Whenever we watched A Christmas Story growing up, my dad would always mention that Darren McGavin, the actor who played Ralphie’s dad, was in a neat show in the 70s called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Darren McGavin played a newspaper reporter who investigated a new supernatural phenomenon every episode, usually a monster of some sort. I’ve seen a few episodes here and there but for some reason, it seems to jump streaming services frequently and is never on any of them very long.
Unlike Brady and my mom, I watch a dozen or so movies and shows at the same time (what would’ve been normal behavior in the days before streaming makes me seem like a madman today). So, I never made it through the show before it got either taken down or moved to another streaming service. I always tend to think about this show around Christmas time when we watch A Christmas Story and casually try to find it.
I recently re-subscribed to Peacock and guess what was streaming? That’s right, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. (At the time of this writing, the show is on Peacock for anyone interested). After watching an episode, I decided to look up the trivia for the show on IMDb. And that’s when I found out that before Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a show, it was originally a made-for-tv movie of the week in 1972, with a sequel produced in 1973. How did I not know this existed until now? I had to find it.
I had no luck with any streaming service, except an out-of-print DVD that was super expensive. Then I discovered that both movies are, as of this writing, streaming on YouTube for free. So, was finding the original The Night Stalker (1972) worth the effort? Absolutely, and let me tell you why.
In The Night Stalker, Darren McGavin, most famous for playing Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story, plays a middle-aged newspaper reporter named Carl Kolchak. Kolchak is often fired from newspaper jobs. The police think he is too nosy and often is run out of town. Kolchak believes that the people deserve to hear the truth and is not one to be paid off to keep his mouth shut.
In the original TV movie, Kolchak is currently working for a Las Vegas paper. Kolchak is always one of the first to a crime scene and frequently interrupts police officers when they are interviewing witnesses, often in tongue-in-cheek ways. For example, Kolchak will ask the witness what the suspect looked like and the police officer will say “I’ll ask the questions around here if you don’t mind! So ma’am, what did the suspect look like?” I love little moments like this in movies. Not bust a gut hilarious, but it feels real and helps set up the characters’ personalities in a short amount of time.
Each victim in The Night Stalker is found in the same way, drained of all blood, but not a drop of it to be found at the crime along with no footprints. Each victim has teeth marks and saliva found on their wounds. Of course, you know how it goes.
Kolchak thinks it is a vampire, but nobody believes him, right? Well, this time there is a twist to the traditional trope. In public press conferences, the police act like Kolchak is crazy, even when the mortician’s information seems to at least point toward someone who thinks he is a vampire. The police are constantly telling Kolchak to back off. When the policemen actually fight the suspect later on in the movie, their bullets don’t slow him down at all, and the vampire is able to kill three police officers with his bare hands. The police then cremate the bodies of all the victims. Now why would they exhume the bodies to burn them unless they were afraid of them becoming vampires? It may not sound like much, but to me, it really adds to the tension between reporters and police.
What I love about this movie is the mystery. The writing in this movie is particularly entertaining. Darren McGavin is of course enduring as always and does not disappoint here. The movie does an excellent job of balancing exposition and vision clues. Kolchak is also not a lone wolf type character. He works with the public to solve the mystery and chooses people who are often ignored or not taken seriously. In other words, the every day Dick and Jane.
The mystery is certainly more complex than “is he or he is not a vampire”, but it does not make it overly complicated or convoluted. It is just the right amount of clues to make you buy the story, and that is what a good mystery drama should do. It is not just a rehash of Dracula but provides its own twist to the vampire narrative. While fictional, it feels just plausible enough by relating the current story to unsolved murders from the past. The pacing in this film really works because according to similar killing sprees from the past, they only have 18 days to solve the mystery.
It goes without saying, but Darren McGavin knocks it out of the park. He is funny, sincere, determined, and stops at nothing to save the day. The climax of the film is particularly good. There is very little dialogue, but the pacing, atmosphere, and stunt work make this a fun watch. There is a lot of slinging, smashing, and breaking of things. The vampire turns out to be a hoarder and I don’t know why, but this makes it extra creepy and realistic to me. Dracula is a more sophisticated monster, but The Night Stalker vampire is a different kind of vampire altogether.
The only negatives I would give this movie, and this is nitpicking, but the soundtrack is very 70s. This works with a lot of movies from the era, like Dirty Harry, but in my opinion, it does not work as well here. It is not bad by any means, but it is certainly not one of the best movie soundtracks of all time.
Spoilers warning: I appreciate that this movie does not have the traditional happy ending. Sure, Kolchak drives the stake through the vampire's heart and saves the day, but the police chief frames this as murder even though it is not. The police just want to sweep this under the rug so if Kolchak skips town and doesn’t run the story, they won’t charge him for murder. The government is clearly wanting to hide the truth in this movie, and this has interesting parallels to real life where many of the details of crimes are not public knowledge.
They make Kolchak’s girlfriend leave town too and make her promise to never contact him again. Did they have to do this? No, but it is just rubbing a little extra salt into Kolchak’s wound. And something about this ending makes The Night Stalker feel real to me. If something like this really happened, I could see it going down this way.
The test screenings were so positive that director John Llewellyn Moxey said he regretted not releasing it to theaters. And I can see why. The movie’s production values would’ve held up just as well in a made-for-TV movie in the 80s and would’ve definitely worked for an early 70s production. So if you are interested in Darren McGavin, vampires, mysteries, made-for-tv classics, or all the above, then The Night Stalker is for you. Check out the link below to watch it now for free!
Best quality upload of The Night Stalker (1972): Click here to watch!
Read the sequel movie review. Click here!
