The Future of Sinister Simian - a Post-it Note

The slow disintegration of my family and personal situation that has been growing worse for the past two or three years is now fully upon me.  My parents are gone, my home soon will be.  I have a place to go, but it will be a struggle for everyone involved, a situation I am loath to inflict on the people trying to help me.

If it is possible to return to this blog in the future and resume contributing reviews I will do so.  It won't be for awhile, and doubtful with any regularity.

I'm currently trying to cull my DVD collection, sadly.  I have a few thousand discs.

No promises.  I've got a good dozen or more Draculas (Draculae?) to go, more Stephen King, Tsukamoto's Kotoko (I still haven't see Fires on the Plain), quite a few by Sion Sono - though I don't have the same grasp on his work...I'd like to write about the 1988 remake of D.O.A., part review and part personal reaction...it's a movie about a guy who has only hours left to live, and I saw it when I was deeply depressed.  I'd like to do some Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento.   For that matter, I'm tempted to try to review Spike Lee.  Lee is an interesting case...the public Lee is kind of an asshole, but the private Lee seems to be a decent, thoughtful person...and Lee the director informs his films with all the consideration that seems to escape Public Lee when he  sounds off.  I think he's a tremendously talented (if unreliable), passionate filmmaker, provocative in ways good and bad. 

I'd also like to write about Blue is the Warmest Color or Shortbus.  Or the abysmal but fascinating trainwreck that is Caligula.  Tinto Brass wuz robbed.

Then there's the other half of Kolchak's run...and Russian Roulette, an unremarkable but highly endearing Canadian spy thriller from the '70s starring George Segal.  I have to lose my Doctor Who collection, sadly.  Space:1999, now,  that could be fun.

Wish me luck.  I have a small handful of friends who are good people and want to see me through this.  I hope to be back again next year.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Energy Eater

This week Kolchak takes on mucho Menudo.  That oughtta scare ya.  No, wait, my bad.  It's Matchemonedo. 

Dispatched by Vincenzo to a press tour of the new Lakefront Medical Research Center, Kolchak finds the place has opened prematurely.  There are alarming cracks throughout the subbasements, the air is stiflingly hot even with the AC working overtime to chill things, the elevator won't run smoothly, and even the grand opening event's bar is closed.  There's a story here to dig into of malfeasance and safety failures.  What's causing the damage - settling?  A geothermal vent, was the land not adequately researched? 

What he doesn't know and will soon learn is that people are already dying, and not in explicable ways.  The blood of the victims has congealed to a tarry substance.  The first two to die were a pair of steel workers for a construction service - they fell from a great height.  After that, the rest of the team walked off the job.  It was a Native American outfit.  Kolchak seeks the input of their super, who is also their shaman, one Jim Elkhorn.

This our third consecutive week that Kolchak has faced a legend of Native American origin, and the first time that any Indian has been allowed a voice as a character.  Jim Elkhorn is played by William Smith, making a happy break from his line of b-movie tough guys*.  He's a powerfully built man that you don't  doubt for a moment could single-handedly take apart a tavern and everyone in it, but Elkhorn never raises so much as his voice - not even when warning Kolchak that the reporter and his camera are about to meet his foot.  Oh, he's a modern macho man but his means of proving it is by making smooth moves on every attractive woman he sees.  Speaking French and being a household fix-it get him so much further.  I half-expected him to say he's a lover, not a fighter.  Elkhorn has fully assimilated into White Western Culture but accepts his people's lore as truth.  On the other hand, he feels  embarrassed about performing the rituals, as if he's afraid he will look comical to Western eyes.  He calls himself a shaman but admits he'd rather not pursue it...and he has a degree in business administration but has excuses not to pursue that either. 

Add to that Smith's casual presence, as immediately genial as it is is kickass. He and Mcgavin have an instant rapport even as Elkhorn and Kolchak begin at odds.  Few incidental characters on K:TNS are as fully rounded as Elkhorn, so I gotta give high marks to Smith and writers Arthur Rowe and Rudolph Borchert for that.

It's from Elkhorn that Kolchak learns of Matchemonedo.

According to 'The Pottawatomis: history and folklore of the Indians of Kankakeeland' (Al Stone, 1960),  "The Pottawatomi believed that two great spirits ruled and governed the world . . . Kitchemonedo (the Great Spirit, who was good) and Matchemonedo (the Evil Spirit, who was quite wicked.) We know that the Potta- watomi originally worshipped the sun, and we believe that they developed the concept of the two great spirits from the teachings of the Christian missionaries."
 http://archive.org/stream/pottawatomishist00ston/pottawatomishist00ston_djvu.txt

According to what I've been reading, the Potouatomi ascribe many things to Manitou, spirits of good or ill, and their culture places great emphasis on health and healing.  Apropos then that a hospital should be at the center of the episode.

Elkhorn claims that Matchemonedo goes much  further back, reported by other tribes, and is thought of as the Bear God.  I can't speak to whether the writers made that up or had much better research material than I found.  TNS presents Matchemonedo as a Lovecraftian being, invisible and eternal.  It feeds on raw energy, like electricity and plasma. A highlight of the episode is a chilling moment when Kolchak and Elkhorn recreate an image caught by a spill of x-ray plates to reveal a gigantic, angry eye. This history is clever writing that provides its own solution: the Bear God is so named because it hibernates in the cold months.  The area it inhabits had had a man-made lake until it was drained to make way for the hospital, thus the being has been awakened.  That means if it can be frozen, it will  go back to sleep.  That's a lot less arbitrary than a stake through the heart or silver bullets.   There too I'm liking the script.  On the other hand...

The writer gives us one of the less flattering portraits of Carl Kolchak.  We've seen him charming before, which he still is here, unfailingly.  We've seen him underhanded and manipulative, which he also is here, though usually for a bit of throwaway humor.  His lesser instincts are more pervasive this week, feeling more integral to the character to unflattering effect.  In the past he has been motivated by a desire to save lives or see the right thing done.  This week throws that for a  curve, and it's both a strength and a weakness for the episode.  A strength because it gives us something a bit different.  The character interaction is more complex.  As well as Elkhorn, Kolchak enlists the aid of Nurse Janis Eisen (Elaine Giftos), another fully dimensional role.  She chafes at the intrusion of a reporter trying to find bad press for her place of employment, but frustration at the deteriorating situation forces her to become a whistle-blower.  Kolchak, knowing that women  are  a weakness for Elkhorn, makes his way through the shaman's door by sending Eisen through it first.  They find him wooing his apartment neighbor who has tried to run a muffin through her toaster.  The scene is a low-key comic delight with four-way byplay and  a suggestion of other places the muffin could be stuffed.
 
Kolchak has managed to get rid of one distraction only to give Elkhorn another in Janis.  She reciprocates the attraction.  Instead of the usual sexual byplay with the lead most shows would offer, it's all between the side characters with Carl oblivious singlemindedly focused on Matchemonedo.  It's not the first time he's raised questions of asexuality, but an early exchange caught my attention: when he's greeted at the press tour by a young woman, he comments that she must be an aspiring actress.  She says that it's difficult to get exposed, and he replies - smirkingly, looking her up and down - "Oh, I don't know about that."  Excuse me?  Jesus, Carl, a casting couch joke?  Was that meant to be snide or...please don't tell me that was your idea of a come-on!  No wonder you never have a date. That was totally out of the blue and uncalled for.  Pervy Uncle Carl.  Nice.

Which leads back to Eisen.  She's an interesting  character, but once Elkhorn is on board neither Kolchak nor Rowe & Borchert have any use for her.  Kolchak has spent the episode using people (Miss Emily to write his first article on the hospital's opening, Eisen to reach Elkhorn), manipulating them (psyching Vincenzo into covering a story Kolchak doesn't want to be bothered with) and generally lying his way past obstacles, but in TEE he's downright cold-blooded in his dismissal of a room full of bodies, one of which looks to be Janis Eisen.  We never see her again.  I don't know what to make of it, because Elkhorn doesn't react with any concern for the dead either.  Is this bad writing, or have Borchert and Rowe given us the ugly truth about Carl as they see it?  Betrayal of character, or insightful summary? 

For that matter, Vincenso also has a moment that doesn't sit well.  When Miss Emily confesses that she wrote Carl's article, which she based on concern over the poor state of health care for the elderly, Vincenzo has the balls to ridicule both the older generations and the very concept of concern for them.  This, to Miss Emily's face.  It's beyond rude.  It also fail credibility - no editor would have such lousy sense of a newsworthy story.

It seems clear that Kolchak is no hero in the writers' eyes.  Consider the finale.  For once Kolchak has met with authorities who have the with to realize that his arguments are hard to refute, and they act on his advice.  They  do so grudgingly, of course, and secretly.  They even spite him for it, giving a story to the other news agencies but not INS.  It's a false story, of course, but it provokes Kolchak anyway, as it was meant to.  The hospital is evacuated and liquid nitrogen is pumped into the basement.  Kolchak, however, is determined to get a story and a  photo of Matchemonedo, and so armed with expensive cameras and infrared film storms once more unto the breach.  The final confrontation has no particular nobility about it - he's not vanquishing a foe, just getting a snapshot out of reckless pride.  I like the way it's staged, with cameras jiggled in a forerunner of 'shaky-cam', a shift to closeups to make the space suddenly more claustrophobic, and jarring changes in camera POV of the same shot. Hospitals are natural settings for horror.  We are till at ease in them, traditionally as places of disease and death, and more recently for fear of technology overwhelming us.  Add the cloying feeling of being deep underground, you have a winning setup. 

The Energy Eater present a dilemma for rating.  Overall I think it's a winner for it's richer character and diversions from formula, but  there are evident flaws.  How could Kolchak lay passed out on a floor  covered in liquid nitrogen and survive with only minor frostbite?  More troubling is his seeming sociopathy, which is either laudably honest writing or missing the mark badly. 

I'll  give it 8 blueberry-oat suppositories.

*I'll always think of William Smith foremost in another non-tough-guy role, as the race-car  pro in David Cronenberg's Fast Company.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Spanish Moss Murders

 
"Père Malfait gon' getcha!"

