The older one gets, the more one relies on others. You need your crew - your friends and your community. If your community lets you down, your friends are all you've got. Ask the people of Roosevelt Heights. Swastikas are showing up all over this Jewish neighborhood. The city authorities have given up trying to get rid of the rats. The police have grown apathetic to the devoured bodies that appear regularly each night, and when the media notices it's to do little more than lament "what a shame". Yeah, your friends are all you've got getting you by. Pray for Roosevelt Heights, because those friends are turning out to not be what they seem.
Ask Buck Feinman, night guard at a meat rendering facility. Better yet, ask his friend Harry Starman, 'cuz Buck's dead now. He left his poker party to get clean drinking glasses, and when they went to see what was keeping him found him among the rest of the gnawed meat. The police pass it off as natural causes (old age) compounded by the environment (local rodent population).
Ask Harry Starman, he's got another idea. There's this crazy Hindu, see, new to the 'hood, he's the one that's been spray-painting graffiti swastikas everywhere. He's opened his own Indian cuisine restaurant. In a Jewish community, no one wants any. Crazy, I told ya. Guy showed up with the first of the deaths. Did you ask Harry Starman? Too late now, he's dead too. Pretty thoroughly chewed in under a minute. Pretty fast work even for rats.
Harry had been talking to reporter Carl Kolchak. No, literally, talking to him the very moment he was killed. Funny thing, though, poor Harry had thought he was talking to two Kolchaks at the same time. One had jumped the back fence to the Indian stranger's residence, and the other came sauntering down the alley. The Kolchak in the back yard heard Harry die but couldn't see it. Stranger still, a pair of patrol officers died nearby, rumor has it they both had spotted people they trusted in an alley moments before they went in. One saw a fellow cop. One saw his mom. Kolchak sees a story.
Horror in the Heights, penned by Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster, is one of the best stories offered in The Night Stalker series. The nature of the threat is made apparent but audiences are kept guessing about why it's happeneing and who or what is responsible. Xenophobia plays a role in the story, both fear of other cultures and generational alienation, but Sangster introduces his themes observationally instead of being heavy-handed about them (he doesn't hammer them home, if you'll pardon the pun). for the usually comically leavened series it's a pretty grim hour, with dry and weary character-driven humor that isn't much relief and is certainly not camp. Kolchak himself isn't developed much (he is driven throughout by simple decency both in his job then later his heroism) but the portrayal of his editor, Vincenzo, is laudable - when Kolchak hands in a death notice for Feinman, Vincenzo tells him not to editorialize: if there's a story, do the job right and investigate. We also get to see Vincenzo stand up for his staff against bullying by the police. In short, he's written as a professional who knows and deserves his job, which doesn't happen with him that often on K:TNS. He's usually a timid gasbag and butt of jokes. It's refreshing to see him written with respect.
Miss Emily gets some character development, rounding out the episode's treatment of the elderly and demonstrating them to be both physically and mentally fit and active. She's writing her advice column for inspiration as she aspires to write a novel, and she's not averse to making a new romantic connection should one appear. Ron Updyke gets the second-best laugh of the night just by being himself, interjecting with an unasked-for lesson about culture clash and the invention of the longbow, confuzzling his colleagues. He is upstaged only by the Hindu, who explains that he is hunting a Rakshasa. He says to Kolchak, "One must be honest and brave - maybe you?" He pauses a moment and gives Carl a looking-over. "Um, you'd best go home."
Rakshasa are a Hindu legend, human-devouring shapeshifters that can appear human, presented on K:TNS as a monster that fools it's victims into seeing it as someone close or trusted. It's not a creature most in the Western Christian world are likely to be familiar with, and Sangster makes brilliant use of it re: his themes. Its episodes like this that convince me that the series could have survived a few years longer given scripts of this caliber. It's not the ideas that ran out, it's the budget and the patience of its star. Sangster never lets us guess where he's going, nor does he let on that we're being schooled in diversity. For example, the swastika is commonly recognized today as a symbol of human evil and hate while in fact it was already a far older sigil for good in Hindu faiths. Thanks to the Third Reich, it can no longer be seen that way again. I learned that as a child watching The Night Stalker and I'd bet a lot of others did as well.
This episode's guest cast includes Phil Silvers as Harry Starman, hired for his geniality but not his comedic talents, and young TV veteran Barry Gordon (another Barney Miller alum) as a friendly waiter at the restaurant kvetching on about his crazy boss and ragging on the entrees.
Creep factor is high with a highlight being the death of Starman only feet away from Kolchak. There's something especially affecting about horror when it's tied to the exotic, as the servant of Brahma's home is: the ugliness of the swastikas (as we take them in the moment), the beauty of the beads at the entrance, the sitar for incidental score all make a scene that is alluring and upsetting in its tension. We make wrong guesses just like most of the characters, out of ignorance. We're often scared of the wrong things. It's a lesson that's always current.
The mistrusted agent of Brahma is an old man who has no one left. He must rely on the kindness, understanding, and goodness of a stranger, Kolchak, who is intelligent enough and concerned enough to have sussed out the truth of the situation. The story is brought back to its theme...and then Kolchak, self-styled loner that he is, faces Miss Emily in a dark alley and has to decide an issue of trust. He must be getting older.
10 flaming sword dances in tight spaces.
Asides: how can it be rumored that the two cops thought they saw aquaintances when no one else was nearby when they died?
I keep misremembering this ep as having the Hindu hero die in bed. He is ill, certainly, but Kolchak confronts the Rakshasa on his way to getting medical help for him. No more mention is made of what becomes of the old man. I assume he lived. It's the nod to 'passing on the torch' that makes me stop at 'passing on'.
If the Brahman thought the Rakshasa was appearing to him in the form of Kolchak, whom he's never seen before, that doesn't suggest good things of his relationship to his employee. Too bad, they both seem like nice people who'd get along.
Kudos to Jimmy Sangster for showing the younger writers how to do it right.
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