The Night Strangler (1973)

Redundant and unnecessary.

It is a performances centric movie

Brilliant and touching

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

After the success of THE NIGHT STALKER, Dan Curtis put together THE NIGHT STRANGLER. Now in Seattle, reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) runs into his old boss from Las Vegas, Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) in a bar, and a new partnership is forged, just as a bizarre string of murders is getting underway. Kolchak is on the case, much to the irritation of the police. Of course, Police Captain Schubert (Scott Brady) has no tolerance for any of Kolchak's foolishness. After all, this is Kolchak, and he's following another supernatural story. This time, women are being killed by what is described as a rotting corpse w/ superhuman strength! As he investigates further, Kolchak finds quite a lengthy history of such killings, dating back many decades. He also discovers each victim died by strangulation, and that some vital information has been withheld by police. This information is very interesting indeed, complete w/ a definite pattern! Kolchak is led to the underground labyrinth of "Old Seattle", where truly ghoulish terror awaits. While not as fresh as STALKER, STRANGLER is still an excellent made-for-TV horror movie. Some of its charm comes from the number of cameos by the likes of John Carradine, Wally Cox, Al Lewis, and Margaret Hamilton! Co-stars the beautiful Jo ann Pflug as Louise Harper...

This story puts Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland together in Seattle during a string of murders committed by a mad doctor left over from the Civil War. It has a fine cast of mostly over-the-hill but still well-known performers, most of them now overweight with their necks bulging out over their collars and their uniforms about to burst. This series appeared at about the time "Columbo" was at its peak but there isn't much borrowed from the model except McGavin's curious outfit -- seersucker suit, straw hat, and white tennis shoes. His blustery, shouting reporter is the opposite of Coumbo's character. This is one of the better entries in the series, a noticeable improvement over the original that had appeared the year before. The characters are more, well, interesting -- especially Nina Wayne as Charisma Beauty, a belly dancer. My God, a living Kewpie doll. And Margaret Hamilton scores as Miss Crabwell, as odious as the Wicked Witch.There are little asides in the conversations that keep one's attention. Scott Brady as the police chief is having a shouting match with McGavin and he uses the word "vilification." There is a pause while McGavin looks puzzled, then asks, "You KNOW that word?"Seattle's underground really exists but how much of what we see is real and how much is a set is impossible to say.

After the success the previous year of The Night Stalker, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) returns for another feature film. The intrepid reporter with a quip on the lips and a disdain for the unbelievers in the suit wearing echelons, is now in Seattle and quickly realises that the current spate of killings are more than just the work of a serial killer. But can he convince the authorities of this?The formula is exactly the same here, Kolchak simultaneously locks horns with his editor and all the law enforcement people in his arc. He does a voice over for us, proves to be clearly better than the law officers in charge of the case, drops sarcasm as pearls of wisdom, and of course has charisma in abundance. The difference here is that the villain, elegantly played by Richard Anderson, has a voice, a sort of Count Dracula for the modern setting, a Eugene Tooms in embryonic form, he's a great villain and this in turn gives Kolchack more to get his teeth into. Of course the ending is never in doubt, but there's a whole bunch of fun and 70s style scares to enjoy during the ride. Joining the ever enjoyable McGavin are Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland (again great foil for McGavin), Scott Brady, Wally Cox, Margaret Hamilton and John Carradine. A TV series would follow, such was the popularity of the character and its monster of the week formula, and it would influence none other than The X-Files some years down the line. Kolchack, legacy earned and warranted. 7.5/10

Carl Kolchak is my favorite TV character, hands down. So yes, I am pretty biased towards anything Carl appears in. This pugnacious misfit was an anachronism even in the 1970's...he would have been much more comfortable in the wild-and-woolly journalistic days of the 20's and 30's. He's clumsy...tactless...socially inept...and completely fearless in pursuit of the truth. He gets beaten up, but never beaten down. Plus, I like his hat.Following the humongous success of "The Night Stalker", it was only natural that a sequel be commissioned. With Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson teaming up on the creative end, there were no worries that "The Night Strangler" would be second-rate or inferior. Even though in many ways it is a virtual remake of the first film, the sequel manages to be even eerier and more frightening, while containing many humorous touches and character bits.Kicked out of Las Vegas after the Janos Skorzeny "vampire" debacle, Kolchak makes his way to Seattle...just in time for a rash of mysterious murders of young women to break out. The victims have had their throats crushed by a man with incredible strength and a small amount of blood has been syringed out of the base of their skulls. Obviously more than just a typical serial killer is at loose. Digging through the moldy archives of the local newspaper (with the help of Titus Berry, played by the great Wally Cox), Kolchak discovers that every 21 years since 1889, six women have been strangled during a period of 18 days. In each case, the killer was described as having superhuman strength and in some cases looking like a corpse.When Carl proposes the theory that the same man is responsible for all the killings going back to 1889, he gets the same response he did in Las Vegas: disbelief, silence and stonewalling. His long-suffering editor Tony Vincenzo is driven almost to a heart attack by arguments with Kolchak and pressure from the police and the powers that be.Kolchak learns that the killer may be lurking in the sinister Seattle "underground"...the remains of the 19th century town buried beneath the modern metropolis. With the help of a sexy belly dancer (cute Jo Ann Pflug), he plunges into the underground in search of the seemingly immortal maniac. The only question is: what will he do when he finds him? The villain in "The Night Strangler" is more interesting to me than the bestial Janos Skorzeny. He is more ghoulish because of his rotted features (depicted in a grisly police sketch) and yet more intellectual, because he is able to speak and articulate his mad reasoning. The scene where Dr. Richard Malcolm, the Night Strangler, converses easily with the mummified remains of his dead family sitting at a cobwebbed dinner table, communicates how utterly insane this genius has become. Richard Anderson, soon to play Oscar Goldman in "The Six Million Dollar Man", gives a chilling performance in his relatively brief scene as Malcolm.As was typical for all Kolchak vehicles, the movie is full of well-known character actors. It's a joy to watch these old pro's in action. Scott Brady is the belligerent police Captain Shubert, cadaverous John Carradine is the publisher of Kolchak's paper, Al Lewis is a drunken bum lurking in the Seattle underground, and, best of all, the Wicked Witch of the West herself, Margaret Hamilton, is a stern college professor who gives Carl information on alchemy and immortality. She has the movie's best line. When Carl asks if everlasting youth was possible, the professor replies "If it was, I'd be an 80 year old sexpot." The scenes in underground Seattle are terrifically spooky and the sequence where the killer bursts through a glass window to get to a victim had me jumping out of my chair. The mixture of humor and horror was never done better than in the Kolchak stories.Yes, the story is very familiar and yes, the shouting between characters gets a little overdone, but "The Night Strangler" is nothing but pure entertainment. Check it out and discover why Carl Kolchak is one of the greatest characters ever to appear on TV.