Greetings gentle readers, welcome to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today we have the sequel to the previously posted Kolchak: The Night Stalker. This is the Night Strangler, another “gem” of 1970s made-for-tv film.
Reviews:
imdb says:
Follow-up to the 1972 TV movie “The Night Stalker”. Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) is now in Seattle. It seems women are being killed and drained of their blood. It also seems this happens every 21 years. Kolchak investigates helped by a wacky woman (Jo Ann Pflug).
This is nowhere near as good as “The Night Stalker” despite having most of the same crew involved. The story is kind of vague and the comedy and scares don’t really work. Still it looks fantastic, has great atmosphere and good acting. McGavin and Simon Oakland reprise their roles and are great. Pflug is too but her character is annoying. This lead to a TV show called “Kolchak the Night Stalker” which was not a hit but has a cult following now. So this is an OK movie elevated by good acting and atmosphere.
letterboxd says:
Its basically a retread of the formula that worked for The Night Stalker, but its still so much freaking fun. Nothing brings a smile to my face like Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland shouting at each other so hard their lungs might give out. Onto the TV series!
and
Really enjoy these detective stories, the supernatural aspects are so cool without being over dramatic or cheesy. This guy hides for 21 years straight and he can’t even keep the place clean, despicable.
and
Long form Kolchak is the best Kolchak. Instead of a Universal monster knock-off we have an immortal killer – perhaps zombie adjacent but pretty much its own thing.
We’re in Seattle this time, and Kolchak does his thing. Lots of 70s backdrops – you know the formula if you’ve seen these before. Plus a surprise cameo from Margaret Hamilton!
It’s definitely the lesser of the two Kolchak movies. It is an amusing tale what with the fact that Kolchak immediately goes to the most insane explanations right off the bat and is proven right. One can forgive the cops and his bosses for taking his theories with a grain of salt. It’s worth a viewing but probably only once.
Director: Dan Curtis
Notable Actors: Darren McGavin
Wally Cox
Richard Anderson
Margaret Hamilton
Plot (Spoiler alert!):
Carl Kolchak is back, this time he is situated in Seattle. His old editor is there as well, Tony Vincenzo and they go at it all the time. Their shouting matches are half the fun of the movie.
Someone is brutally murdering dancing girls. Their throats are crushed and small amounts of blood from the back of their necks. Furthermore, there are bits of rotting flesh on their necks.
As usual, the police are of little help, fighting Kolchak every step of the way. He turns to his papers research Mr. Berry for information. The two discover that there were sets of similar murders over the years, spaced 21 years apart. Kolchak, much like his argument for a vampire killer in the first movies, arrives at the perfectly reasonable deduction that the killer is an alchemist who has discovered the Elixir of Life. Of course, everyone thinks he is bat-shit crazy.
Further investigations uncover that there was a Civil War surgeon, Dr. Richard Malcolm, who had told Mark Twain that he had discovered the aforementioned Elixir. Kolchak and Berry go to the hospital where the surgeon had worked to look for records. Kolchak attempts to alter a picture there to show that the man in the painting was actually a man who lived for far too long. The cops arrive and cuff him but he is able to convince them and his editor that he is on to something with the alchemist angle. He warns that the man will kill again.
Kolchak and an exotic dancer he has managed to hook up with, Louise, search the Seattle Underground to look for the killer’s hideout. Kolchak finds the killer before he disappears for another 21 years. The two struggle and Kolchak destroys the killer’s alchemical equipment. Before the killer can finish Kolchak off the cops arrive and the killer leaps to his death from a window.
Vincenzo runs a heavily edited version of Kolchak’s story but it’s not enough for their boss. Both are fired and Louise is expelled from the city. The movie ends with the three of them heading to New York, perhaps to tangle with a werewolf. Who knows?
While at times over the top, this is still a not-so-subtle takedown of the media and law enforcement that oppositionalists have to love. I’ve watched all the TV series episodes, and the formula does wear thin-to-ludicrous. There are many Kolchak’s out there who can recognize the treatment of exposés.
