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.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on May 25, 1979; November 30, 1981; September 25, 1987 and January 1, 1988.

Directed by Don Weis (who did tons of TV work, like 22 episodes of Fantasy Island, 16 episodes of M*A*S*H* and 57 episodes of Ironside) and written by David Chase (The Sopranos) and Bill Stratton, “Vampire” brings Carl Kolchak to Los Angeles to interview a transcendental New Age leader. Still, the real reason he’s left Chicago is that his old friend James “Swede” Brightowsky (Larry Storch) tells him that there’s been a new series of vampire-like murders in Las Vegas.

Catherine Rawlins (Suanne Charny) was once a Las Vegas showgirl before being turned by Janos Skorzeny, the vampire from the original film that started it all, The Night Stalker. As a vampire, she’s learned how to handle even gigantic men and is now hiding out in the Hollywood hills, seeking victims when the night falls.

So, while real estate agent Fay Krueger (Kathleen Nolan) does the interview for Carl, who is in Los Angeles, he starts investigating and drawing the ire of the police, as always. Lt. Mateo (William Daniels, the voice of K.I.T.T.) dislikes Kolchak instantly, as our reporter hero tells him that the killings are all the doings of a vampire.

This episode was originally written to have Kolchak come to New York City when he heard that Skorzeny was still alive. The idea that there could be more of his conquests living in Las Vegas is a much better one, and Charny plays a frightening vampire, defeated by Carl, when he burns a cross in her front yard and stakes her through the heart.

Carl gets arrested, but it doesn’t stick. He explains why: “They booked me for murder just like I thought they would, but then after 12 hours they let me go. They never said they did say why, but while I was sitting in Lt. Matteo’s office waiting for execution. I happen to see a coroner’s report on Catherine Rawlins. I quote the coroner: “The tissue structure of the individual appeared to be that of a female, species human, who had been dead at least three years. This is a medical conundrum for which I have no explanation. Three years!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on June 15, 1979; June 12, 1981; October 16, 1987 and February 19, 1988.

Directed by Allen Baron, who did four episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and written by Rudolph Borchert, who wrote five episodes of the series, and Dennis Lynton Clark, who started his career in Hollywood as a costume designer on A Man Called Horse and Man In the Wilderness, the title of this episode comes from a line in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror: “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them; they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.”

A killing force unseen has blown into the Windy City with hurricane strength. It kills by creating an electromagnetic field that sucks the bone marrow from both humans and animals. And, oh yeah, it steals lead and electrical equipment.

Sounds like a story for Carl Kolchak.

Carl’s nemesis, Ron Updyke, has been selected as the temporary sports editor. And he owes Carl, who saved his life from an angry roller derby player a few weeks ago. He promised Carl a World Series ticket and the chance to see the Chicago Cubs play in the biggest baseball game, the first time in nearly thirty years, but he forgot. And now Carl will either get his ticket or a piece of Updyke.

But Vicenzo has worked for him. Today, a cheetah died in the zoo. Carl corrects him and says that it was yesterday and it was a panther. Vicenzo double-corrects him. Two dead jungle predators in two days. Forget the World Series; Carl smells a story.

Carl learns that the police are at an electronic company and arrives just in time to watch a wall explode and a bunch of lead disappear into thin air. Captain Quill (James Gregory) pulls him away, but not before saluting some very important military people. Now, Carl is practically dying to figure out this story.

Keen-reporting instincts lead Carl to the zoo. As he studies where the animals were killed, he can see that the bars are bent, there’s a black goo everywhere, and zoologist Dr. Bess Weinstock (Mary Wickes, Sister Mary Lazarus in the Sister Act movies) informs Carl that a leopard and a panda have also been killed and their deaths appear to be heart attacks. This matches an angry talk radio caller that Kolchak hears complaining about black tar all over Mariposa Way.

After getting a sample of the black substance—and who said this show wasn’t an influence on The X-Files—and getting Weinstock to work with him, Cark learns that it’s a mix of hydrochloric acid, acetone, and bone marrow. As all of the animals killed at the zoo had puncture marks at the major bone joints to drain the marrow, the zoologist theorizes that whatever was doing the killing ate the marrow and then puked.

At the morgue — to discover what happened at the factory explosion — Gordy the Ghoul is willing to talk for a price. Carl’s shocked to learn that Gordy’s boss, Stanley Wedemeyer (Rudy Challenger), tells him that the one dead person from the factory died from a simple heart attack. But Gordy sneakily reveals the truth to Carl and passes him a cassette tape.

