The Vampire

Darren McGavin gets an assignment from Simon Oakland to fly to Las Vegas to interview some Hindu guru who had a bit of a vogue at the time when the Beatles had one as a consultant. Ravi Shankar and his music were also popular at the time.

Instead he gets sidetracked with a vampire story, one who's killing her way to Los Angeles from Las Vegas. Kolchak wants to not just get the story, he wants to kill her permanently and by now he's read up enough on the occult to do it.

If he can avoid police interference like John Doucette as a redneck sheriff's deputy or William Daniels as an LA police captain. He has a way of rubbing law enforcement the wrong way, especially when they're covering up.

You'll have to see how he does it because I won't tell.

Kolchak goes back to faces another Vampire, but this time a female hungry for blood, she works as hooker in Las Vegas area, kolchak wised has a propper way to be chosen by your louder boss when he suggest to him your fellow work, so he is imediatelly appointed to assignment, then there after much trouble (he brings quite often) he finds a woman to write for him, while he collects some info about the Vampire, amuzing episode of our hampered hero!!!

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First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) tracks down a female vampire (Suzanne Charny). I saw this when it originally aired back in 1974. I was only 12 and I remember it scaring me silly! Seeing it now almost 50 years later it doesn't scare me as much as it used to but it still works. It moves quickly, has a nice tight script with some very funny bits and some great vampire attack scenes. My favorite has got to be when she kills a bunch of football players who interrupt her while she's feeding. The acting is great by everybody but especially by McGavin and Charny. BTW Charny doesn't have a word of dialogue in this but when she hisses at her victims she's terrifying! I've seen all the Kolchak episodes and this is easily my favorite!

The fourth time's the charm for dogged crime reporter Carl Kolchak, who can't seem to shake the supernatural in pursuit of his stories, only to be left wanting in his attempt to convince his long-suffering editor Tony Vincenzo that the bogeyman really is real.

This time Kolchak comes up against a Hollywood vampire, not a denizen of Alice Cooper's celebrated 1970s drinking club that later informed the name of Cooper's rock supergroup, but an actual bite-the-neck bloodsucker as "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" finally hits its stride with a compelling story, juicy humor you can sink your teeth into, and, for the first time, a third act that is genuinely scary--and that you can actually see happening.

"The Vampire" did have to dip back into "The Night Stalker," the highly successful 1972 television movie that brought Kolchak and Las Vegas vampire Janos Skorzeny together, for inspiration. This time, it's one of Skorzeny's victims, buried outside Sin City, who is resurrected by a stranded motorist's inadvertent spilling of blood and makes her way to Los Angeles, snacking on victims en route in this tidy tale by Bill Stratton that was smartly scripted by series story consultant David Chase.

Tipped to the mysterious deaths by old Vegas colleague Swede Brytoski (Larry Storch), Carl is able to ace out fellow reporter Ron Updyke for Tony's assignment to cover the wedding of celebrity yogi Amerta Mera in Los Angeles. Once there, and having missed the matrimonial-minded maharishi because he was investigating disturbing findings in Barstow, he enlists Faye Kruger (Kathleen Nolan), Mera's realtor who just happens to be a former reporter herself, to write the groovy guru's nuptials piece while he pursues the vampire.

First, though, he spars with LAPD's Lieutenant Jack Matteo (William Daniels), erudite and exasperated while having to parry with reporters at the scene of two murders committed by the vampire--only Matteo claims that two Satanists already in custody are responsible for the corpses that have been drained of blood. That won't be Kolchak's only encounter with Matteo as Daniels delivers the first memorable performance of a "Night Stalker" set-piece: the police investigator with whom Kolchak invariably tangles as Daniels and Darren McGavin sparkle in their scenes together.

But as Kolchak pieces together the identity of the vampire, Catherine Rawlins (Suzanne Charny), moonlighting as a call-girl for "sugar mac" Ichabod Grace (Jan Murray), he must also fend off, by telephone, Tony, who is none too happy to read his piece, written by Faye, that's more suited to "Better Homes and Gardens" in some hilarious exchanges as McGavin and Simon Oakland solidify their antagonistic bond.

With no dialog, only beastly, guttural hissing, Charny indeed seems supernatural as her Catherine throws football players around like tackling dummies in a frightening kinetic pantomime. That leads to the scorching nighttime finale, staged suspensefully and evocatively by director Don Weis, in which this horror series maximizes its limited resources to stunning effect, the first "Night Stalker" episode with real teeth, although you do have to wonder: Would a vampire choose to live adjacent to a hill topped by a giant cross?

Carl (Darren McGavin) is determined to kill a beautiful, but extremely vicious, female vampire unknowingly unearthed by a road construction crew.

After Jack the Ripper and aliens, it is only natural that sooner or later Kolchak would come up against a vampire. Possibly for the second time if you count the movie. But either way, this time it is a female vampire, which really calls to mind some of the finer films from Hammer Studios.

This is one of the stronger episodes, though it does have one problem (in my opinion): it strays too far from Chicago. For me, Kolchak and Chicago go hand in hand, and it is great when we can get some authentic Midwest backgrounds. But that is just my bias.