The Night Strangler (1973): written by Richard Matheson; directed by Dan Curtis; starring Darren McGavin (Carl Kolchak), Jo Ann Pflug (Louie Harper), Simon Oakland (Tony Vincenzo), Wally Cox (Berry), Margaret Hamilton (Prof. Crabwell), John Carradine (Crossbinder), Al Lewis (Tramp), and Richard Anderson (Dr. Malcolm):
The second Kolchak TV movie sees producer Dan Curtis take over as director and Richard Matheson return as screenwriter. The DVD version isn't quite what American audiences saw in 1973 -- 15 extra minutes were filmed for European theatrical release, and that's the version here.
Darren McGavin is a wonder here as in The Night Stalker. His slightly flaky reporter Kolchak is now in Seattle because Las Vegas banished him for, well, saving it from a vampire. Now Seattle will not want his help stopping a series of murders in which some blood, but not all, is withdrawn from the female victims. A recurring theme of Kolchak, films and series, is that cops are stupid.
Matheson set the story in Seattle to take advantage of the Seattle Underground, an abandoned section of the city from which the so-called Night Strangler appears and then returns to. Curtis cast a lot of familiar genre faces in supporting roles, most notably Grandpa Munster Al Lewis and John Carradine. It's not as good as The Night Stalker, maybe in part because when we finally meet that eponymous monster, he won't stop talking, unlike the silent vampire of the first film. Boy, does he talk!
There are also a few too many wacky comedy moments deflating the tension throughout. I wonder how many of these were added for the theatrical release? Oh, well. This would spawn the short-lived, 20-episode TV series of 1974-75. Notably and weirdly, neither Curtis nor Matheson would be involved with the series, which seems like a pretty stupid decision on the part of CBS. Recommended.
The Night Stalker (1972): adapted by Richard Matheson from the novel by Jeff Rice; directed by John Llewellyn Moxey; starring Darren McGavin (Carl Kolchak), Carol Lynley (Gail), Simon Oakland (Tony Vincenzo), Ralph Meeker (FBI Agent Bernie Jenks), Claude Akins (Sheriff Butcher), and Barry Atwater (Janos Skorzeny):
The Night Stalker shocked everyone in 1972 when its first airing became ABC's highest rated original TV movie to that point, with a crazy 54 Share (a typical Super Bowl generally gets a share in the mid-60's). It was produced by genre giant Dan Curtis and written by genre god Richard Matheson, so it had a lot going for it -- not least of which veteran character actor Darren McGavin as a cynical Las Vegas newspaper reporter who finds himself battling a vampire.
The movie originally aired in a 90-minute time slot, so it clocks in at a tense, terse 75 minutes without commercials. McGavin is great, a reluctant, almost noirish hero with a good reason for supplying voice-over narration throughout -- he is talking into a tape recorder, after all.
The battles and physical stunts involving various confrontations with the vampire sometimes border on the crazy: people fly all over the place. In what would become a Kolchak trope, Carl quite realistically slips and falls occasionally while fleeing his supernatural pursuer. But he always gets up. And with the police both unbelieving and seriously incompetent, Kolchak is Las Vegas' only chance to escape becoming Fun Town, U.S.A. for Vampires.
Matheson and Curtis opt to have their vampire speak not at all -- I think a good choice. He's more of a vicious animal than anything else, and Barry Atwater does a fine job of portraying a completely non-charming, non-erotic vampire. The silent route would be used by Curtis in the Jack Palance version of Dracula that he produced, and may have also influenced the decision to make the fairly talkative vampire Barlow in Stephen King's Salem's Lot into the non-talking horror of the first TV-movie version. In all, highly recommended.
