We open in Chicago, at the offices of the Independent News Service (INS). It's very late when intrepid investigative reporter Carl Kolchak enters the deserted offices, whistling a familiar tune that the soundtrack merrily takes up. He sits at his desk, loads his typewriter up with paper (and I cringe knowing some of you might not even know what a typewriter is), and starts hammering out a story. The credits roll as the soundtrack gets a little more serious -- and then sinister, as Kolchak senses something is wrong. The office plunges into darkness, the soundtrack reaches a dissonant chord, and the action freezes on Kolchak's terrified reaction...

* * * *

Relax, that's just the opening credits that introduce each show, but it sure sets the stage well.

Childhood recollection is often a tricky business when one tries to remember things seen on the old idiot box (better known as your TV set.) I’ve been blessed -- some would say cursed -- with an amazing recall ability when it comes to images and shows I’ve seen over the years, stockpiling ridiculous amounts of worthless knowledge on old plots and episodes of TV shows long since forgotten. I have fond memories of William Smith’s forgotten western series, Wildside. Anyone else remember the short-lived Delta House, based on the antics of the frat boys from Animal House? (Well Flounder, D-Day and Hoover were in it, but everyone else bowed out.) And then there was the weekly barroom brawls, furnished by Bulldog's construction crew, on When the Whistle Blows. But my personal obscure favorite, was the series that helped bridge the gap between Mayberry and Matlock for Andy Griffith called Salvage-1. Don’t recall that one? Well, every week Andy and his crew would kit-bash together needed equipment out of junk from his salvage yard to accomplish some mission. The pilot episode saw them take a junk-rocket to the moon, to retrieve some equipment NASA left behind, while another saw them retrieving ice bergs to deliver much needed water to the desert.

There are a lot more floating around in my brain, just waiting for the right chemical or electrical charge to stimulate a stored memory (that usually come into my mind's eye at strange and often inopportune times.) But I don’t have to overtax the old brain synapses when recalling one of my favorite TV shows from my misspent youth. I can see the action as plain as if it were on yesterday, instead of 30 years ago: An excitable, yet acerbic reporter, in a powder blue seersucker suit, sneakers, and ratty straw hat, doing battle against the supernatural and forces of darkness. Why? Because he was the only one who understood or believed the true danger. (Of course being in syndicated re-runs for over 30 years helps out quite a bit, too.) To those uninitiated, I’m talking about Kolchak: The Night Stalker. For a brief period in the mid-1970s, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) served as a new age crusader against the supernatural. Each week, this cynical knight in his armor of seersucker blue, would mount his trusty steed -- a Mustang convertible, and do battle with monsters, witches, ghosts and even alien invaders.

Following Curtis’ formula of bringing the supernatural to modern times, the movie was set in Las Vegas. Kolchak, when not butting heads with  his boss, Vincenzo (Simon Oakland), was raising the ire of the local authorities over a rash of bizarre murders plaguing Sin City. Dead hookers and showgirls are found dumped in the desert, with their bodies completely drained of blood. All the clues and evidence point to a vampire stalking the strip, but that’s pretty hard to believe in this day and age. Kolchak is skeptical, too, at first, but soon unearths the truth. Of course the authorities don’t believe him, so he takes matters into his own hands. With crucifix, camera, and wooden stake in those hands, Kolchak goes to work in the thrilling finale.

The episode begins, like all the others, with Kolchak trying to make sense of what happened while storing his thoughts onto his tape recorder. (Yep, every episode of the show was a flashback, giving Kolchak an omniscient sense of what happened as he narrates the action when he's not actually present.) For the past week, the city of Chicago has been in the grip of something so horrifying, that it defies rational explanation. 

Back in Chicago, at the INS offices, Kolchak is once again in trouble with his boss. Vincenzo rages while Kolchak tries to explain how he got into trouble with the police department. Again! Captain Warren has threatened no further cooperation with INS, unless Vincenzo reins his reporter in. So as punishment, Vincenzo pulls Kolchak off the streets, and since Ms. Emily, his regular advice columnist (think Dear Abby), is on vacation for a week, he forces Kolchak to sub in for her. He'll spend the week answering letters and offering advice to the hopeless and lovelorn. Bristling at the assignment, Vincenzo warns him to be civil with his answers -- or else, and then dumps a huge bag of letters on his desk. While Vincenzo goes on about the questions being sincere, Kolchak scoffs and reads the first letter: A woman writes that a strange man, in a foolish costume and cape, has returned to his house across the way in Wilton Park. He frightens her with what she calls "x-ray eyes," and wonders if they'll kill her, or just make her sterile? 

