some cheesy special effects, I advise you give this series a try if you ever run across it.