EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker didn’t air on the CBS Late Movie. It wasn’t offered to CBS because ABC made a TV movie from it and “Firefall” and titled it Crackle of Death. As a completist, I’m covering the episode this week.

The new, modern Lakefront Hospital is supposed to save lives. But why don’t its machines work correctly? How are there cracks in the foundation and walls already? And why have so many people died from horrifying deaths in a place of wellness?

These are the kinds of questions that Carl Kolchak would like the answers to.

He gets his answers from one of the foremen who left the construction before it was finished, Jim Elkhorn (William Smith!), who explains that he and the rest of his Native American crew didn’t want to anger Matchemonedo, an invisible bear spirit that Kolchak must send back into hibernation.

Joyce Jilson (Superchick) and Elaine Giftos (Angel) also appear in the cast. Beyond being in danger, they’re two conquests for Elkhorn, who seemingly is as interested in lying down with lovely women as he is in erecting buildings.

The episode’s highlight is when Karl takes two of his paper’s most expensive cameras to get a photo of the monster. Vincenzo stops him and wants to know what’s happening.

Vincenzo: What are you doing with two of our best cameras?

Kolchak: I’m gonna hock ’em, what do you think? You ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer.

As Elkhorn is helping Karl do research, he translates some French. Smith could do that, as he was fluent in Russian, French, German and Serbo-Croatian, languages he learned while serving as an Intelligence Specialist for the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War.

This episode was directed by Alexander Grasshoff and written by Arthur Rowe, who wrote thirteen episodes of Fantasy Island and nineteen episodes of The Bionic Woman and served as a producer on those shows. It also has scripting by Rudolph Borchert, who wrote five Kolchak episodes.

While not the best episode, this does have Kolchak trying to freeze the basement floors and foundation, which is pretty impressive as he’s just one man against a Native American spirit that has been murdering humans since we first showed up on this planet.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on June 29 and October 26, 1979; July 17, 1981; October 30, 1987 and February 26, 1988.

Chicago is filled with supernatural murders. This time, the only thing linking the killings of a sleep research center assistant (Elisabeth Brooks from The Howling!) and the chef of Chez Voltaire is that their chests were crushed, and their bodies were covered with Spanish Moss. Somehow, Kolchak learns that the crimes come from the Cajun myth of Pere Malfait, the Bad Father. Only a spear made of gumwood from the bayou can stop the monster, which Kolchak also finds, and then goes into the sewers to again battle the supernatural.

The monster has come to life thanks to the sleep studies of Dr. Aaron Pollack (Severn Darden), and as one of his patients (Don Mantooth) dreams of the boogeyman, the tactics to help him sleep unleash it in the real world. Kolchak comes up against another Chicago cop who wants none of his monkey business, this time Captain Joe “Mad Dog” Siska, played by Keenan Wynn.

The Spanish Moss Monster is played by Richard Kiel, the same bad guy two episodes in a row. The creature is based on a legend of a soldier who kidnaps, rapes and beheads and hangs a Native American princess from a tree. Her spirit becomes one with the tree, and she hunts down the soldier, killing him with the tree’s roots, which have become one with his hair. There’s also a Florida Moss Man legend of a “large man-like beast with a rank odor and covered with swamp grass” that was seen often in the late 1800s.

This was directed by Gordon Hessler, who also directed Scream, Pretty Peggy, Cry of the Banshee and Scream and Scream Again. It was written by Alvin R. Friedman and David Chase.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on September 21, 1979; July 10, 1981 and October 23, 1987.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘The rich are different than you and me.’ They sure are. They got more money. But there wasn’t enough money in the world to save some of Chicago’s upper crust members from a fiendish force so dark, it can only be called diabolic.” This quote sets the tone for the episode, hinting at the episode’s focus on the wealthy and their encounter with a sinister force.

With those words, Carl Kolchak embarks on a new episode, delving into the mysterious deaths of two Chicago socialites who killed themselves the same night and lost their precious gems. This leads him to the intriguing Native American legend of the Diablero, a sorcerer amassing a fortune in gems to break its eternal curse.

The highlight of this episode is when Karl goes to battle the legend at the Champion Towers, a luxurious high-rise in Chicago, bringing along a small mirror as seeing its reflection is the only way to stop this monster. Of course, Karl gets spooked and drops the mirror, shattering it and is alone, afraid and up against pure terror.

Despite facing a force that can hypnotize people into doing its bidding, Kolchak finds a mirror in the bathroom, transforms it into a skeleton, and then dusts. In a surprising turn of events, Canadian actor Victor Jory plays Charles Rolling Thunder, a role that might raise some eyebrows. And to top it off, the tribe in this episode, the Yoshone, is a fictional creation.

This episode was directed by Alexander Grasshoff (The Last Dinosaur) and was written by L. Ford Neale and John Huff, both of whom wrote the Burt Reynolds movie The Hunter’s Moon.

The makers of Kolchak must have really liked Kiel, as he would return the next episode to play the Paramafait in the next episode, “The Spanish Moss Murders.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker didn’t air on the CBS Late Movie. It wasn’t offered to CBS as ABC made a TV movie from this episode, “The Energy Eater,” and titled it Crackle of Death. As I’m a completist, I’m covering the episode this week.

A doppelgänger, a spirit with a sinister agenda, is at the heart of this episode. It’s targeting musical conductor Ryder Bond (Fred Beir), who has been spotted at crime scenes where victims died from spontaneous combustion. These victims, all colleagues and friends of Bond, draw Carl Kolchak into the mystery.

Carl, after getting to know Bond, decides to assist him. However, he’s in grave danger. If Bond falls asleep, his doppelgänger could emerge and kill, with Carl potentially being the next victim.  Carl uncovers that an organized crime figure named Markoff, who dreams of being a conductor, is the malevolent force behind this. Markoff’s restless spirit is now targeting Bond to take over his life.