Objects may appear smaller than actual size.

When the French came to Louisiana in the 18th Century they learned the Native American legend of the 'Father of a Thousand Leaves", a name which translated to French as Le Père de Mille Feuilles. It was a tall creature of vengeance in the bayous, covered in moss, branches, and mud, able to disguise itself as a tree. The Father was a protector of the swamps - do malice there and you would be sure to have a horrible encounter with Le Père. As language does, the pronunciation and translation migrated: the legend grew among the settlers as Père Malfait: roughly, Father of Bad Doings.

"Père Malfait" has a dreamy ring to it, non? Smooth like melted butter, saucy like a Cajun patois. But you can just call him Bad Daddy. He was a legend to tell your kids to scare them into line. That's how Paul Langlois came to know him, a childhood fear that lives on in the darkest parts of Paul's psyche. These days Paul's been spending all his time there, inside his own head, being a volunteer in a sleep study experiment. He has been asleep for six weeks.

A psychology grad student is dead, victim of a hit&run according to the police. The chef of an expensive French restaurant has been murdered in his kitchen. A street musician has been killed in a basement where he liked to toke up. All disparate deaths but for a couple shared details: they all had their chests crushed by inhuman force, each of the bodies had been strewn with some green vegetable matter. As Kolchak investigates, he learns that they also all knew Paul Langlois. Langlois, a musician and resentful hothead from Louisiana. Langlois, who has a perfect alibi.

One of my favorite character actors, Severn Darden, plays Dr. Aaron Pollack who is conducting a sleep analysis on his volunteer subject, Langlois. The purpose of this pure research is to study the brain patterns when it is deprived of dream activity over an extended period. Every now and then the monitors go nuts - something is happening in that skull, but no one knows what. Pollack finds it fascinating, and it's the only thing he has any interest in or patience for. Darden has a knack for underplayed comic gold, here playing Pollack as a soft-spoken but disdainful sufferer of fools. His encounters with Kolchak are a little different from the usual exasperated authorities the reporter clashes with. For all his complaints, Pollack is a loquacious sort.

Pollack: "I try to be a nice guy."
Kolchak: "How's that working out?"
Pollack: "I don't know."

Not Captain Siska, though. 'Mad Dog' Siska is a congenitally angry man who may have met his match in Kolchak, who manages to undo weeks of anger management therapy in a few hours time. It was a nice change while it lasted, his "I'm okay..."(heavy sigh)" you're okay" resistance to Kolchak's persistence, but this is the great Keenan Wynn and we'd be cheated if we didn't see him lose it sooner or later. "To tell you the truth, you're not okay! The people in group therapy didn't tell me I was ever gonna meet anybody as un-okay as you are!"

Kolchak follows a chain of leads to the street scene where he encounters Langlois' associates. One of them, Morris Shapiro (playing to rubes as 'Pepe') tells him a little about the sleeper and lets us in on Père Malfait, a childhood legend Langlois shared with some of his fellow Louisianans. Père Malfait was a monster from the Bayou, covered in moss. We learn from a botanic garden that the vegetation left on the victims is Spanish Moss, and it only grows in Louisiana.

As Kolchak and Shapiro talk, walking along an alley at night, Morris suddenly vanishes in the middle of the conversation - there one moment, gone the next, silently snatched away without a trace. Of all the scares in Kolchak to have stayed with me, it's one of the more unnerving for it's sudden sharp turn: TNS tends to telegraph it's scares. This one catches us unaware. Kolchak remains on the scene, trying to find the missing 'Pepe' in the dark, unaware that the thing that took him shares the space with him. It's not the only creepy scene in the episode. Another is a nasty fright when Kolchak discovers that the monster is now looking for him and has come to his very desk at INS. Earlier attacks were preceded by half-glimpses of a creature in glass, translucent, not quite there. Director Gordon Hessler maintains Chicago as a world usually seen at night. The first shot is a close up of an abstract painting, and the final sequence takes place in the city's network of sewers, which could double as a metaphor for the murky waters of Paul Langlois' id.

TSSM is one case in which it may be helpful to see the unrestored version, as the costume worn by Richard Kiel leaves something to be desired. It's a guy wearing moss. They didn't even green up his hands. Still...don't those sewer scenes look great?

That feeling of a nighttime world and the presence of dread is well balanced with the episode's character-driven humor ala Darden and Wynn. This week a full twenty-seven minutes passes before we even see the INS staff, they're used sparingly but with precision. Updyke has two scenes, one of them nothing more than a telling look - his singular spoken line is perfectly Updykian.

Kudos to writers Alvin R. Friedman and David Chase. It's Friedman's story, so it must have been he who brought in Père Malfait. That's a areal legend and even more obscure than the Diableros of last week. It's not easy to present a legend without diminishing it's power as a legend, but TSMM manages to do this by keeping it just that, it also ushers us into the unexplored realms of dreams and the power of the subconscious. These were hot topics of the era, the stuff of "In Search Of..." with Leonard Nimoy and countless documentaries. It makes TSMM double creepy.

The Spanish Moss Murders scared the hell out of me as a kid, and I'm delighted to say that, seen as an adult, it holds up to my memories in all aspect a kid wouldn't notice: writing, performances, directing, editing, photography. It's always been one of my favorites. I give it a dinner order of Cajun blackened chicken, couscous, and a 10 foot tall seaweed salad.

Asides:
Langlois is played by Donald Mantooth, brother of Emergency! star Randolph Mantooth. He played a cop in The Ripper and has a role in an upcoming episode.

If you enjoyed TSMM, check out the excellent Australian horror movie Patrick (Richard Franklin, 1978) in which a man lying in a coma for years acts out his desires via mental telepathy.

With that I bid you goodnight. Sleep well, pleasant dreams, and remember...Père Malfait, he go' getchoo.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - Bad Medicine

According to Sonoran Indian legend, a diablero is a brujo (sorcerer) who by way of black magic can transform himself into a variety of wild creatures, such as birds of prey, dogs, wolves, coyotes and more.

Last week we had a threat who was human - imbued with Satanic powers, yes, but human. Robert Palmer in The Devil's Platform was human in his ambition, in his cunning, and in his deliberation. Sorcerers likewise are human beings, but for all the characterization the diablero gets in Bad Medicine it had me wondering whether Richard Kiel was playing a man who could appear as an animal or an animal who could appear as a man.

Wealthy women in Chicago are beginning to die off. At first it looked like suicide, until a chauffer also adds his body to the count via a broken neck. He was clutching a black feather. Kolchak also witnesses firsthand a robbery in which a police dog is killed apparently by another dog (or coyote) and two guards turn their own guns on themselves. A man is seen in Native American garb, is chased to the roof from which he leaps, and vanishes into thin air*.

it's got the INS staff abuzz. Tony isn't convinced there's a story to be had. Were the early deaths suicides? His staff can't see eye to eye with him on that, or that it's reasonable that the wealthy have wanted to keep a low profile. Ron Updyke is sent to cover the funeral but is too sensitive to do the job. Miss Cowles thinks Carl is on to something with the deaths being suspicious. Meanwhile, Carl is chasing tangents about coyotes and some nut dressing up like an Indian. Vincenzo's having a hard time drawing it into coherence.

If Vincenzo thinks the story is a mess, I too think the story is a mixed bag. Medicine bag maybe. There's a useful pun somewhere but I can't make it work.

A friend recently commented that the INS gang reminds him of Barney Miller: a motley ensemble of well-drawn, distinct, quirky personalities that bounce lines off each other with delicious timing. He's absolutely right. For the third week in a row the writing feels organic to the characters, and perhaps even more confident as it handles the entire newsroom at once in multiple scenes. If only Monique had still been around, it would have been a full house and a full episode. Even a sarcastic young photo lab tech gets a good scene. Never mind the spooky stuff - If K:TNS were a sitcom that never strayed from this single set, I'd watch it loyally.

Since my friend pointed this out, it becomes obvious that the guest cast fits the comparison as well. barney Miller thrived by its regular cast, but were fed material through an endless stream of colorful strangers who filed through the precinct case by case - vivid and hilarious people fully rounded and played by veteran character actors of the era. Every week you'd see actors you'd seen a dozen times before. Alice Ghostley, for example, who shows up on TNS this week as the curator of a museum on Native American folklore. She plays the part straight, yet her reaction bubbles with humor beneath when the details turn too preposterous. Another amusing scene is Kolchak dealing with a strict dog owner and trying to soothe his own nerves by speaking German to a well-disciplined canine. This parade of eclectic irregulars for comic relief is part of K:TNS' niche. When it delivers on this score, applying the comedy with the lightest touch and emphasizing character over humor, it's worth seeing.

I wish I could say the rest of this episode holds up its end. Give credit for an interesting choice of villain, at least, and for looking outside the West's dominant faith for inspiration. How it's handled on the other hand...

Purely on a surface level, the attacks by the sorcerer are eerie in their details but not conducive to a traditionally spooky atmosphere. Richard Kiel plays the diablero, and his stony face and malevolent glare are plenty menacing. The spookiness comes from the use of sound: first an animal of one form or another trespasses on a scene, and it's vocalizations are treated with an electronic distortion that remains in the air; then when the brujo appears the score goes breathy over a relentless percussion. The victims are under a spell. This works for me, though I've seen the episode so many times that altogether it fails to make me feel a pervading chill and I'm not sure anymore how much it ever did. It does lead to an appreciably tense finale when Kolchak tries to put an end to the sorcerer but loses the one weapon that could render the sorcerer powerless. Even that, though is hobbled by unintended absurdity. Kolchak creeps up on the brujo who is intoning (in an electronically altered voice) an incantation that is surely meant to sound otherworldly. "EE-eye-ee-eye-ohhh, ee-eye-ee-eye-ohhh, OOOOH ee-eye-ee-eye-oh." Pretty much takes the piss out of the scene.

