This time of year, my thoughts turn toward my favorite holiday, Halloween. Parents today may feel differently, but when I was a child, there was no conceivable downside to being able to dress up in costume and go out knocking on doors in search of candy.
While being scared is the predominant theme of the holiday, fear is a subjective emotion. Age notwithstanding, monsters created in a laboratory somewhere may not seem scary to one, but definitely terrifying to someone else. Sometimes, reminding oneself that "it's only a movie," is enough to keep terror at bay. But where's the fun in that?
Growing up, I never really got into horror comics. For one, they weren't scary. Sure they had witches and goblins and the like, but more often than not they played out like episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, full of ironic twist endings.
I remember a couple of stories I read in some forgotten issue of The Unexpected. In one, a woman begins to suspect her elderly uncle to be responsible for a series of grisly murders. One night, while he is out, she discovers evidence suggesting he is indeed the culprit. Knowing the police are out in force, she hurries out into the night in an effort to prevent tragedy. Sure enough, the uncle is involved in the latest attack by the werewolf-like creature, but as the victim. Police arrive and managed to kill the creature, and the horrified uncle watches as the body transforms into his niece.
In another, a handful of boys dare one of their kid brothers to spend the night in a supposedly haunted house. Naturally, they sneak around back, climb in through a window intending to scare the young boy, but he doesn't come running out as they expect. Later, they discover he has indeed stayed in the house, but that's because in his attempt to escape, the boy fell down the stairs and broke his neck. The angry spirit of the dead boy explains that while it may not have been a haunted house when they entered, it certainly was haunted now.
A kid dying from falling and breaking his neck? Well, yeah, now that's scary, because it's real. Moreso than a werewolf, especially one that can be killed by ordinary bullets.
Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak
My horror of choice as a kid (besides the prerequisite Universal monsters) was The Night Stalker. It started as a book by Jeffrey Grant Rice, which was made into a 1972 TV movie starring Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a Las Vegas reporter who becomes embroiled in a series of grisly, supernatural murders. A sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), followed, then a television series, in which Kolchak, now in Chicago working for Independent News Service, faced all manner of horrible creatures, from Mayan demons to swamp creatures to a headless biker. To this day, I can still recall the recipe for permanently killing a zombie.
When the television series was initially proposed, McGavin wanted to be the producer as well as the star, intending to use a reverse of The Fugitive formula, with Kolchak pursuing vampire Janos Skorzeny across the television landscape. Instead, McGavin was, by some reports, squeezed out of the producer's slot in favor of Dan Harris, famous for his work on Dark Shadows. And instead, Kolchak faced a different monster each week, inexplicably drawn to his Chicago turf.
McGavin, embarrassed by the lackluster scripts and juvenile scenarios, plodded along with his usual professionalism. In one interview with TV Guide at the time, McGavin claimed that due to the tight production schedule common in television, an actor drawing on his own persona was a handy short-cut. As a result, Kolcahk became a role with which he is most commonly identified.
I was in fourth grade at the time, and attending Catholic school. There was big push in those days to end violence on television. The girls in my school circulated a petition toward that end, and teachers – nuns, mostly – encouraged all of us to participate by watching more Little House on the Prairie. Having already seen my beloved Jonny Quest removed from the Saturday morning schedule, I wasn't about to allow The Night Stalker to suffer the same fate.
But alas, fate was not on my side, as Kolchak's ubiquitous soliloquies might intone. The network had already made its decision, choosing instead to sweep Carl Kolchak and his host of monsters and paranormal shenanigans – as well as Darren McGavin and his constant dissatisfaction – under the pop culture rug after only 20 episodes. But was he really gone for good? Only time would tell.
Stuart Townsend
I watched a handful of episodes when they were shown on the Sci Fi Channel some years back. Even taking the show's age into account, I must admit the stories don't hold up very well.
The Night Stalker has been mentioned in inspiring the successful series The X-files, even guest starring Darren McGavin as a former agent and Mulder's fellow believer in the paranormal. in 2005, the ABC network resurrected Karl Kolchak, this time played by Stuart Townsend (Dorian Gray in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) in a new series. But again, Kolchak's days were numbered. The show was cancelled after only six episodes.
Though the original television show is ancient history, it is the character of Kolchak that retains the appeal. More recently he has been featured in a number of comic books published by Moonstone.
Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? E-mail me at philip@comicbookbin.com.
Couldn't agree more. I loved the Nightstalker series. Even the two made for TV movies "Night Stalker" and "Night Strangler" were a lot of fun. I watched the series as a kid also. Still some of the scariest scenes committed to film and done on a small budget.
The zombie episode where Kolchak had to destroy it by filling it's mouth with salt and sewing it's mouth shut is still a chilling sequence. As is the female vampire carryover episode from the TV movie. One of my favourites? The doppleganger episode when the doppleganger is peering through the windows of the church to unsettle it's victim. This was a truly awesome series and the beauty of it was that it was actor driven, not effects driven. It used the claustrophobic sense very well. Many times Kolchak would be caught in the midst of an investigation by the "entity" and have to hide in a closet or under a bed, scramble out of a window etcetera. He'd be forced to be very close and quite vulnerable to the episode's threat. I loved this device in the series. Lying on the zombie in a cramped car in a junk yard, pouring salt into it's mouth was just a great scene. McGavin played it so well too. The series lost some speed by it's end just as many series do though.
A parallel from today could be "Paranormal Activity". A very low budget affair done on "shaky cam" that builds tension and dread very well...again actor driven not effects driven.
May I also offer Tobe Hooper's "Salem's Lot"? Both the "theatrical" and mini-series versions are very creepy. The Barlowe character himself is creepy enough but the Glick boy at Mark Petrie's window is still one of the finest moments in horror film history. As the vampire infestation grows in Salem's Lot the familiar Hooper "rotting look" comes more into play. The Marsden house reeks. Even Barlowe's coffin looks rancid. Put your special effects cravings on hold and just enjoy it...it's a great mini-series. I'll be watching it this Halloween.
I also loved Kolchak and the 'Nightstalker' series. The films were great fun too. McGavin was brilliant (his appearance in 'The Natural' was a delight). I wish they would re-run the series again here (UK) soon.
'Salem's Lot' was and is fantastic. One of my favourite mini-seies. I agree with Tel on those scenes. And would add the scene where Barlow bursts violently through a window and then this pool of darkness on the floor slowly gets bigger and rises to reveal..true horror.
I haven't seen the latest adaptation of 'Salem's Lot', but may give it a try. It would be interesting to see how they adapted the King novel.
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