Kolchak gets his pictures developed; but he didn't have a good enough flash, so the pictures are uselss. He starts to write up a story, but Vincenzo stops him, saying he's assigned another reporter -- the prudish Ron "Uptight" Updyke (Jack Grinnage) -- to the story, and to get back to work answering Ms. Emily's mail. Updyke returns to the office, pale and visibly shaken; it's his first murder case and dead body -- that he didn't even actually see, but the description of the near decapitation was more than enough. Vincenzo tells Updyke to go home.

The next day, against orders, Kolchak attends Captain Warren's press conference about the killer, who the newspapers are calling "The Ripper." Warren (Robert Schaal) tries but can't ignore Kolchak's questions about how the Ripper survived his fall off the building. Another reporter, June Bloom (Beatrice Colon), asks Warren when can her paper publish the letter the Ripper sent her. Kolchak is intrigued by this mystery letter, but Warren says it will have to wait, and thanks her publisher for withholding vital information to the case in the interest of public safety. He then chides Kolchak to take note of that. Kolchak takes Bloom to lunch. Bloom has a hearty appetite, but won't reveal the letter's contents, unless Kolchak will help her with an exposé on the Ripper. Her bosses want something lurid and sensationalistic, and Kolchak is great at that kind of stuff. He gives her a good headline and a gruesome angle, so she reveals the letters hold info that only the real killer would know: the police aren't releasing the fact that the Ripper is cutting out his victim's kidneys. He also ends each letter with a rhyme, the last one being "And now a pretty girl will die, so Jack can have his kidney pie." The exact same poem Jack the Ripper used back in London in 1888. That's not all, in her research, Bloom has uncovered a bizarre pattern of similar murders throughout the world. Each city would suffer five female victims, and then the Ripper would move on.

So the reporter returns to The Sultan's Palace, posing as a customer. He's taken into one of the rooms, where he asks his *ahem* masseuse if he can be secreted some place, so he can just watch the other customers. The masseuse is an undercover policewoman, and arrests Kolchak on the spot for what she feels is a lewd proposal. Kolchak identifies himself as a reporter, but they arrest him anyway; several officers recognize him and laugh. While Kolchak is hauled away, the Ripper returns and attacks the policewoman. More officers pour into the room, but the Ripper easily bulls his way outside. Warren has his crack tactical squad on call for the sting; but even they can't corral the Ripper. Kolchak, in handcuffs, still manages to get several snapshots of the battle. It appears that the Ripper is about to escape again, but makes the mistake of trying to climb an electrified fence and is shocked unconscious.

Vincenzo bails Kolchak out, and they confront Warren because he exposed the reporter's film, ruining it. Warren tells Kolchak he can just take more pictures of the Ripper at his arraignment, but the reporter warns that they'll never hold him, ranting they've got the real Jack the Ripper, and he's killed over 80 women over the years, five at a time, everywhere from Vladivostok, Russia to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Warren scoffs that Kolchak's boogey-man is being held upstairs in the maximum security ward, and he'll never get out. Right on cue, we spy a large steel door starting to buckle, the concrete around it gives first, and then it collapses. The Ripper calmly walks out as the other astonished prisoners watch. Warren is right in Kolchak's face, denying him access to the prisoner, when word comes of the escape.

Kolchak and Vincenzo work the payphones. While Vincenzo tries to track down June Bloom, Carl investigates a hunch and tries to find out when the electric chair was first used in New York. Vincenzo says Bloom is on assignment, interviewing another person claiming to be the Ripper. Gathering the info he needs, Kolchak confronts Warren with it. The only time the Ripper didn't get his five kills was in New York in 1908. Why? Because he was afraid of the electric chair. It makes sense, because the only thing that ever slowed him down was the charged fence, but Warren doesn't buy it and orders them both to leave. 

Kolchak wants to talk to Bloom and asks where her interview was to take place. The answer is on the pier, near Wilton Park. Wilton Park triggers a memory about the letter to Ms. Emily, about the caped man with x-ray eyes, so they rush back to the office to find the address. Kolchak finds and interviews the elderly letter writer, who spies on her neighbors with a telescope. Showing him the old decrepit house where the man lives, she also shows him her journal. She's written down his movements for the past month, and they all neatly coincide with the murders. The last log says he was out again tonight, and met a girl over on the pier. Thanking her, Kolchak leaves to investigate the old house. After bouncing one rock off a window, and sending the next right through it, the sound of breaking glass brings no response from inside. No one's home. While trying to get inside, the ramshackle house tries to kill him as he falls through the rotting porch, twice. He almost enters, but then realizes he has no real plan, and retreats to regroup. First, Kolchak raids a construction supply house for some heavy electrical cable and insulated gloves. He finds a small, shallow pool of water near the house, and strings the cable from the water and splices it into the house's main power box, and then turns the power on; the insulated wire is now electrified.