So too is the investigation aspect weak this week, as first Carl leaps to a number of conclusions that are dubious. Saving a great deal of time, Victor Jory appears unbidden as a Native American holy man who not only knows everything Kolchak needs to learn about diableros but even miraculously happens to know the very one terrorizing Chicago. That ought to be a good story, right? But we don't get it, and Carl hasn't the wit to ask. Diableros are a Southern legend, this one is pretty far afield. These are the beliefs of the people of the pueblos, the communities that lived in apartment-like multi-lever housing of adobe, often along cliffsides. Kolchak lights on a story Ron is working, conveniently dropped earlier in the script, of an unfinished highrise.

Here is where the greatest disappointment Bad Medicine lies. I'm reminded of a scene in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent in which another journalist, played by Joel McCrae learns that he is being sent to Europe to discover whether war is going to break out. He asks his astonished editor whether it might be a good idea to interview Hitler. "He must have something on his mind." Don't you think this diablero must have something on his mind? That's a conversation I would love to have heard. Instead, Kolchak - and the script - treat him as a creature to be hunted down and killed. It's a fine line walked by the script, as the holy man informs us that this diablero is under a curse to "wander the centuries" seeking treasure, and only after amassing a magnificent fortune may he pass into the next world. So...is he or is he not still human? No, never mind that, is he or is he not still interesting as a character? And, troublingly, is Kolchak guilty of forgetting that a human being is owed the right to trial? When he confronted Robert Palmer, it was to thwart him not kill him. The metaphysical state of the diablero (human or spirit) is left purposely vague so that we won't raise that objection. I think it's a dodgy kinda dodge.


More than one opportunity is lost here. I imagine the producers felt that The Night Stalker was not a property they wanted to get political with, though by the Seventies most television was dealing with prejudice and resentments, and injustice toward the Native American population well acknowledged - meaning, not an issue likely to rile viewers. Never mind, I wouldn't have expected much on that count anyway...but there's a more damning loss here, and that's the dramatic one. Let the diablero speak for himself. Let the conflict challenge us. There's a story here! Or, to quote Kolchak from one of the movies, "This is news, Vincenzo, nyyeewwws!"

5 "pyoo--webb-loes", give or take wiring and ductwork.

Asides:

Eidth Cowles, last week referred to as "Miss Emily" (whom we know is the INS advice columnist) officially announces herself as Emily Cowles when she answers the phone. Gaffe: she drops the 's' from her own name.

*Where does that phrase come from, 'into thin air'? I guess vanishing into thick air is pretty mundane, isn't it? Like losing someone in a fog.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Devil's Platform

It's good to see a villain that's human for a change, even if said  villain does spend most of his of time running around on all fours.

It's election time, and Chicago is finding Senate hopeful Robert Palmer simply irresistible.   It doesn't hurt that his opponents are dropping like flies.  His allies too - Kolchak is in the right place at the right time to witness a tragic elevator failure that kills a carload of people that included one Stephen Wald,  a disillusioned campaign member that was about to disclose some damaging material on Palmer.  The only survivor is a big black dog Carl manages to photograph.  The dog runs away, with Carl accidentally snagging a pendant it was wearing.  We the audience know that Palmer got into the elevator - he wasn't in it when it hit the basement.

For once Vincenzo is supportive of a story Kolchak is following, provided it's solidly based in evidence.  It's a good, down-to-earth story of political corruption.  It does have an irritating drawback, as Kolchak insists on obsessing over that dog.  The damned thing keeps showing up.  It attacks Carl when he drops in on the Palmer estate hoping for an interview (bites a hole in Kolchak's pocket and takes back the pendant), and is seen by police ripping apart Wald's secretary who had a briefcase full of blackmail material on Palmer.  Off the record?  The police shot six rounds into that dog at close range, and it just stood there staring at them like it enjoyed it.  Meanwhile, the dog has disappeared from Kolchak's photo.  The dog has five toes per paw, which Updyke informs him is impossible.

I've been complaining that the writing of the episodes has been venturing into camp, which can be either amusing or painful, and threatens my suspension of disbelief.  Light comic relief is one thing, and it works if it rises organically from the characters and situations.  It's quite another if it becomes outright comedy that relies on caricatures or too-clever byplay.  Firefall was the show done right, IMO,   with well-rounded characters, a clever plot that doesn't take a predictable path, and humor that's organic.  TDP has another smart script well-directed, though not up to the level of Firefall - it's never particularly scary, nor does it surprise or misdirect.  We know what's going on well ahead of Kolchak, where it would have been more rewarding to discover the secrets of the case with him.  all the same, it's a nicely urbane piece with good character writing.  Vincenzo is less bellicose and more the model of an editor with a head for a good story ethically presented.  Updyke and Kolchak play their scenes less like high school rivals and more like realistic colleagues; they  trades shots at each other but not so maliciously that they can't share office space together.  Ruth McDevitt as Edith Cowles finally clicks into place, revealed as the advice columnist "Miss Emily" who was much alluded to but not seen in 'The Ripper'.  She's a pleasant sort, always wanting to do nice turns for her fellow office workers like buying them gifts when she's out of town.  She brings Carl a nice hat.  It's...not a Kolchak hat.  But it's a nice hat.

In the course of covering the story Carl meets a doctor who tries to brush him off, and doesn't reveal much, but the exchange is notable for a couple of reasons.  One, the dialog is terse and sharp without being bombastic.  In fact, this episode is entirely devoid of the usual antagonism between Kolchak and the  authority-of-the-week (there isn't a foil at all this week), which is a welcome change.  The doctor is mistrustful, secretive, abrasive, but also reasonable.  Also a female authority figure, with no fuss made about it, in a show that's been spotty on it's presentation of women.

Then there's our villain, Palmer, coolly played by now-veteran Tom Skerritt in an  early role.  He's an icy one, married to an equally icy woman unruffled in public but unhappy in private.  Her breezy rebuffs of Kolchak's efforts made me want to see more of her. (Kolchak: "What's it like, living with Bob?"  "He's perfect."  "I wish I were."  "So do I.  Goodnight.")  That doesn't happen, but with an economy of scenes we learn that privately she is left cold from her husband's pursuit of power and uncomfortable with his secrets.  We get the sense he's not the same man anymore.  He's certainly not a man who would hesitate to turn on her.  It's not a lot of development but it's more than the standard monster on TNS gets. 

Everything falls into place for Kolchak a mere ten minutes or less from the closing credits when an info packet on Palmer lands on his desk.  The candidate is seen in one photo wearing the same pendant that the dog sports: a pentacle in a circle.  Kolchak scours the libraries for books on Satanism.  He also reaches for Ms. Cowles' souvenir bottle of holy water. 

There's a nice sequence herein involving the INS darkroom.  A solid minute and forty seconds are spent developing a blowup of Palmer to see the medallion, and developing tension.  No  coincidence that the scene is dark, lit entirely in red.  Yes, that's standard for a darkroom but it also plays on the nerves and sets a mood.  Normally we should have  had Monique doing the work for him, with half a minute of banter serving as exposition.  We know what the scene is leading to, and utilizing Monique would have cut to the chase...but that would have lent the scene an entirely different flavor, useless to the episode.  Instead the director takes three times as long and establishes a mood of dread before the inevitable confrontation.

Kolchak sneaks into the Palmer household that evening and finds Robert in his basement preparing a ritual.  Palmer knows he's there and calmly calls him forth.  Skerritt underplays the scene beautifully, no histrionics or boasting an all the more threatening for his supreme confidence.  He makes Kolchak an offer: he could become the evening's blood sacrifice or he could see his life's ambitions to fruition by becoming a servant and acolyte.  Palmer's going to the top, President, and he'll need allies in the press - people to squelch honest  reporting and be a conduit for his lies.  That's how tyrants work, history shows.  Sad I need to reiterate that, but in 2017 the lesson is still timely...and the devil has nothing to do with it.  We saw it in Russia, in any number of Third World countries, in '30s Germany, and we're seeing it again today.  That's not a matter of right or left, it's a matter of democracy and freedom.  I know people on both sides of the aisle who are alarmed.  Devalue a free press, and slide into tyranny. 

"The offer expires almost immediately."  Skerritt gets a monologue that includes an  insightful passage about Kolchak himself.  "You're a good reporter.  Not a great one, you have character flaws that are going to keep total success from your grasp, but you are nonetheless a very good reporter.  You would like more than anything to have the Pulitzer Prize.  Though publicly you scorn the very concept of awards, you would like more than anything else to get to New York and work on a major daily paper.  You would even like a suede-backed chair at your desk.  Not leather, suede.  Such small ambitions, really.  Your editor is Anthony Vincenzo, he frustrates you terribly...you blame him for your problems but you know that you yourself are responsible for most of them. Mr. Kolchak, all those stumbling blocks can be very easily put aside.  You can have as little as you want and much more, starting tonight."

This is the crux of the threat.  Words, carefully chosen and backed up by demonstrated power.  The threat lies in a moral choice.  This again is an important change from the usual baited chase and trap, to the story's benefit.  We're never in doubt what Kolchak will choose, but we can feel how palpable the temptation for him. At the episode's start Kolchak laments that politicians seem "fearless, independent, and energetic" rather than "like the rest of us: timid, insecure, and lazy". Now Palmer is telling Kolchak that Palmer was just like him and did something about it. We've never seen a conundrum hit so close to home for Kolchak before.   Rightfully, he never voices his reason for the choice he makes - be it simplistic or complex, fueled by morals, personal integrity, or just stark terror at consigning his soul to darkness.  

I will give it 9 nice hats.  In spite of it's lack of scares, it's a good story.

Asides:
a bartender is played by Stanley Adams, Tribble-trader Cyrano Jones of Star Trek.

The juxtaposition of politics and Satan is not a new one, but The Devil's Platform looks forward to The Omen (which also has scenes involving scary dogs) just a couple of years down the road.  It's sequel, Damien: Omen II, even features a demise by crashing elevator.  Omen III: The Final Conflict has a nice turn by Sam Neill as the Antichrist that might have been inspired by Skerritt's unruffled quietude in TDP - they look not dissimilar to each other. 

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - Firefall

People in the life of celebrated composer Ryder Bond keep dying.  The circumstances are suspicious, with Bond himself spotted on the scene each time despite having alibis.  The police can find no hint of foul play - the victims died of fire, seemingly accidentally.  A cigarette, the police say, dropped on a mattress when the smoker fell asleep.  What no one can explain is how the bodies could be incinerated so quickly yet leave only minimal damage to surroundings, including the furniture on which the remains were found lying.