Carl must team up with fortune teller Marie (Madlyn Rhue) to combat this evil. Together, they devise a plan to stop the malevolent ghost. This involves a daring act of grave-robbing, using footage recycled from the “The Zombie” episode, and a fiery showdown at the arcade where Markoff died. It’s a risky plan, but their determination is unwavering.

This is one of four series episodes that Don Weis would direct. It was written by Bill S. Ballinger, who also wrote “The Ghost of Potter’s Field” episode of Circle of Fear and the movie The Strangler.

It ends with Carl finally being able to sleep, except it’s in the back of a police car, and he’s hauled off to jail. He closes the story by saying, “Well, I won’t have to worry about the doppelganger any longer. He’s back in his own body and will probably be cremated, which is rather sweet poetic justice for Frankie Markoff. My only worry now is to find Tony Vincenzo to try to raise bail. They’ve got me hooked on some stupid arson charge. But it’s Tony’s night to play cards, and I don’t know where he is. So I think I’ll spend a nice good night’s sleep in the slammer.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker aired on the CBS Late Movie on June 22 and October 19, 1979; June 26, 1981 and January 22 and August 30, 1988.

Vincenzo gives Carl Kolchak another assignment: go out on the last voyage of the Hanover, a once excellent cruise ship — actually the RMS Queen Mary with some stock footage of another boat when it was on the ocean — on its final voyage as a swinging singles-only cruise.

Indeed, there’s no way that the supernatural will be on board.

Come on. It’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

One of the passengers is NATO officer Bernhardt Stieglitz (Eric Braeden), who last month turned in Montana and murdered an entire family. Now, he has a buffet of people to snack on as the Hanover heads into open waters under the full moon.

Working with the movie-obsessed Paula Griffin (Nita Talbot), Carl realizes that he does indeed have a werewolf on his hands — even if Paula thinks John Wayne was in Werewolf of London before realizing that it was Charlie Chan actor Warner Oland — and he has to steal the ship captain’s uniform and melts down the buttons to make silver bullets. This seems like a lot of work, but I’m writing about Carl’s adventures, not living them.

By this point, five episodes in, Carl has faced Jack the Ripper, an alien, a zombie and a vampire. The “monster of the week” format starts to show here as Carl is sent somewhere new, meets a partner of sorts, butts heads with authority and battles a monster that throws people all over the place.

What does work and elevates the show is the humor and how well McGavin imbues our hero. Plus, the werewolf is a sympathetic character who doesn’t want to be a killer. Carl’s ship roommate Mel (Dick Gautier) is also a blast.

Maybe the makeup isn’t perfect, and perhaps it all seems rather silly now, but Carl’s ending lines point to something more that made this show special: “The body was never recovered. When the old ship was scrapped, all evidence was scrapped along with her. Of the eleven crewmen and four passengers attacked by the beast, it is not known how many actually died. The injured… well, they disappeared. Rumor has it to Switzerland to undergo treatment for a rare blood disease. The shipping line would only admit to having had a psychotic stowaway onboard. The killer had fallen overboard after being cornered by the ship’s officers, so they said. All traces of Bernhard Stieglitz vanished. His baggage was gone. His name could not be found in any passenger manifest. NATO officials claimed that no such man had ever existed in their organization, and any attempt to publish a werewolf story about such a man would be met with the heaviest legal artillery. Vincenzo, always gun-shy, conveyed that message to me in no uncertain terms. So here the story sits. For good, I guess. No one but you or I know the real truth… the real story.”

We have become complicit in the conspiracy that Carl Kolchak has found himself coming up against repeatedly. Only we can understand his private struggle, that in the dogged search of the truth and the story behind it all, he’s just one man, surviving by dumb late just as much as skill or smarts. And there he remains, constantly finding and losing the threads of what’s lurking in the shadows.

In the Quentin Tarantino universe of films, Gary Lockwood did not play the role of Jim Fugg. Instead, this was another role for Rick Dalton in the wake of his career resurgence after he violently dispersed a home invasion from several hippies. But in our world, this is the episode of Night Gallery that we got.

“The Ring With the Red Velvet Ropes” is the story of Figg (Lockwood), who has finally won the championship from “Big” Dan Anger (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) even if that victory seems not altogether a shoot, in the parlance of pro wrestling. That is to say, it looks like the fix was in.

But when Figg’s manager returns from answering the press, he tells him that that would be impossible because Anger is in the hospital.

After a shower, Figg wakes up in a classy hotel, confused by how time passes. He soon meets the gorgeous Sandra Blanco (Joan Van Ark), who informs him that he’s due to box her husband, Roderick (Chuck Conners), a fighter who has never been defeated and who will fight him in a ring of fire—or at least red ropes.

Before the fight, Sandra begs Figg to lose to her husband. She thinks he’s the first man who can defeat him and claims that it would be much better if he just did the job here. Figg responds that he’s never thrown a fight.

After a war in the ring, Figg wins. As he looks down on his defeated foe, the man disintegrates into dust and bones. The referee says, “The champion is dead. Long live the champion.” That’s when we learn that Roderick had been the champ since 1861, and now Figg must take on the role. Does he get Joan Van Ark? That would make this all worth it.

Directed by season three workhorse Jeannot Szwarc and written by Robert Malcolm Young, who also wrote “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes” and “Fright Night,” this was based on the story by Edward D. Hoch. It’s almost identical to the Twilight Zone story “A Game of Pool.” But it never really explains how we’ve entered the world of the fantastic or the stakes. It’s yet another just there episode in the lame duck feeling season three.