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Kolchak The Night Stalker review,
The Night Stalker DVD review
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There’s a generation who only knows actor Darren
McGavin for his role as Ralphie’s dad in the timeless holiday film from the
‘80s, “A Christmas Story”...and, frankly, if you’ve got to be beloved by
millions for one gig, that’s a helluva one to have under your belt. McGavin had,
however, already secured pop culture immortality in the ‘70s via the small
screen when he created the role of Carl Kolchak, everyone’s favorite rumpled,
straw-hat-sporting writer.
Kolchak first appeared in two made-for-TV movies: “The Night Strangler” and “The
Night Stalker,” the latter resulting in the subtitle for the ongoing weekly
series. McGavin played Kolchak as a haggard, seen-it-all reporter for the
Independent News Service, and one with little time for his fellow writers, let
alone his editor, Tony Vincenzo, played by Simon Oakland. The gimmick of the
show, if you can call it that, was Kolchak’s unerring ability to find elements
of the paranormal hiding in various corners of the Windy City; throughout the 20
hour-long episodes, Kolchak met up with vampires, werevolves, ghosts, and
zombies, as well as aliens, robots, and other strange goings-on. If this sounds
like Fox Mulder as a reporter, but without a Scully to drag down the limits of
his imagination, you won’t be surprised to learn that Chris Carter has rarely
failed to note how much of an inspiration “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” was for
“The X-Files.” (In fact, scheduling conflicts prevented McGavin from playing the
role of Mulder’s father on the show...though he did later pop up as a retired
FBI agent.) Like Mulder, Kolchak has a penchant for a sarcastic aside or a quick
quip (“You should meet my boss. He'd turn Buddha into a chain smoker”) and a
streak for disobeying authority in favor of satisfying his own curiosity. In one
episode, Vincenzo yells, “I'm tired of it, Kolchak. I'm fed up! I've got a
brother-in-law who's got a fourteen-year-old kid he's always bailing out of
juvenile hall, but I've got you, and you're worse!”
The definitive “Kolchak” episode, at least in this writer’s humble opinion, is
“The Vampire.” With a summary that reads, “The victim of a vampire is
accidentally resurrected outside Las Vegas, and she makes her way to the City of
Angels where she becomes part of the world’s oldest profession,” it’s equal
parts hilarious and horrifying; it also provides Kolchak with a great nemesis in
the L.A. police department in the form of Lt. Jack Matteo, played by the
ever-sardonic William Daniels (“St. Elsewhere”).
As with many of Universal’s “Classic Television” sets, there’s precisely nil in
the way of special features. In this case, however, it’s unlikely that McGavin
would’ve been able to participate in any of them, anyway; he turned 83 in 2005,
has been ill for some time and, although someone maintains an official website
for him, he no longer accepts autograph requests due to his illness. Still,
surely, there were some writers or producers of the show, even some of those who
were inspired by it, who could’ve contributed to a retrospective. But no matter;
the greatest boon to classic TV fans is that the series has been released on
video in its entirety. If you caught any episodes of the horrid,
Stuart-Townsend-starring remake that was briefly on ABC earlier this season,
just pretend you didn’t; the producers of that new version left their senses of
humor on the cutting room floor. Do yourself a favor and check out the original.
Darren McGavin is Carl Kolchak. Accept no substitutes.
~Will Harris
wharris@bullz-eye.com
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