While I don't really remember the entire episode from childhood - I think most of it went over my head - I vividly recall two scenes as particularly frightening. 

Maybe the reason it didn't entirely connect is because it took a creepy concept - spontaneous combustion - and tried to adapt it to a show about monsters.  SC freaked me out as a kid, the one supernatural thing that disturbed me more (almost) than I wanted to hear about.  A person falls asleep, then the body consumes itself from the inside out in unimaginable heat but without causing a fire around it.  That's pretty damn scary.  Problem is, it's a phenomenon without an agenda.  It doesn't stalk people, it just...happens.  In a show like this you have to have a cause that can be investigated, and the investigation has to lead somewhere dramatic.  You need a villain.  In this case, the solution to the mystery strays so far from SC that it kinda lost me along the way.  Ghosts and SC don't share a connection.

Not just any ghost,  Firefall's premise focuses on a doppleganger.  In folklore a doppleganger was not the same as a ghost.  Though a wraith, they were inextricably linked to a living person as if an integral part of themselves: their evil twin in spirit form.  Firefall takes liberties with the doppleganger, as one of Kolchak's resources informs him that it is the ghost of one who envied the target in life and wishes to torment him with the eventual aim of becoming him.  Rider Bond inspired such feeling in one Franky Markoff, an arsonist recently executed gang-style.  Franky loved music and dreamed of being a conductor.  Now an undead spirit, he's bent on getting his wish.  Bond's musicians begin  to die...then his girlfriend, his manager...  Ryder Bond is beside himself.  Literally.

Firefall, I believe, is one of the finest episodes of the series with one of the best scripts.  Kolchak overhears a juicy lead on his police scanner, and soon thinks he may have a story implicating the composer  in a murder or two.  He doesn't know what going on, and for once neither do we.  Nor does Bond, played by Fred Beir with a nuanced restraint: initially cold and imperious with the arrogance of fame, then rattled, ultimately reaching exhausted submission to the reporter trying to save him. Kolchak is on display having to work for his story.  The story unfolds at a steady pace, keeping us intrigued without boring us  or making wild leaps.  Office byplay is more credible than usual, the humor organic to the situation rather than overt or forced - no Abbott & Costellos routines with Vincenzo.  Uptight acts like a schoolboy tattler, justifying Kolchak's abuse of him earlier, yet still displays the genuine concern of a fellow colleague later when Carl reaches a point of collapse.  Monique Marmelstein is used sparingly, trying to be quite helpful as usual without her initial grating armor of defensiveness.  Among many interviews, Kolchak meets the family of the deceased Markoff, where the arsonist's son promises to continue his father's sickness.  It's amusing in a sick, chilly, nasty way.  Each character comes across as fully dimensional - the gypsy friend Carl consults, the police sergeant who does not bluster over Kolchak but reasonably finds him aggravating (as does a witness's dog), Ron Updyke, Monique, Ryder, and even Carl himself in his earnest concern for the life of a man he had set out to expose as a murderer.

The scares are also top shelf, I think, again organic to the premise.  For example, there's a shuddery moement of realization when Kolchak meets with the conductor and after several minutes of talking realizes he was conversing with the spirit instead.   In another scene, the unseen ghost is offended and attacks a piano - the piano seems to go mad all on it's own. Firefall's best setpiece is not the usual stalk-and-trap we've seen before nor even the finale (the finale is plenty chilling and full of fever-dream menace), but a scene of deep panic and pathos as a nearly broken Ryder Bond seeks refuge on sanctified ground as advised by one of kolchak's sources.  He's in a church,  to be exact, desperate for sleep.  If he sleeps, the doppleganger will take him.  The threat is a complicated one - he's in the greatest danger from  people who want very much to help him, thinking he is having a breakdown, they wish to remove him from the church and give a sedative.  They do not see what only Bond and Kolchak can: Bond's diabolical doubled leering in through an open window impossibly high in the church wall.  As they look on, the doppleganger multiplies to become many Bonds tormenting, taunting, rapping at the windows.  It's a hellish spectacle and frightened the crap outta me as a child.  I was not raised in any faith, but I knew the church was supposed to mean sanctuary...here was  a demon that could reach you even there. 

Nor is sleep a refuge, in Firefall.  That also frightened me though the scene at the INS office is played for humor (understated, as I said).  Remember, this originally aired just before my bedtime.  What better evening sendoff that a story in which falling asleep is what kills you?

10 pieces of dubious pet care advice from a non-veterinarian.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Werewolf

 On a cruise liner full of party animals on the prowl, one passenger truly is your boogieman.

It's Winter, and one lucky editor is getting away on a cruise line for swinging singles.  That Tony Vincenzo, what a stud!  Alas, the office Christmas party gifts him with a lump of coal in the form of auditors.  Updyke won't take the ticket, he'd be happier being miserable with his imaginary cold.  Reluctantly, then, the cherished getaway goes to Kolchak - and Vincenzo's damn well not gonna let him enjoy it!  This is a working trip, boyo, Tony wants an expose of the Love Boat.

Once aboard, Kolchak is surrounded by great stories.  An ocean liner, formerly a majestic icon of grace, about to be decommissioned as obsolete in the jet age playing host to a crowd of '70s-modern, sexually jaded passengers rejecting old mores...a divinity school flunky on the make and a purser on the take...a couple who were married and found the institution didn't suit them, and are now are happily divorced swingers together.  it's rich pickings, but Kolchak is more fascinated by the four freshly mangled corpses in the ship's swimming pool.

All hell breaks loose that first night of the cruise.  Something wild is killing passengers on deck, and the crew is running around in pandemonium trying to figure out what it is they're looking for.  Kolchak can't help but notice.  As a ship's crew will, it's 'nothing to see here' to everyone not wearing a uniform.  Captain's a busy man, no time for questions. They all come face to face with the killer that night: a nattily dressed wildman with a face full of hair.  The men are tossed around, and Kolchak is knocked unconscious.

He awakens later in the infirmary to the sound of a fellow passenger upset over horrible nightmares and a wound that hasn't healed for weeks, and is irate at not being given sedatives.  His name is Bernard Steiglitz, he's an officer with NATO, he has anger management issues.

And is hair was perfect.

Steiglitz is a good move for K:TNS, the first monster featured to be given any kind of character depth at all.  Not much, and it's pretty standard for a werewolf portrayal - the guy knows what he is and is distraught over an inability to keep from transforming and killing innocents...but it's more than the series has offered us before in their gallery of creatures.  Steiglitz is played with intensity by Eric Braeden, of The Forbin Project and Escape From the Planet of the Apes.  Braeden is an actor of dark, quiet intensity who holds your attention just standing still.  As Braeden, his intensity is giving way to anger.  Braeden is a little too cold to feel sorry for, but it's  enough to understand the tragedy of his circumstance.  He's not a willing monster, but he's killing all the same.

Leavening that is a strong streak of humor.  Humor has been a part of the Kolchak formula from the first film but it has ramped up considerably since even The Ripper.  First is the fun had at the expense of put-upon Vincenzo and the nebbishy Updyke who  does not have the Winter flu but is  certain the supplements he is taking are making him ill.   This time TNS goes over the line into broader humor with one character suggesting a "drinkie-winkie" and comic actor Dick Gautier (RIP) as movable mouth Mel Tarter, half of the happily-divorced-and-still-dating couple.  Gautier is known for Hymie on Get Smart, but to me he'll always be Robin Hood on When Things Were Rotten.  He's a Love Boat, Love American Style stereotype strictly for laughs, none too bright but always lit, we suspect, friendly and tacky.

Mel's polar opposite is found in Captain Wells (Henry Jones), as sturdy as his ship and twice as icy as the waters it's in.  Again for TNS it's casting to type making use of Jones' air of long-suffering exposure to fools.  Wells can quote every line of sea law that will see Kolchak introduced to irons while the reporter himself cannot fast-talk his way past a single one of Well's men.

Wells: "Article 22, Revised Maritime Code, should any passenger or passengers exhibit, in the captain's opinion, an unbalanced state of mind the captain may order such passenger be put-"

Kolchak: "- to sleep, yes, I know."

Kolchak is fast but the crew is faster, and potential romantic hookup Paula (Nita Talbot) is the fastest of them all.  She's intelligent, which might be why she continues to find  Carl fascinating even after he proves oblivious to sexual overtures.  Too bad, as they have a pretty good chemistry.

Kolchak's seeming asexuality is curious though nothing is made of it, but then the episode is full of incongruous moments that might be funnier than the more overt jokes.  For instance, for a ship full of people who presumably can't wait to party all night, Kolchak is the only person alarmed by the sight of the crew rushing all over the ship in a panic.  "I don't know what's gotten into everyone!" Paula says.  "Claws and fangs", he quips.  Or there's the usual trope of Kolchak's delving into resources to understand what he's up against.  Being aboard ship, he has to rely on Paula's extensive store of movie lore to learn  about lycanthropy.  What better source for a horror show to lean on than Hollywood!  We have silver dress uniform buttons melted to make silver shotgun shells - and exactly what is a shotgun doing aboard a ship?  Is hunting on the list of approved amenities?  I know gun laws were looser then, but really! 

What sets The Werewolf apart is the setting.  The Werewolf was filmed aboard the RMS Queen Mary to give it an air of authenticity, and it's well used.  The beast is every bit as trapped aboard as his fellow passengers and likely prey, and so is Kolchak. In this setting, all anyone can do is stalk, run in panic, or hide behind locked doors.  Everything leads back to itself, a closed circuit maze of corridors and ladders. There's something about ships that make them particularly affecting as a horror setting. Echoes of the Marie Celeste and the Titanic lurked under my thoughts while watching. 

I have to wonder shy a man who knows he's a werewolf books a cruise during a full moon.

Pace is brisk, including the choppy editing  technique that has come to mark the show.  that helps, because the werewolf makeup is nothing inspired. The one look we get, a blurred freeze-and-zoom, is still too clear to be helpful.  Nor does it help that what we are told is bodies "torn limb from limb" can't be shown on television of the era.  I expect a werewolf to tear someone up, not throw him over a railing. 