The actual cause of death: All of the bone marrow was sucked out of his body.

Carl busts into a press conference and asks questions that get him kicked out of nearly every press conference he ever attends. He grills Captain Quill on what exactly happened at Raydyne Electronics, why everyone’s watches have stopped at the exact time, how the lead bars disappeared and how the animals and humans who have been killed all died from having their bone marrow removed.

When Vicenzo tells Carl to drop the whole mess — saying, “We don’t need another UFO story” — that only spurs him on. After all, he never said UFO. Who said UFO? Carl definitely finds the thing, a small metal ship, after an attack on an observatory and is nearly killed by the force when it comes back. Only the whine of his camera can protect him.

As always, no evidence remains.

This is one of the first times Carl has been threatened that someone much worse than the police will be taking care of him.

Also, there’s a moment where the zoologist explains to Carl that pandas are raccoons, not bears. Believe it or not, there was a significant debate over this. Only when DNA technology was advanced enough to be used did we discover that pandas are actually bears.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on June 8, 1979; June 5, 1981; October 9, 1987 and January 15, 1988.

Directed by Alexander Grasshoff (The Last Dinosaur) and written by Zekial Marko and David Chase (the creator of The Sopranos), this episode starts with a gangland slaying committed by a gigantic and unstoppable man and then an even more unbelievable happening. And that’s Vincenzo being friendly to Kolchak, all to ensure that he takes young reporter Monique Marmelstein (Carol Anne Susi) under his wing. She’s important because her uncle is a company bigwig.

Carl saves her from a police shootout with the Russo brothers and then heads to the morgue where his informant, Gordy the Ghoul (John Fiedler), is making bets and selling information. Kolchak learns that all the gang-related deaths have had multiple blunt force traumas to their dead bodies and that one of the other dead people was filled with bullet holes and chicken blood.

It all points to the death of a Haitian named François Edmonds, and the investigation even takes Carl to a voodoo shop owned by Uncle Filemon (Scatman Crothers), which is soon crawling with organized crime figures. He soon meets up with “Mamalois” Marie Juliette Edmonds (Paulene Myers), the mother of the dead man and, as we soon learn, now the undead killer who she can command by writing the names of his victims on tiny coffins. And now Kolchak’s name is on one of them!

This episode has one of my favorite endings. Carl enters a junkyard and has to fill the sleeping zombie’s mouth with salt and sew it shut. It gets wild when the zombie awakens mid-stitch and chases our intrepid reporter through the maze of crushed cars. Sure, Carl stops him, but he does it at the expense of another Rollei 16 film camera.

The zombie is played by defensive lineman Earl “Tree” Faison of the San Diego Chargers, who, at 6′ 5″ and 260 pounds, looks absolutely monstrous next to the much smaller McGavin. Antonio Fargas also appears in this one.

The monsters on Kolchak: The Night Stalker sure do like throwing people through the air, huh?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was on the CBS Late Movie on June 1 and December 7, 1979; May 29, 1981; October 2, 1987 and January 8, 1988.

Carl Kolchak, a character I can’t even explain how important he was to two-year-old me. My parents even bought me a straw hat and toy camera so that I could hunt down the monsters in my small Western Pennsylvania hometown. I may never have found any, but I discovered a love for the supernatural that has lasted my entire life. Kolchak, a Las Vegas reporter with a penchant for getting into trouble, was a hero to me. His relentless pursuit of the truth, even when it led him into danger, was inspiring. And his unorthodox methods, like pretending to be the commissioner, stealing a car, and placing several people under citizen’s arrest, were always entertaining.

The character started in Jeff Rice’s unpublished novel The Kolchak Papers — which told the story of the Las Vegas reporter discovering real-life vampire Janos Skorzeny — which was optioned as a movie by ABC in 1972. The Night Stalker is even today one of the best TV movies ever filmed with a dream team of director John Llewellyn Moxey, writer Richard Matheson, producer Dan Curtis and star Darren McGavin.On its first airing, it had a 33.2 rating and a 54 share, which means that 33% of possible viewers were watching it, and 54% of all TVs turned on were tuned to ABC. Those are the kinds of numbers that we will never see again outside of the Superbowl, and perhaps not even then.

A year later, Curtis directed and wrote The Night Strangler, which was written by Matheson. This time, Kolchak had been run out of Vegas and was working in Seattle when he ran into a serial killer who had stayed alive for nearly a hundred years thanks to the blood of his victims. The movie also did well in the ratings, so well that instead of a third movie in which Kolchak would investigate android duplicates—The Night Killers—ABC ordered a weekly series.