There's still nobody home, so Kolchak summons the courage to investigate inside. The house is bare except for one upstairs bedroom, where he finds a small burner with a teapot whistling on top of it. By the bed, he finds several canes with swords secreted inside them. Kolchak starts taking pictures of the Rippers knick knacks, when he hears someone entering the house. He quietly spies the cloaked Ripper's return and hides in the bedroom closet. The Ripper comes in and turns down the heat on his tea pot. Kolchak sweats it out for awhile, but loses it when the Ripper hangs his cape up, missing his nose by mere inches. Yelling in fright, the reporter charges out of the closet, knocking the Ripper over. He pauses as the Ripper's face finally comes to light, and is shocked to see a normal looking bearded man glaring back at him. The Ripper draws his sword, so our hero beats a hasty retreat. He bails over the banister, landing in a heap on an old couch below. It tips over, revealing June Bloom's dead body. The Ripper comes after him, so Kolchak leads him outside -- toward the pool. Kolchak splashes through, with the killer splashing right behind him. Once out of the water, Kolchak grabs the electrified cable and thrusts the exposed end into the water. The Ripper seizes up as the water is electrified, convulses violently, and then slowly sinks beneath the water. The wild stunt overloads the power box on the old house, and its sparks quickly ignite an inferno, and the house, Bloom's corpse, and all the contents go up in flames.

The dénouement finds Kolchak limping back to the INS offices. When they strained the pond, all they found were some old clothes. Captain Warren is threatening to bring arson and malicious mischief charges against him -- the fire was a six-alarm blaze, leaving no traces of the Ripper's possessions, save for one shoe that the reporter found. The shoe bore a tag of a company in London; it was still open, but the style hadn't been produced for over 70 years. Kolchak loads his typewriter with paper and begins to type, but then stops. He asks himself how could you explain it, and more importantly, who'd ever believe it. He rips the paper out of his typewriter, crumples it up, and chucks it in the trash can.

Aside from a few budget-restrained monster suits (usually occupied by Richard Kiel), the series holds up remarkably well thirty years later. Curtis made the perfect choice when casting the cantankerous McGavin as Kolchak. Now, to me, McGavin will always be Ralphie Parker’s old man from A Christmas Story, but he was born to play Carl Kolchak. And it is his performance, I believe, that has perpetuated the shows popularity for so long. One must also mention Simon Oakland’s solid performance as his long-suffering boss, Vincenzo. There was a lot of talent involved, here, and the series was a launching pad for the likes of David Chase (The Sopranos) and Rob Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), so it was blessed with some good and novel scripts. However, how do you keep it fresh when the monsters just happen to keep showing up in Chicago? Each week, it was the same thing: A few strange and ghastly murders, then Kolchak butts heads with the authorities, then no one believes his theories, then he takes it upon himself and dispatches the monster, and then Vincenzo won't print his story. The end. The series tried to move the action around with Kolchak investigating strange happenings around the country, but again, he just happens to be on a cruise ship with a bona fied werewolf?

But I say, so what if the premise was a little far-fetched. It was my contention that there were more vampires, werewolves and other things haunting this earth, tons of them, and these were the ones that just happened to stumble into Kolchak's view-finder. And it was the monsters that got me hooked those many years ago. Scenes of the Ripper or the Spanish Moss Monster running amok, buzz-sawing through Chicago's finest and tossing them aside like twigs, actually scared the begeezus out of me when I was five. Mostly because the show was on way past my bedtime, and I had to sneak to see what I could, and I seldom got to see how the episodes ended, meaning as far as I knew, the monsters were still out there under my bed. Boo!

I will admit, however, that the series would have been better served if it could have stayed in the two-hour movie-of-the-week format. An hour just wasn't long enough and really hamstrung the plots, resulting in too many occasions of vital pieces of information conveniently finding there way to Kolchak, usually from out of the blue, so things could be wrapped up in time.

So the series died before it could really find its legs, but it's influence can still be seen on the small screen today. Chris Carter cites it as the main inspiration for The X-Files, and short lived but fun shows like Project: Shadowchasers and There’s Something Out There would never have had a chance, and even Buffy: The Vampire Slayer owes a debt to Carl Kolchak.

Posted: 04/30/03. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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