On balance, I think I have to give it 8 improvised leg irons.


Asides:

Ruth McDevitt returns to the cast as INS contributor Edith Cowles, a creator of puzzles.  McDevitt was first seen as the self-described "weirdo" writing to Miss Emily about her creepy neighbor.  She must have impressed the producers.

Once Kolchak is no longer in his presence, Captain Wells admits that he believe Kolchak may be right.  That's a welcome change and marks him as a smart man.

Kolchak is a writer but he doesn't know what a polemic is?

Wolves do attack humans, but rarely and not for sport but for food or territorial trespass.  They are reputed to be shy of confrontation.  For sheer viciousness, wolves have nothing on mankind.  That should mean that werewolves are at their most dangerous  whenever the moon is not full.

One week it's October, the next Spring, then Winter.  Never mind the  weather, Chicagoans need forecasters to tell them  what time of year it's gonna be tomorrow.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Vampire

Carl Kolchak first came to believe in the supernatural in 1972 when he covered a rash of serial murders in Las Vegas.  The killer turned out to be one Janos Skorzeny...and he was a vampire.  By the time it was over, Kolchak thought the story had been neatly wrapped up (along with his career).  He was wrong.  One of Skorzeny's victims has just awoken by the side of the road where Skorzeny buried her two years ago.  She is no longer human.

That connection from The Night Stalker (1972 telefilm) to Kokchak: The Night Stalker (1974 series) is neither overtly stated nor alluded to by Kolchak himself, so anyone who hasn't seen the original film won't need to feel  they're missing anything, but it does help explain Kolchak's sudden urgency to be on the  scene when he hears that a string of homicides from Vegas to L.A. has left victims with "an inordinate loss of blood".  If you haven't seen the telefilm, it just looks like a reporter's zeal.
 
On learning of the murders from an old friend (TV comedy stalwart Larrry Storch as "Swede" Breitowski), and hearing that Vincenzo needs a reporter to fly to LA to get a story on a celebrity spiritual leader, Kolchak secures the assignment by pretending not to want it.  Updyke volunteers, and has read up on the subject - just a little - but Kolchak knows how to play his boss, and though Updyke sees through it he's helpless to do anything about it.  Too bad for both him and Vincenzo, because Updyke would actually have written the story - Kolchak has no   interest in the guru, it's just a plane ticket to him.

Where the earlier three episodes allowed some mystery for us and Kolchak to discover, 'The Vampire' lets us in on the killer's identity from  the beginning.  Even the story title mocks a concern for spoilers.  Her name is Catherine Rawlins, and we  watch her progress even as Kolchak is still winging his way across the continent. Her introductory scene is possibly the creepiest single image from the series as her hands rising from the earth by the stalled car of a motorist.  It's a blood-curdling moment. In life, she worked L.A. and Vegas as a prostitute.  Returning to L.A. in death she kills her former roommate, steals her clothing, and makes herself  attractive to a pimp who will put her right where she can find easy victims.  By implication Rawlins must be able to pass for human, including speech, but never appears onscreen as anything but a feral animal caught in the act of feeding.  Woe to whoever catches her, because she's violent and stronger than human. Skorzeny was kept silent as well in the movie.  It's an effective approach, minimizing what humanity she once had. 

A police investigation is led by William Daniels as Lt. Matteo, bringing to the role the same imperious irascibility he displayed in 1776 and St. Elsewhere.  Excellent casting -that's two in a  row, following James Gregory, as authoritative foils both  strong and amusing.  Matteo is working on a theory that the killings are being conducted by Satanists using vacuum pumps to drain the victims of blood for use in rituals.  It's preposterous in the details, but at least presents down-to-earth perpetrators. He's about to run headlong into Kolchak who keeps throwing vampires in his face.  Matteo  doesn't have the patience for it.  Do people really get 'run out of town' by police?

Here's a bit of a problem as Kolchak for the first time starts to sound like a loon even to us, the audience.  We know he's right, of course, but what does he do to convince Matteo?  Walk him through the logic?  Ask Vincenzo to tell Matteo what happened two years ago in Vegas?  No, he rants.  Rants about stakes and hammers and the undead. Rants like a true believer thinking the conviction of his passion alone will convert everyone else regardless of reason or fact.  If you're already in a hole, stop digging.  Kolchak is so  carried away he can't stop digging with Matteo.  He can't get it through his head that others have to go through the same process he did, from  skeptic to believer.

Again, it's a testament to Darren McGavin that we cheer on and enjoy Carl Kolchak even though he treats those around him in spectacularly selfish and thoughtless ways.  To remain in L.A. he  has to placate Vincenzo with his given assignment.  To do that, after a token stab at covering it himself, he bamboozles a one-time journalist wannabe into writing it for him.  I have a little trouble with this as well, on a couple of levels.  Faye the realtor was for a brief time a genuine journalist.  Her mind bends to estates these days, and drafts a piece detailing the property the guru used to live in...and I wonder whether she shouldn't know better.  It's comic relief, of course, and we are meant to understand that she is now a realtor because as a writer she made a better estate agent.  No writer's instinct, then, but...not even a fundamental understanding of covering a story?  It may be a quibble, but the more I see of the episode the less these interludes in 'The Vampire' play for me.  Vincenzo should immediately spot that the submitted piece was not written by his own reporter: another quibble.  K:TNS is precariously balancing between character-driven humor and goofiness, and I have to say that camp has never been my favorite flavor.   Speaking of character, I'm leery of Kolchak's intention to sign his byline to Faye's writing.  It's grossly unethical, of course, and a shitty thing to do...but even granting that Kolchak is willing to sink to any dirty trick to get a story, I had always thought his own work was something he held sacrosanct. This isn't the same Carl who shared a lunch with Jane Plumm.

Much of the humor elsewhere is spot on, as when Carl flashes his INS credentials at a janitor and makes like a fed, having been mistaken  for one a few hours earlier.  There's the look on the face of a doorman when Kolchak pulls up in front of his hotel and sends a woman to his room with the instructions to "Start without me" before driving off.  There's an awkward scene wherein Kolchak arranges for the escort service to send  Rawlins to his room, and they send someone else.  She's a little alarmed, and a lot blase about whatever kink this sad bastard waving a cross at her must be into.  He's  drawn a cross on the door in lipstick.  It's sort of humorous in a nervous, uncomfortable way but not exactly comedy.  Nor is the horror-stricken shock on Matteo's face when he finds Kolchak having just driven a stake into the heart of a young woman.  He could only be thinking that her death is his own fault for not realizing this lunatic reporter was crazy enough to kill someone and not merely a nutter to put on a plane.  No, this show may be about  the boogeymen of our childhoods but it ain't for kids. 

"The multiple listings had described Catherine Rawlins' house as a baronial retreat.  It was actually a decayed turn-of-the-century mansion waiting to be turned into a  condominium, and it would appeal  to a special type of client: someone unconcerned with earthy comforts...and it was secluded. Who would go near it?  Only a vampire.  Or some fool looking for her."  'The Vampire' concludes with one of TNS' patented sequences of fumbling in the dark where no sane  person should be to find the monster-of-the-week in its lair, and a confrontation.  This is one of the better ones with Kolchak leading the vampire into a trap he has set with a local landmark.  It does suffer from being repetitive, though, echoing closely the same finale in The Ripper.  For a  formulaic series, this is something to avoid relying on.  I've seen pics of the cross on the hill but a quick (lazy) search turned up nothing. 

What to rate it, having set The Ripper at 7 for a standard?  I don't think the Faye scenes live up to that but the horror does, and I like that the story varies (if slightly) from the formula.   Okay then, 6.5 tubes of lipstick blessed by a priest.
 
Asides:
Kolchak's narration tells us this takes place in Spring, and later the more specific date of May 6th is given.  A week ago it was October! (They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be... was set on the first day of the '74 World Series).

I know I could not have heard correctly the name of the paper Faye worked for, and I hesitate to repeat it now for fear of offending anyone - sincerely, I'm not getting political - but it sounded like... "The Greaseball Republican"??  That  can't be right.  I'd hate to imagine the names of the more left-leaning publications that carry Carl's stories.

By now we've all seen the nightmarish image of a corpse digging its own way out of the soil it was buried in.  This got me wondering when that image might have been put on screen for the first time.  It was seen in Zombi 2 (Lucio Fulci, 1979), and Michael Jackson's Thriller (1983), in Return of the Living Dead (Dan O'Bannon, 1985), and Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960 - highly recommended), and before then must have been a vivid description appearing in printed fiction. Oddly enough, George Romero never used it in his Living Dead films but I think he might have in Creepshow.  I asked the good people of the IMDb Horror Board, and while it may or may not be the earliest example I was pointed toward "Misterios de ultratumba" aka The Black Pit of Dr. M  (Fernando Méndez, 1959)  (Thanks, seth_yeah!) Psychotronicbeatnik made the astute observation that it likely was first used by the pulp comics like Eerie or Creepy, and AlamoScout210 came up with this: https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/769983.jpg, and tommix42 is recommending a later story by Richard Matheson and his son Richard Christian Matheson titled Where There's a Will.

Another repeated music cue I like comes in at about 44:23 on the older DVD. 

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be...

"I will now address you in the universal language of Mathematico: AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!!"

That never fails to put a smile on my face!

THB,TA,TWB takes it's title from H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror: “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.”  Lovecraft in turn echoes John 6:60 in the Bible.  Both sources speak of a greater nature to the universe than mankind can fathom (in John that unfathomable nature is our own).

That's pretty creepy, unseen and pitiless forces that care nothing for our well-being...but ya know what?  It's also great for filming on low budgets!

