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.
No comments:
Post a Comment