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.