It's the first day of the World Series, The Cubs are playing, and Kolchak has tickets.  It's unseasonably warm* by the look of things.  Heat makes people crazy, audio reception is terrible, animals keep dying of heart attacks every night at the zoo, someone is stealing electronics - going as far as ripping them out of home stereo components on 2nd stories while they're in use!  Right out the windows of people's homes!  Someone trashed a guy's lawn, said guy insisting it must have been a road crew given the stinking globs of tar left behind.  the city swears no such work took place.  Said guy's neighbor had all her cats killed by someone.  Even the police are having a weird day.  Captain  Quill and his men respond to a break-in at Raydyne Electronics and witness a cinderblock wall blow out and a ton of lead ingots slowly fade out of existence before their eyes.  No perpetrators were ever seen.  Feds keep showing up - you can tell them by their aloof superiority, style-free suits, and closed mouths. 

The first half of the episode is a sequence of deceptively meandering incidents, letting us as Kolchak in on a feast of disparate and seemingly random phenomena.  We get it in fragments the way Kolchak does, distracted by the radio in his top-down Mustang. Kolchak begins to realize there are connections forming.  The "viscid mass" on the citizen's lawn also appears in the zoo every time an animal  dies.  The goo is composed of digestive acids and bone marrow.  A guard killed at Raydyne had the marrow removed from his bones, as have a few others who've died mysteriously. We see Kolchak taking in info from a variety of sources, and we get to put the pieces together as he does.  At a police press conference, everyone learns that those who were at Raydyne when it was raided have had their watches stopped dead.  Kolchak reasons it must have been an electro-magnetic force, and so invests in a compass.  Not all of his research makes it to the screen, we learn, as Kolchak brings Vincenzo up to speed on experts he's consulted on different fields.

Poor Vincenzo.  His star reporter is on crackpot patrol again. Not great timing, this briefing, the details and the headache are putting him off the gourmet dinner he's treated himself to.  What the hell is that on his plate?  Brains??  What's on Kolchak's plate, little green men?  Oh, sorry, little invisible men but obviously from Mars.  Oy vey.

Monique Marmelstein sure has pluck!  She was thrown last week the first time she'd ever had to face a murder scene, but she got right back in there.  You've got to respect that.  She's meant to be annoying as a foil to Kolchak but I appreciate the humor of Carol Ann Susi's performance more all the time, as well as the character's resolution to succeed.  She's feisty.  She's such a contradictory bundle of nerve, self-worth, and insecurity such as overhearing Updyke's comments on a roller-derby warrior that terrifies him: Monique thinks it's her being spoken of literally right behind her back.  She speaks up and offers opinions, right up until her boss uses her as a prop in a transparent ploy to lure Carl into taking an assignment. 

Everyone gets a  good moment.  Monique faces the wrath of Kolchak after the Feds press her to hand over his negatives.  Kolchak can be a holy terror.  He's not too soft on Updyke either when Ron needles him over the prized World Series tickets.  Jack Grinnage has a quiet moment, spot-on: "And you call me uptight." As gregarious and outgoing as Kolchak can be with strangers, it must be hard having him in your life.  He comes off as a bully in this scene.  No one likes a bully.

Quill must feel that way too, that Carl is hard to abide.  Call me crazy, though, I still got a whiff of grudging respect passed between he and Kolchak.  They both seem to know the other is good at what they do and are willing to watch out for each other as much as conflicts arise.  Quill cuts him off at a press conference with a subtle hint that Kolchak's line of questioning is going to make them both look bad.  Kolchak uncharacteristically never suggests that Quill is incompetent.  At least, he trusts the Captain more than he does the Men in Black.  Quill is well played by James Gregory, best known as the crusty Inspector Luger of Barney Miller and as General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes ("...the only good human is a dead one!") It's good casting, to type to foreshorten time spent establishing the character.  We instantly get this is a guy to take seriously.

Mary Wickes has a nice turn a Dr. Winestock, a vet at the zoo.  Gordie the Ghoul returns.  Dick Van Patten overplays just a bit the aggrieved homeowner.  Sportscaster Dick Enberg is the radio DJ, uncredited.  Kolchak gets a lead from a meeting of local UFO enthusiasts where he talks with one of those familiar bit players you know you've seen before but can't place.

One of the UFO groupies has disappeared. Kolchak finds his equipment and an audio tape in the woods, made just as the man was attacked and killed.  Using his compass, Kolchak follows a magnetic trail to a nearby planetarium.

This was the single most frightening scene for me as a child, one of the most memorable of the whole series - one of those that left an impression.  Visually it looks like a Mario Bava film in saturated red, blue, and yellow.  I didn't know what a planetarium was at the time, and the projector looked  like the kind of exotic weapon H.G. Wells' Martians might have employed.  More unsettling was the fact that it was moving by some invisible hand as if the machine had a mind of its own (like I said, I didn't know how those work - controlled by an operator at a panel) - that's inherently terrifying, because a machine bent on killing cannot be reasoned with.   It's the same thing that made The Car (1977) and Killdozer (1974) so potent for me, as well as the Gunslinger in Westworld (1973) or later The Terminator (1984).  "It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."  You cannot appeal to empathy from  what has no human feeling, and when it doesn't even look remotely humanoid (as an auto or bulldozer certainly do not) the possibility doesn't even enter one's head.  The aliens aren't machines, but they  do seem exactly as unreachable. And they were right there in the room with Kolchak.  Probably standing right next to him.  He's not searching anymore, he's found them now and that's probably a huge mistake.

THB,TA,TWB often rates low with fans because the aliens are not seen and because the finale plays as an anticlimax.  On the former, I think it was the right call for the reasons given above and because no alien design or costume would fail to come across as silly.  Overall, I like  how the intruder (we don't know if there was more than one, but its craft was pretty small) was handled from the police being hurled slo-mo to the  wind that heralds their passing.  Many UFO reports allege objects or craft simply fading out rather than navigating away from a scene, so I've no problem with the ingots disappearing - though I'd ask why it's necessary to blow out a wall if translocation is possible.  I also wonder why an electromagnetic field strong enough to stop watches doesn't ruin Kolchak's film or erase audiotapes.  (Would it affect Kolchak's pictures?)  As for the weak ending...the entire episode is an immersion into the creepy, a pervading air of the Lovecraftian.  I prefer that Kolchak is in over his head and can  do nought but stand by and hope that it's over.

The UFO is singularly unimpressive by today's standards but is an average depiction for the era.

"A traveler has a breakdown, stops to fix it, gets a roadmap, has a bite to eat, and goes on his way.  It's happened to all of us.  This traveler happened to be light years off his course instead of miles."  No invasion, not even the slightest interest in humanity.  It's a rare treat to see the alien arrival scenario without the narcissistic insistence that Earth is some special jewel coveted by the rest of the universe.  The idea was inherent in Ray Bradbury's It came From Outer Space, and the line Kolchak speaks to his recorder echoes the novella Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.  Roadside Picnic was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and an inspiration for the podcast Tanis.  I highly recommend all of these titles.


9 ghastly repasts of gastronomic enchantment.  Get this plate away from me before I throw up in my brains!

Asides:
You can tell that rewrites took place mid-production.  Vincenzo and Carl have an exchange about a second large cat being stolen from the zoo in two days.  That's an intriguing story, because who would steal a cheetah and a panther?  That's the last time the script refers to thefts, henceforth Kolchak and everyone else speaks of deaths at the zoo and no suggestion the animals ever went missing.

I've been to a MUFON meeting.  The UFO group in the ep is played for laughs with all the usual nutters trying to find meaning in stellar designations twisted beyond recognition (Wormwood means DOOMWROM if you read it backwards and upside-down!).  Amusing but camp.  In real life, the people I've met at MUFON are sober, educated, and highly credible people who have either an interest or experiences that are inexplicable by any 'rational' means.

I've noted the opening titles sequence and how deftly it sets the tone for what's to follow, but not yet mentioned the closing credits.  Titles play over Kolchak picking up his coat and hat, walking for the exit, and turning out the lights.  It's clearly night.  He'll be crossing the city alone.  Yeah, it seems to say, you sitting there about to turn off the TV and go to bed - you try sleeping after what you've just seen.  Pitch-perfect way to close each episode.

*The outdoor scenes were obviously filmed in Summer, though Chicago does have the odd hot day in October.  They had one in '74, October 11th. First day of the World Series was October 12th, between the Oakland A's and the LA Dodgers and was played in California.  Had to look it up, not a baseball fan.  Kolchak says he's a Cubs fan, but the series never establishes whether he is or is not from Chicago.  The movies had him in Las Vegas, then Seattle, and the planned third (The Night Killers, written by Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan) would have seen him in Hawaii.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Zombie

Kolchak runs away. He flees in terror, this man who has faced the undead, shouting "Get back! Get back!" and probably wishing he had a crucifix to wave. He is being chased down the stairs by one Monique Marmelstein, fledgling journalist. Well, you can't blame him, she is rather a handful.

Monique is one of those young creatures in need of a compliment and constant encouragement. One word taken the wrong way might get you a steady drone of her insecurity and her life story. She's got a direction, at least, she wants to be a photo-journalist. No talent for it, mind you, but she's dead set and eager to prove herself. She's also armed with an uncle who owns a news service. INS, to be precise. So Uncle Abe makes it editor Tony Vincenzo's problem to deal with. Tony passes her along to Kolchak. As compensation, Carl gets a potential mob war to cover - if Kolchak can keep Monique from running straight into a crossfire of bullets with her camera. Talk about getting the shot.

There's a conflict brewing between factions of Chicago's mafia. It began with one François Edmonds, a numbers runner suspected by the Syndicate of skimming their money. It got him a hail of bullets. Soon after, it's the Syndicate boys being taken out. Kolchak uses his connections to learn a few things the cops aren't telling: the gangsters are having their spines crushed like chalk, for one thing. Another is that the body of François Edmonds keeps showing up among the corpses, with yet more bullets in him and chicken blood in his ears. Funny guy, that François. He gets killed a lot in this episode. They keep burying him.

The Zombie gives us a microcosm of the society Kolchak moves in. Everything's a power play. The black mafia under "Sweetstick" Weldon chafes at having to report to the higher-echelon Italian mobsters under Benjamin Sposato. People like Vincenzo have to bow to "nessitism" (nepotism) from their publishers, and police captains like Leo Winwood will easily resort to illegal pressure tactics to get their way. If you live at street level, what are you supposed to do? For Kolchak, it's a tape recoder and the power of the press (or in the case of Vincenzo and Monique, duck and cover). If you're a gravedigger, you register a complaint with your union. For the mother of François, it's Vodoun. "The law" has nothing to do with the laws of society, you don't have to be a criminal to be subject to them.