The series cannot live up to the movies, but there are some great episodes.

The show aired in the worst time slot, Friday nights at 10 p.m., and then moved to 8 p.m. Before the last four reruns aired on Saturday at 8 p.m., McGavin worked as an executive producer with no credit or pay to try and keep the show’s quality, which exhausted him. He hated that each week there was a new monster, and finally fed up, he asked for his release with two episodes unfilmed. Despite the challenging time slot, the show developed a dedicated fan base who would stay up late or rearrange their schedules to watch it.

For several years, that was it. No more Kolchak.

Then, on May 25, 1979, The CBS Late Movie resurrected Kolchak!

Sure, they started with episode four, but it was back. And then it was gone! The ratings were so strong that CBS decided to save it until the fall. The series played in 1979, 1981 and from 1987 to 1988, missing only four episodes.

That’s because ABC packaged “Demon In Lace” and “Legacy of Terror” as The Demon and the Mummy and “Firefall” and “The Energy Eater” as Crackle of Death. Until 1990, these episodes were kept from the original rotation. They made their return to the series when SciFi aired the show.

Now, let’s journey back to 11:30 p.m., when the rest of America was asleep or about to fall asleep watching Carson and getting into “The Ripper.”

Directed by Allen Baron (who also made the noir classic Blast of Silence) and written by Rudolph Borchert, the story begins with an exotic dancer (Denise Dillaway, The Cheerleaders) being attacked by a man in a cape with a sword cane who is somehow strong enough to throw human beings through the air.

We cut from this to a scene that will become familiar to show fans: Carl’s boss, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland), is now with him in Chicago, screaming at him yet again for the reporter’s latest screw-up. This time, he pretended to be the commissioner, stole a car and placed several people under citizen’s arrest as he was looking into a robbery. As punishment, Carl must write an advice column as Miss Emily.

That’s not where our reporter friend wants to be. His police scanner alerts him to another attack by the man people are calling The Ripper. There, Carl watches the man shrug off several point-blank gunshots, a four-story leap off a building and fighting multiple police officers. Carl would be fired if it wasn’t for the fact that his fellow reporter Updyke (Jack Grinnage) got sick when he even heard about the crimes.

At a press conference, Captain Warren (Ken Lynch) refuses to answer any of Kolchak’s questions but does reveal that The Ripper has sent a letter to another reporter, Jane Plumm (Beatrice Colen). She and Carl compare their research, and he learns that the letter says, “And now a pretty girl will die, so Jack can have his kidney pie.” As he digs deeper into the case, he discovers that there have been murders like this all over the world for decades.

Another crime, another poem — “Jack is resting. Be reborn. To finish up on Wednesday morn.” — and Carl learns something else the police didn’t. A couple hit a man with their car who just walked away. Kolchak saves a scrap of fabric from the accident. Jane is taking things even further, meeting men who claim to be The Ripper.

The cops want Carl out of the way, but The Ripper attacks the squad car he’s in the back of, and even though he’s caught after being stunned by an electric fence, the serial killer tears a jail cell door off its hinges and escapes. Carl figures out that he’s in a house in Wilton Park. There, he finds Jane’s corpse and barely survives when The Ripper attacks him. Luckily, Carl thought ahead and brought electrical gear to disintegrate the killer. Unfortunately, it also burns the Musnter’s house on the Universal backlot he’s been hiding in down to the ground, destroying all the evidence.

Carl closes, ruminating over how he got here all over again, saying, “And here’s the postscript: when they drained that pond, they found nothing – nothing, but some old clothes. For some reason, the police suddenly decided they wanted those and my head. I don’t know how Vincenzo will handle the charges of arson and malicious mischief lodged against me by Captain Warren, but that fire was a big one – a six-alarmer. A blast furnace couldn’t have done a better job: everything gone. The house. My story. The evidence. Like they say: ashes to ashes. One thing survived the inferno, however. There’s enough of it left to read the maker: “Peel’s Footwear, London, Southwest 1.” They’re still there, of course, but they don’t make this style shoe anymore. It was discontinued over seventy years ago. Seventy. Years. Ago.”

Realizing that no one will believe a word he’s written, he pulls the paper from his typewriter and throws it in the trash.

“The Ripper” is a decent first episode that introduces Carl to anyone who hasn’t seen the first two movies and the show’s theme. I’m excited to revisit these, as they are some of my fondest childhood memories.