Thanks for this film link, semper loquitur. This is one that I will watch when the wife and daughter are out to watch in peace. Haven’t seen it in decades but am looking forward to it. At the time it came out it was a total break from regular fare and put a modern spin on old stories. An era when reporters could be seen as brave heroes chasing down the truth to report it. Yeah, it was a very long time ago.
Hail and farewell! You have just described my “viewing habits” as well.
The definition of “guilty pleasures.”
I like being able to watch a good movie from start to finish without interruptions or having to answer questions or be asked to fetch things or being told that what I am watching is stupid. More so if it means concentrating on an old movie like “12 Angry Men” or “Inherit The Wind” so that I can pay attention to the nuances.
A sign of the times when a “second rate” outing from a genre movie series shows itself to be more fun than most of the video being produced today.
Silly segue, but this also applies to our politics.
Let’s frame today’s American politics in “Monster Movie” terms. A second rate game show host runs against a functional zombie for power. The public screams and runs for cover while the stalwart “official” heroes are discovered to be, sniveling cowards themselves. As usual, the “true heroes” are sidelined and silenced in the interests of the ruling elites. Fade to black.
Stay safe. Pass the popcorn.
Don’t forget the nuclear suitcase to add suspense.
As a fairly well movied person I’d say the biggest defect of current movie making would be the poor story sense compared to the early days. Many of those old films had formulaic plots but at least they tried to maintain a certain plot logic and dramatic structure. Gore Vidal wrote an essay about how much he loved Edgar Rice Burroughs and as a kid I did too. Even pulp fiction writers knew how to write stories.
However acting in general is probably better now.
“Don’t forget the nuclear suitcase to add suspense.”
Add a touch of Terry Southern to it and have said “Nuclear Football” literally kicked around a fight scene during a big action segment. We can have our “Hero” chasing the item around the floor. Just as he or she is about to snag the prize, they either get shoved out of the way by one of the other strugglers, or the item is kicked away by a combatant. Hilarity ensues! For extra ‘fun,’ we can have the “football” already opened and most of the code, or all of the code, entered and the countdown to Armageddon is on!
Time to perfect our elevator pitch!
I too was enamoured of ERB. I chased down about all of his work, usually in the “early” Ace editions. I once had an early hardcover edition of, if I remember correctly, “The Moon Maid.” (Katrina destroyed a lot of my “cherished” stuff. It taught me to appreciate George Carlin’s monologue on “Stuff” more.)
As for “Pulp Fiction,” of the printed form, I had a pamphlet by one Lester Dent, I found it in a second-hand book shop in New Orleans, who was the author of the Doc Savage stories. It was about the plot requirements to write serial pulp ‘adventure’ stories. He wrote about constructing ‘interesting’ villains, how to set up danger to the hero, how to resolve sub-plots, etc. etc. I was in my twenties then, and it made me appreciate the craft of storytelling, not just the adrenaline pulses a good pulp tale can bring on.
Stay safe over there.
With Mamdani getting so much attention, perhaps you should review her mom’s (Mira Nair) movies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Nair
Suggested movies for review:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Masala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaam_Bombay!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsoon_Wedding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Namesake_(film)
The last one might be appropriate because it “follows the son of Indian immigrants who wants to fit in with New York City society, but struggles to get away from his family’s traditional ways”
Thanks for all these great films ! The Night Stalker series was a favorite of mine as a pre-teen. Seeing it on a grainy black-and-white TV only added to the experience.
A humble suggestion for future Sunday Morning Movie Presents – “Who Am I This TIme ?”, from a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, starring Christopher Walken, Susan Sarandon, and some great character actors of the late 70’s/early 80’s era. It is available on YouTube.
Thanks! One of my favs since I saw it years ago.
Thanks for all the kind words and the recommendations!