We get a feel for what it's like to navigate this world. Kolchak has developed a hardened detachment that comes through in his dime-novel prose. That attitude finds easy camaraderie with people like undertaker Gordie "The Ghoul" and his gallows sensibilities, or shady street informer "The Monk"... it isn't just the mob that's got a support network, Carl's got one too. Vincenzo's is the voice of frustration and abandoned dignity. Various mafia figures and Captain Winwood (who may or may not himself be compromised under mob influence) are the selfish, uncaring engines that run everything, and to whom all bow. Houngan and occult-shop proprietor Uncle Filemon feigns a blithe smile for all and tries to stay the hell out of trouble's way. He's a nice guy who just wants to keep his head down. Mamalois Edmonds is the citizen who won't bow to anyone, nor compromise. She wants what she wants. Along comes Monique, the babe in the woods. She can be draining and exasperating, but it's hard not to feel a little sympathy for her ultimately. She's in over her head and might easily get herself killed by naivety alone.

That's heady stuff for a breezy show. K:TNS is a breezy show, and The Zombie gives us a tour through a variety of city locales without loitering. The story flies past with wit and baited breath, and a plot that unfolds neatly. I had no reservations or objections to either Kolchak's conclusions or his methods of obtaining clues. When the big scare setpiece comes, it's a doozy.

McGavin again has the audience trying to keep pace with his inspired, caffeinated performance bouncing off Oakland and the guest cast. As Monique, Carol Ann Susi is a little grating but a lot more winning in her sincerity and unstoppable drive to succeed. She flits about the newsroom in near silence ready to pounce on any opportunity to assert herself with Vincenzo, her head popping up in the office windows even while the focus of a scene is Kolchak arguing with Winwood. She's pretty damn hilarious, actually, and it's a good thing she's kept to a minimum in the episode because she could overwhelm it. Looking at her IMDb page, I now realize I've seen a few of her gigs without realizing it was the same actress. (In a casting conundrum she could have played Jane Plumm, as she would fit that role physically and has plenty of gumption. Funny, then, and a relief that there no potshots at Monique's weight. Vincenzo calls her "little Monique".)

Charles Aidman is solidly gruff as Winwood. I recognize a number of the other actors from their film and televisison work from the era: Scatman Crothers of The Shining and Chico & the Man plays Uncle Filemon; Joseph Sirola as Sposato, seen in a ton of TV shows in one-off gigs; Ditto Val Bisoglio as Sposato's right-hand man Victor Friese - I especially associate him with Barney Miller and M*A*S*H, a guy with a friendly face and personality who could be charmingly peeved; Likewise again with John Fiedler, who was all over television as well as being the voice of Piglet - I'll always think of him as a lawyer in an episode of Star Trek (oddly enough, one that featured Jack the Ripper as an inhuman entity that repeated the same crimes throughout the centuries); Sweetstick is played by Antonio Fargas, famous as Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch - another hustler.

I also really enjoyed the direction. It isn't just manic Monique, but the director's sense of the humanity of the moment: the frantic quick decisions in the midst of flying bullets that has Kolchak take desperate measures in locking Monique in the trunk of his car, or Kolchak's creeping nerves at night in an auto junkyard - a virtual graveyard where the corpses are just left piled in the open to rust. My favorite might be when Sposato tries to blame Friese for the consequences of his own choices and Friese objects. Kolchak stands in François' empty grave staring up at them, and though he knows they may murder him at any moment he can't help but be delighted by them - stands there watching with a huge amazed smile! How deft that the director turns that moment, that laugh, into sheer horror as the missing corpse of François Edmonds walks into view just then. Kolchak's grin is mirrored in a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of Sposato's terrified grimace.

Again I have to point out that the film stock has darkened over the years to the point of hindrance. Having found some of Edmond's victims, Kolchak realizes that the zombie is leaving the scene by bus. Setting aside the willing obliviousness of a driver and fellow passengers in letting a corpse board (and the question of how a corpse buys a ticket*) , the scene still presents a problem. How did Kolchak know Edmonds was on the bus? I think we're supposed to be able to see him boarding but I've studied those shots and can't see him. Honestly, I can hardly see anything but the bus and a bench. it's one of those moments you have to replay to figure out what new idea has taken Kolchak's attention and what he's up to. ( I love that music cue as he grabs the bus).

Finally, a word about culture. I like this episode a lot, but it treads close to tastelessness in its stereotyping. We have the usual pinstriped Italian mafia trope, and we have Sweetstick arriving in what Dirty Harry would call a pimpmobile. We've also got Voodoo as a boogeyman. I'm not genial to the former two as types, and bristle at the usual horror assumption that if it ain't Christian, it can't be good news. Watch carefully, though, I think the Zombie balances the portrait. Not all of the Syndicate men are Italian, to begin with, but more fundamentally the mafia itself is shown to be a conglomeration of organizations that transcend race and cultural heritage - we could have Italians gengsters, or black.  In Zombie we have both,  mutually proving neither to be a rule. Kolchak names a number of honest, hard-working Italian-Americans who have nothing to do with organized crime.  Vincenzo is one of them.

On zombies, meanwhile...I assume everyone knows going in that the episode title is pointing us toward traditional zombies and not Romerotypes? Legends of zombies are pretty sketchy as practitioners of African magicks are notoriously secretive about their craft. Hollywood can't help that, but they can be careful about not demonizing other religions for the sake of entertainment. Winwood responds to Kolchak's mad theories about Voodoo with an insistence on respecting the faiths of the Haitian community. Uncle Filemon is friendly and welcoming as a representative of both the faith and his community. Mamalois Edmonds stands in for the abuse of magick that the faith acknowledges (both the light and the dark of witchcraft), Filemon must represent the light as both a decent man and Houngan. Anyway, notice that Edmonds has a cross on her wall - Vodoun is a mix of Catholicism and older African faiths. The Other isn't so other.

10 Pulitzer-winning examples of photojournalism taken from the safety of a closed car trunk. They shoot horses, don't they? Please don't kill the Mustang.

Asides:
Before most of us had VCRs, CBS (the American network, Columbia Broadcasting System) bought the series for airing in their Friday Latenight slot, 11:30 to 12:35. One highly memorable Friday night, "The Zombie" was followed by the American television debut of Don Coscarelli's "Phantasm" (1979). I had badly wanted to see that film, it called to me...but I was too young to see an R-rated movie at the cinema without an adult, and no one would take me. So that night after The Night Stalker was my first time seeing it. I was the only one awake in the house and I sat with the entirety of a large living room at my back...all the lights turned out...and the front door next to me, occasionally giving a sudden creak or snap as the house settled for the night. One of the finest, funnest viewing experiences I've ever been blessed with. I love that movie to bits, Phantasm.

I've seldom seen zombies as spry as François when he's got someone trying to sew salt into his face.

If you like horror films, I highly recommend Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow. It is that rare Voodoo/zombie flick that treats the culture of Haiti and the Vodoun faith with respect instead of demonizing them as 'other', and even rarer for being a horror film that bothers to be astute about the politics involved. It's a smart movie with a touching, genuine love story, affecting cast, and some lush visuals of sensual beauty and dreamlike horror. One of my favorite movies, period, and arguably Craven's best film.

*Mamalois Edmonds was as canny as she was cagey. My bet about the bus is that she anticipated the problem and bought her boy an all-month pass.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - The Ripper and intro

(The IMDb group I've hooked up, The Sages of the Single Season, has voted to watch and review/discuss Kolchak: The Night Stalker one episode per week now that we have finished with Gerry Anderson's UFO.  You can find us on the message board for that show: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071003/board)

I was eight years old when Kolchak: The Night Stalker aired in 1974.  Because it was Friday, I had permission to stay up an hour past bedtime - it played right after My Partner, the Ghost (aka Randall & Hopkirk, Deceased).  It scared me plenty, and I wouldn't miss an episode.  Bits and pieces of it stayed with me all my life...scenes, scares, and even certain music cues which I never forgot a note of.  Even today, a sudden familiar noise at two or three in the morning will harken back to this show and suddenly I'll be wide awake with my heart beating too fast.

It was a time when American culture was taken with the 'supernatural'...with mysticism and the occult, with ancient Egypt and its mummies and curses and 'pyramid power', with UFOs, with Kirlian photography and ghosts and ESP, with reincarnation, with Bigfoot and spontaneous combustion.  We had a fascination for the morbid and dark, The uncaught Zodiac awakening the chill of Jack the Ripper.  Leonard Nimoy visited our living rooms for half an hour every weekend to take us In Search Of...the lost town of Roanoke, the Nazca Lines, the ghost of Van Gogh, the death of Pompeii.  People carried tattered paperbacks of "Chariots of the Gods" like it was the new Bible. We wanted to know...we were desperate to know, and to believe.  We were ready.  There had to be more out there, if anyone would just ask.

We wanted to know about power, too.  America's unlikeliest heroes that year were a couple of investigative journalists who broke a story of corruption in the highest office, and the name Watergate became a dictionary fixture.  After the murder of JFK, after Vietnam, and now the President himself deceiving us we had become disillusioned by authority and wanted more Woodwards and more Bernsteins, tenacious seekers of truth who would defy the Powers That Be, to root out just what it was we weren't being told.

Carl Kolchak was that kind of reporter. 

He'd already appeared in a couple of hit made-for-television films, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.  Kolchak had been a print reporter in Las Vegas when a serial killer terrorized that city in 1972.  As the gruesome facts came to be revealed, Kolchak was forced to reach a difficult conclusion that no one else was willing to: the killer was not a madman who thought himself a vampire, but was indeed a genuine vampire.  Kolchak was a rational man, unimaginative and not given to fancies, bull-headed to the point of rudeness...but he understood facts.  The facts were undeniable.

