KOLCHAK PAPERS: THE NIGHT STRANGLER TV Movie (1973)
Here’s the summary from Basement Rejects: Carl Kolchak is trying to get his life back together and set himself up as a reporter in Seattle. Hooked up with his old editor Tony (Simon Oakland), Kolchak finds himself on hot on the heels of another supernatural story. Killings are occurring in Seattle, and they seem to fit a pattern stretching back for almost a hundred years. Kolchak with the help of a woman named Louise Harper (Jo Ann Pflug) must capture the killer before the cycle ends…and a murderer continues to live forever.
That’s WIZARD OF OZ’s witch Margaret Hamilton in a cameo above.
Written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dan Curtis, The Night Strangler was a made-for-TV movie follow-up to the 1972 TV Movie The Night Stalker (which introduced the Carl Kolchak character) and premiered on ABC on January 16, 1973.
ITEM- McGavin is back as Carl Kolchak so is Simon Oakland as his editor Tony Vincenzo, re-united after apparently going their separate ways at the end of the previous movie only to be reunited in a bar in Seattle. Vincenzo gets Carl a job with the newspaper he’s landed at, although he certainly seems to regret it immediately.
Kolchak’s look is closer to what we’ll get in the series as he’s in his blue/grey seersucker suit and white shoes/sneakers.
ITEM- It’s nowhere near as good as the original and it’s got one too many similarities to the original to be unique but we have to remember that this was back in the day before VHS or DVD when people hadn’t seen Carl and Company for a whole year so a lot of that can be forgiven.
It’s still a very good movie, it goes on a bit too long, but there is enough in it to give it a thumbs up because it still hits on some of the elements that make Kolchak entertaining including a good amount of Oddball characters;
ITEM- They’re moving away from the romance aspect we saw in the first film (thankfully) and beginning the advent of the Kolchak Gal— a female character who helps Carl to various extent which will carry through the series going forward. Jo An Pflug, who was a pretty big TV actress in the 70s is exotic dancer Louise Harper. A part time college student Harper is able to connect Carl to people who know some of Seattle’s dark secrets; namely an underground city formed after the Great Fire of the previous century when the new city streets were built one to two stories higher.
A co worker of Pflug’s is fellow dancer and seemingly airheaded Nina Wayne as Charisma Beauty— she serves little purpose in the story other than to agree with much of what Harper is telling Carl, but one bit that adds to the oddball nature is Beauty’s “friend” Wilma, who appears to be a 200lb former German wrestler who also acts as her bodyguard.
Wilma has little use for Carl or men in general.
Charisma seems oblivious to Wilma’s interest in her and there are a few scenes where Wilma clearly wants to break Carl in half.
ITEM- Longtime character actor Wally Cox, best remembered for being the voice of UNDERDOG, plays bookish historian Titus Berry who is convinced the killer is a 17th Century Alchemest who has uncovered the secret of eternal life which involves using human blood to create an Elixer of Life.
Equal parts Jack the Ripper, Vampire Lore and Dorian Grey the killer is mostly kept in the shadows when he needs to be threatening but Richard Dean Anderson, who would go on to play THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN’s boss Oscar Goldman has a very speaky part during the film’s climax which actually works against the monster nature of the character.
Other oddball guest stars include Al Lewis, Grandpa Munster himself, as a street person who might know a few things and veteran horror film actor John Carradine as the authority figure who runs the paper Carl now works for and is not happy with the direction of his story.
The movie would generate ratings that approached the mega success of the first one, so a third film was planned, but eventually that was scrapped in favor of going full on TV series for the 1974/1975 TV season.
KOLCHAK RATING: 2.5 - Carl is a little more the Carl we will come to know and love with the series, but this one drags a lot. The monster is not that interesting but there’s a good deal of spookiness in this one to make it worthwhile.
