The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: The Night Strangler (1973) Run Time: 1H 30M2

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?