The movies worked for a number of reasons, but foremost among them was veteran character actor Darren McGavin as Kolchak, a newsman as exuberant as he was tactless.  He is described in The Night Strangler as having walked straight out of a production of The Front Page, with his vented porkpie hat and simple blue-collar attire.  That's him, boy, he'd have been at home in Hollywood's Thirties with his flippant jibes and irrepressible belief in his calling, his steadfast conviction in the people's right to know the truth.  Carl Kolchak flows from McGavin like water from a spring.  He's not a collection of mannerisms, he's a force of nature.  If The Night Stalker had been a stage play it would have closed early because in McGavin's hands Kolchak would have chased everyone else off the stage in pursuit of a juicy story. 

Stephen King wrote in his book Danse Macabre that Kolchak was the key to taking the vampire from its stuffy Gothic setting where we might see it as silly kids' stuff and making it a credible part of the real world - the mundane place of used car lots and property leases, of tired and hassled casino showgirls, of hospital blood banks and bureaucrats and bellicose editors.  The supernatural was a hard sell for a down-to-Earth, no-bullshit guy like Kolchak, but if he could believe in vampires, King argues, then so could we.  Producer Dan Curtis (of Dark Shadows fame) and author Richard Matheson convinced us by convincing Kolchak.  King was praising the original Night Stalker telefilm.  He was less laudatory of the series overall but still impressed with star Darren McGavin.

This eight-year-old didn't know anything about any of that.  I'd never even heard of the two TV movies.  But I knew what scared me, and Kolchak knew it before I did.

That's what this show is for me, the "safe scare" that the horror genre is at its heart unadulterated by gore, sex, subtext, or other concerns.  It is simple fear distilled. It is the tale told at the campfire, in the dark, in the open where nothing will shelter you.  You know it's not real, but...you look over your shoulders anyway.  Just in case.  'Cuz you can hear the woods moving.

***********************

The Ripper

Our first two proper looks at Carl Kolchak (including a credits sequence that's a miniature masterpiece) establish him as 'a regular joe' and a working stiff.  He rides the L, has no head for fashion, and if his hat spends all day on the floor 'cuz he missed the coathook it's no big deal.

Writing for the Independent News Service, Carl is watching a big story pass him by.  Someone is murdering women in Chicago's sex trade.  That's the kind of mean, gritty beat Carl is good at...and he's stuck filling in for "Miss Emily", the advice columnist while the killer assignment lands on the desk of prissy Ron "Uptight" Updyke - a  reporter singularly unqualified for the job.  Carl has been sidelined as  chastised by editor Tony Vincenzo after Kolchak's latest act of overzealousness in covering a story: Kolchak made a 'citizen's arrest' of people who got in his way.  In Carl's view, that's just getting the job done.  Tony knows Kolchak's the best reporter he's got going but oh! The headaches!  Kolchak has a gut instinct for rubbing  every authority in sight the wrong way, and it always ends up in Vincenzo's lap.  That's Tony Vincenzo, bellicose with his underlings but timid with authority.  The lead characters and the dynamic that will drive them have now been expertly sketched out for us in a matter of minutes with  zero exposition and no fuss. 

These regulars are half the fun of K:TNS, balancing the careful build of fright setpieces with delightfully funny bickering.  Simon Oakland reprises the role of Tony Vincenzo from the two Kolchak movies that preceded the series, ever frustrated by his star reporter's eccentricities.  One of these days Vincenzo's gonna be driven to a breakdown.   Updyke (Jack Grinnage) is the butt of Kolchak's humor, never able to get the upper hand.  McGavin and Oakland had already established a chemistry with natural rhythm and timing into which Grinnage easily becomes a perfect third party.  They make a great comedy trio. 

Also funny are scenes of Kolchak being stymied at a massage parlor and encountering a Miss Emily fan who asks if he spends a lot of time checking on weirdos.  Cpt. Warren is not especially amusing in himself but his steadfast faith in rationality provides a launching pad for McGavin to send Kolchak on an outraged tirade - he's so much fun to watch when he's skyrocketing!

Humor is a staple of TNS, balancing extended sequences of terror.  We see the victims being assaulted, Kolchak investigates, the facts mount.  Our serial killer dresses like an escapee from  Gothic horror production with natty Victorian dress, cape, top hat and devil's-head cane.  He leaps from rooftops several stories high with no injury, walks away from being hit by a car, tosses  around grown men - trained cops - like rag dolls and never utters  a single sound. 

For  most of the episode we will only see the murderer's clothing, and in glimpses at that.  We are kept in the dark quite literally as time has darkened the film stock of what  was already a production set largely at night.  This renders some of the action difficult to make out (Kolchak declares that the killer demolished a squad car, but we don't see it), but it also increases the creep factor.  You can really feel those empty spaces where it's best not to lurk, or the isolation of a  city street at night.

Fellow journalist Jane Plumm sets Kolchak in the right direction when she points out that these killings are replicating Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in London of the late 19th century.  Even the crude notes left for police are the same, and a letter withheld by police contain a nasty taunt about devouring one of the victim's kidneys (Jane relates over a huge lunch).  Did you know, she asks, that the same killing spree has been re-enacted multiple times over the last century?  Contagious psychosis, that's her theory.  This story is going to make her career if she can land it for the tabloid paying her salary.  She's hungry for it.

Kolchak comes to a much more radical  conclusion of his own.  One of Jane's copycats was hanged for his crimes, and the next to appear had rope burns on his neck. That added to the superhuman power this killer is possessed of can mean only one thing.  This is the real Jack the Ripper, still alive and still killing.  I hate to say this, but I must... if you were to judge by the series alone without the prior movies, Kolchak comes off as kind of a flake sometimes.  The Night Stalker (1972) had a running length of about 75 minutes, plenty of time in which Kolchak - a down-to-earth skeptic toward the supernatural - could weigh evidence and become convinced that vampires are real. The Night Strangler originally ran for 75 minutes and has since had material restored bringing it to 90.  Following up on those two telefilms, K:TNS allows only some 50 minutes per episode, which necessarily means we get little or nothing of his process in reaching unbelievable conclusions.  We know he's right every time, but only because he's the hero.  By extension that means we know that people like Jane Plumm are wrong.  We get exasperated with people like Vincenzo, or figures like Cpt. Warren of the police who stonewall with their common sense.  All the same, these are the rational ones in Kolchak's universe.  I try not to let that bother me when watching, but sometimes it does.  because of the airtime limitations, Kolchak is kind of an incredulous nutter too quick to embrace the ridiculous.  Besides his bull-in-a-china-shop approach, it's no wonder the authorities won't give him the time of day.

This particular theory has some holes in it.  How exactly is the Ripper still alive and unaging?  Is he not human?  If not, then what?  Why does he keep repeating the exact same pattern of his infamous spree,  down to the same notes, instead of just...killing? How can he wear the same shoes for over 70 years without a hint of wear on them?  To be filed under YNSTA (You're Not Supposed to Ask).  You gloss over it because it's a campfire tale. The details just get in the way.  For many, Jack the Ripper isn't just another serial killer, he's the quintessential boogeyman.  You can use him any way you like in a story and it will work.

 

Where the banter with Vincenzo and Uptight have a playful score complete with a near-'wah-wahhhh' theme for horns, strings dominate the dark.  Otherwise, scenes of Carl hunting or preparing to confront a monster tend to be silent.  If he speaks. it's in pithy prose voiceovers, recorded notes from which he will write his accounts.  He tends to compose his thoughts with an ear for the melodramatic punch.  Not exactly the stoic hero, then.  The Ripper's final act is a confident tour of the Ripper's derelict home and lair, Kolchak making us cringe as he leaves his sign everywhere through sheer lack of grace.  That too is a nice touch, making us fear that he is waaay too incautious and really ought the get the fuck out.  But no, he takes us in with him, right into a closet where he and we hide as Jack keeps reaching his hand through a curtain and right past Carl's nose.  How does our stalwart hero hold up?  He panics and screams.  You have to love a hero who loses his shit like that.

The finale is well orchestrated, quiet dread building to a breaking point before erupting into frenzy.  It would have been nothing, though, without the firm base that the rest of the episode has provided.  We see women going about their lives, The Ripper literally intruding into the frame,  and then we see the aftermath.  it's not graphic, but the sense of transgression and violence is carried in the reactions of those who are on the scene.  Ron Updyke is an object of ridicule but his revulsion and horror are easy to sympathize with.
Carl Kolchak - a hero for the people.  I'll rate it 7 drawers stuffed with unopened letters asking for advice.

Asides:

The dialog keeps insisting that Jane Plumm is "fat" - that's the specific adjective repeatedly given.  Unfortunate enough, this body shaming, and in her one big scene she overloads at a diner.  Why, then,  was the part  cast with an actress who by any standard could never be considered anything but her ideal body index? There's not an ounce of fat on her.

Kolchak wears tennis shoes (or running shoes if you prefer).  This makes sense for a reporter, or these days for just about anyone: hard shoes suck.  I guess in '74 that wasn't the norm?  A masseuse (actually undercover police officer) remarks that Kolchak's  shoes "are so funny".

 

One of the series' signature music cues makes its debut at around 48:40 (per the DVD).  It's one of my favorites from childhood.  You'll be hearing it often throughout the show.  I also  love that title theme by Gil Mellé.  Mellé is credited with writing the music for (at least) this episode, however five composers contributed throughout the series.  They include Jerry Fielding and Robert Cobert from Dark Shadows.  Who wrote what exactly, I don't know. 

I like Johnny Depp, I do.  All the same, I have read with no small amount of relief that Disney has finally deep-sixed Depp's plans to play Kolchak in a modern film version of The Night Stalker.  I've nothing against Depp, who is adept at crafting memorable, colorful characters, but in any given performance he is as likely to rely on mannerisms and caricature as he is to push himself for something more genuine.  McGavin's Kolchak was not driven by mannerisms and tics but by sheer force of personality.  In that, McGavin and Depp's approaches would be polar opposites: one spontaneous and the other studied to death.   Depp proclaims that he is a huge fan of the series, the character, and McGavin, and that his movie would be respectful.  I'm sure he means it, but he said the same of Dark Shadows and we all saw the awful parody which he and Tim Burton delivered  instead. I like Depp, but keep him away from The Night Stalker.