{"id":7615,"date":"2005-01-26T08:13:46","date_gmt":"2005-01-26T15:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/01\/26\/kolchak-the-night-stalker.html"},"modified":"2005-01-26T08:13:46","modified_gmt":"2005-01-26T15:13:46","slug":"kolchak_the_nig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/26\/kolchak_the_nig.html","title":{"rendered":"Kolchak: The Night Stalker<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before there were any X-Files … Carl Kolchak was on the case in Kolchak: The Night Stalker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"kolchak.jpg\"Darren McGavin<\/a> played Carl Kolchak, a disreputable “investigative reporter” of the sort you’d expect to be reporting for the Weekly World News.<\/em> Considered a pest by the police and barely tolerated by his boss, he continued to check out and report on various weird doings about Chicago — with the twist, of course, that they were real. Vampires, rogue robots, aliens, black witches, ghostly knights, pagan sacrificers, monsters … Karl approached each story with a Scully-like skepticism that would eventually morph into desperate action when he was the only one who believed that the threat of the week was real — and usually, by that time, aiming at him. <\/em><\/p>\n

(The series title was an odd combo of the title character’s name (the standard 70s way to name a show) with the title of the original TV movie he piloted in (the “Night Stalker” was a vampire, as I recall).)<\/p>\n

The show holds up pretty well thirty years later (gads). The fx, such as they are, are crude, but there’s plenty of violence each ep, threatened and just-off-screen, and horror to go with it, with screams from both male and female throats and a sizeable body count (often in the first fifteen minutes or so, voice-over reported by Kolchak as he records notes for his story). McGavin himself does the reluctant hero well, the cynic with a heart of gold. While there were bits of conspiracy theory at times, the main problem Kolchak faced was the unwillingness of people to believe, even in the face of proof that had convinced him.<\/em><\/p>\n

The main titles were always a favorite of mine, starting with Kolchak whistling as he casually enters the darkened news room to write up his story, tossing his ever-present hat to a hook (and missing), plopping down in a chair, loading up a typewriter — and the music abruptly shifts to bass viols and horns, deep and threatening, as we see a few of the ominous words he’s typing — and, by the end, as things begin to weird out even there, the freeze-frame look of terror McGavin’s face was perfect.<\/p>\n

The series only lasted a season, but has remained, justifiably, a cult classic. Many of the eps are out on VHS, and the original two TV movies (The Night Stalker and the The Night Strangler) have been out on DVD, but the pair has now been rereleased<\/a>, and I expect (given that SciFi<\/a> is occasionally running a block of eps during the day) that a full series collection should be coming soon <\/p>\n

Plus there’s word that a revival<\/a> is on the way. Which could be good, or could be horrible, depending on what course they take — the ground of horror, conspiracy, disbelief and credulity has been well-plowed since then, and it would take a serious twist to make doing a new Kolchak worthwhile.<\/p>\n

More info: TV Tome<\/a>, IMDB<\/a>, and a great fan page<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before there were any X-Files … Carl Kolchak was on the case in Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Darren McGavin played Carl Kolchak, a disreputable “investigative reporter” of the sort you’d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9060,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/25\/30.html","url_meta":{"origin":7615,"position":0},"title":"-30-","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Feb-06 11:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"RIP Darrin McGavin. 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