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.

Part of the success of The Night Stalker and this its sequel has to be the ever-present humour created throughout the script in the character of Carl Kolchak. He is a character that is as stubborn as ever andone that despite his need/desire for a story shows more humanity and ethical standards than the system which continually steps on him. He is at one point a caricature...sneakers and the same suit and the same straw hat....and yet possesses common sense, intelligence and wit. These contradictions in character often provide a lot of comedic relief in the Night Stalker/Strangler movies and the television series as well. No one better understands this than Darren McGavin who essays the role of the obstinate reporter. Each of his performances is a real treat. And although I have been genuinely frightened by these films and the series...many of my fondest memories are about the funny things..the character traits(and outfit) of Kolchak, the discussions between Kolchak and super veteran character actor Simon Oakland(his boss), the situations Kolchak faces out of lack of care, and so on. In many ways The Night Strangler is a better film that the first one...perhaps not as scary..but better written and acted. Great character actors abound with the likes of Al Lewis, Margaret Hamilton, Wally Cox, and John Carradine. The story this time deals with the secret of a man who kills young women for their blood...a need he must satisfy every few years. He lives in a city below a city...and the shots of this subterranean polis are visually striking. Great story, great acting, wonderful sets, and lots of scary moments and funny ones make this a triumph of the small screen.

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.

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.

Relocated to Seattle, reporter Kolchak stumbles on yet another series of murders, a series which seems to be repeated every twenty-one years. Of the two movies, `The Night Strangler' has the slight edge. This is possibly down to its location, Seattle. Very unfamiliar to me, it adds certain freshness to the story, while the underground ‘old' Seattle is a fantastic location, macabre and memorable; it sticks in my mind long after watching the movie. The candle lit, cob-webbed corpses are perhaps one of the most vivid images in American genre television.

Also of note is Richard Anderson's villain, a crazed, immortality seeking Doctor, he is far more impressive than the original's vampire. A more assured script (which is genuinely funny in places), plus some enjoyable cameo's (Carradine, Hamilton), help make this a rare sequel which is better than the original.

Sadly, plans for a third movie were abandoned and instead a short-lived, inferior television series (without Matheson's involvement) resulted. A patchy effort, despite McGavin's best efforts it never attained the quality of the two movies.