Darren McGavin IS “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”

Adapted from a talk I gave at Clay McLeod Chapman’s “Fear Mongers” in March 2012, in which the participants are asked to talk about the one  horror movie or show that really scared the Bejesus out of them. We share it now, just in time for Hallowe’en! 

I want to talk about this tv show that was on when I was around 9 or 10 years old called . It starred Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a pain-in-the-ass reporter for a fly-by-night news wire service. Simon Oakland played his apoplectic editor Vincenzo, who always seemed about one burst blood vessel away from a stroke, thanks to his star reporter, who — no matter what case he was initially investigating — invariably would end up embroiled in a nocturnal world of undead monsters. Also in the cast: Ruth McDevitt as the elederly advice columnist Miss Emily, and Jack Grinnage as a supercilious rival reporter. Recurring characters included John Fiedler as a comical morgue attendant and Keenan Wynn as a hypertensive cop.

The series had started out as a tv movie called The Night Stalker (1971) adopted by Richard Matheson from a novel, concerning a serial killer who turns out to be a vampire. Two years later there was a sequel, set in an underground city underneath Seattle.

The series was launched in 1974. Like all the very best shows, this one was cancelled before the first season was out. They shot 20 of a planned 26 episodes. McGavin quit, saying that it had become a “monster of the week” show, and had become ridiculous. Some people did and do find the show ridiculous, and it did quickly exhaust itself and become so. McGavin’s characterization was at least partially at fault, whether he admitted that or not. But it wasn’t that at first.

The key to its effectiveness as horror was my young age. I was 9 or 10.  Parents at the time were forbidding children to watch it, so naturally kids at school were daring each other. My sister and I were forbidden and we definitely snuck down after bed time and watched it. Actually, she only did a couple of times (she was only 7 or 8).

Most of the time I was alone. My father worked the 3^rd shift, and my mother worked in a factory so she would be asleep, exhausted at that point, 9 or 10 at night. So I really wasn’t going to get busted. So there were no grown ups around, no one around, doing this, forbidden, wrong mysterious thing. It was a very intense solitary, formative experience.

The show had this great theme music, mixing a moody melodic cello motif with the rhythm of a reporter’s typewriter. Kolchak would go off on these assignments (always some other story) and then he would get into trouble for following leads unrelated to his assignment because he was on to something vastly more fascinating. It usually began with people dying from highly bizarre causes.

And it would always be night (and it wasn’t day-for-night, it was that pitch black contrasty 70s lighting). I re-watched the entire series recently and saw one very good reason for them to have all those night scenes (other than simply for atmosphere). The show is set in Chicago, but they filmed most of it in LA, so sometimes in the daytime, you get these shots of Kolchak driving past rows of palm trees in what is supposed to be the Windy City.

Kolchak was very funny and smart so you liked him, but no one else did, so he would always be completely alone, in an alley, or a parking garage, or a hospital corridor or a roof, with some creature stalking him, a vampire or a zombie or a mummy. And then when it was all over and he’d killed the monster and told his story no one would believe him. And he’d always be typing up his story or dictating it in the newspaper office all alone at night. Even that seemed creepy.

During my recent re-viewing I was astounded at how much I remembered from the show., and what an impact the show made. I was also impressed by the fact that I had seen every single episode! Favorites include “Demon in Lace”, which featured a succubus, and “The Zombie”, which introduced me to voodoo. I recall finding those the scariest. The silliest may well have been “Chopper” which featured a headless motorycle rider that chops off people’s heads with a sword.

And my word, the guest stars! There might be a half dozen recognizable ones in any given episode! Among them: J. Pat O’Malley, Beatrice Colen, Antonio Fargas, Scatman Crothers,William Daniels, Larry Storch, Jan Murray, Dick Gautier, Nita Talbot, Henry Jones,Bob Hastings, David Doyle,Tom Skerritt, Richard Kiel,Victor Jory,Alice Ghostley,Phil Silvers, Benny Rubin, Barry Gordon, Julie Adams,Red Barry, Pat Harrington, Jamie Farr,John Marley,Larry Linville,Art Metrano, Jim Backus,Jay Robinson, Steve Franken, Jackie Vernon, Sorrell Booke,Erik Estrada,John Dehner,Hans Conried,Cathy Lee Crosby, Dwayne Hickman, Kathleen Freeman,Tom Bosley, etc etc etc. I mean, that’s a graveyard’s worth of character actors, right?