The Night Strangler

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.

This is the sequel to the hugely successful "Night Stalker" and unlike most sequels this one was just as frightening and just as funny as the original. The story has just the right mix of horror and humor to have made it as successful as it was. The fact that it never took itself seriously and Darrin McGavin's performance helped to make this a very memorable film. After this the critically acclaimed, but short lived series was released the next year and it like this film and its predecessor are still great to watch.

The Night Strangler is the follow up to the successful 1972 TV movie 'The Night Stalker'. Aside from featuring similar titles, the films also share similar plot lines, and it could be said that this is something of a remake of the first film with a slightly more in depth story. I won't profess to be a big fan of the first film in the series, although I found it to be a more than decent TV movie and I did enjoy it. This film isn't a big improvement over the first one, although I would say it's an improvement; with a longer running time and a more well thought-out plot, this one delves into it's subject matter more and feels more like a proper movie than a made for TV movie. Darren McGavin once again plays Kolchak; a maverick reporter who this time finds himself in Seattle after being ran out of Las Vegas (probably for annoying everyone with his constant persistence!). Coincidence strikes and pretty soon he's on the trail of yet another vampire! He discovers that every 21 years for over a hundred years, a group of people have been killed within a small time period and thinks the murders are connected.

The thing that stands out most about this film is most definitely the central performance from Darren McGavin. His portrayal of the stubborn reporter is great to watch and always ensures that the film is entertaining. A lot of the film consists of our unlikely hero trying to convince the relevant authorities that his suspicions are fact and them disbelieving them. These scenes are fairly clichéd, although they are fun to watch; and again it's mostly because of McGavin's excellent impersonation of the central character. Since the film is really about the detective on the trail of the vampire, there's not a great deal of actual bloodshed or bloodsucking in the film, although that isn't much of a hindrance because as a thriller it works very well and director Dan Curtis does manage to create several moments of suspense that kick the action up a level. It's always obvious where it's all going, and the ending doesn't come as a surprise; but it's a fun time getting there. This film and the first one were pilots for a TV series and obviously they did the trick because Kolchak was solving more mysteries in his own TV series a year after this film was released.

After an estimated 75,000,000 viewers tuned in to ABC-TV on Tuesday, January 11, 1972, television history was made. That night, one-third of America was transfixed to its TV sets as the tale of an intrepid, hard-nosed reporter named Carl Kolchak pursued an elusive modern-day vampire across Las Vegas before dispatching the bloodsucker with an inevitable stake-through-the-heart. At the time, THE NIGHT STALKER, an ABC Circle Film, became the most watched television program in the history of the medium, which enticed the ABC brass to quickly reassemble key players of the telefilm (actor Darren McGavin, producer Dan Curtis, and writer Richard Matheson) to lay plans for its sequel.

Thus, THE NIGHT STRANGLER hit the airwaves a year after its popular predecessor. The talented Darren McGavin reprises his role as Kolchak, the tenacious newsman in trademark straw porkpie hat and rumply seersucker suit, who arrives in Seattle, meets up with his cantankerous former editor Tony Vincenzo, and lands another unearthly assignment. This time around, the locum tenens of the vampire is an immortal alchemist named Dr. Richard Malcolm, an ex-Civil War physician who gains superhuman strength and avoids death by concocting an elixir of life, a substance whose main ingredient is human blood! Every 21 years since the end of the Civil War, Malcolm returns to the Seattle streets to procure blood from the bases of strangled women's skulls. But Kolchak manages to locate the undead medico's lair in Old Seattle's underground ruins and foils the creature's attempts at another 21 years of dormancy. Again, local authorities ice his chances at publishing his macabre story and the hapless reporter becomes footloose once more.

Like THE NIGHT STALKER, THE NIGHT STRANGLER is a bone-chilling tale that blends gritty detective drama with a touch of the supernatural. Fast-paced plot, nail-biting suspense, and above-average dialogue highlight this sequel, which rivals the original telefilm for originality and overall quality. Contrary to popular opinion, THE NIGHT STALKER and THE NIGHT STRANGLER are much better TV fare than any episode of the much-overrated Kolchak rip-off THE X-FILES, and these telefilms serve to remind viewers that TV has indeed produced some outstanding programs, programs which mark the halcyon days of the medium.

Having seen this movie when it originally appeared on TV in the '70's, I can still remember the chills I got watching it. Seeing it again on video recently, those old chills returned and were just as enjoyable. Kolchak is one of my all-time favorite heroes, a bumbling regular guy who has enough faith in himself to follow his beliefs despite the road blocks thrown in his path by the authorities, who believe only they know the right way. The villain is not your run of the mill monster but as evil, lurking and despicable as the best of them. The premise of the movie that these things can and do exist unbeknownst to the gullible public is what makes this movie so much fun to watch. It makes you want to pull your covers up over your head on a dark stormy night just the way a great horror film should.