![]() ![]() Set in Las Vegas, the resulting TV film turned out to be a near ideal mix of B-movie horror and humour, and at the time of its original airing it became the most highly-rated TV movie of all time, with a 33.2 rating and a 54 share. Then, in two great bits of casting, Darren McGavin ( Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, The Outsider) was given the plum role of crusading wisenheimer Kolchak, and Simon Oakland was assigned to play Tony Vincenzo, his short-tempered, incredulous boss (and reluctant friend). It bounced around Hollywood until someone saw some TV potential in the unpublished story about a fast-talking news hawk trying to track down a modern-day vampire, and it was adapted into the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker by horror writer Richard Matheson (The Twilight Zone). ![]() Still, in the tradition of the best pulp heroes, Carl Kolchak never lets his outward cynicism stop him from battling near-hopeless odds in his quest for truth - nor would he ever let the forces of supernatural evil prey on the innocent (even if in destroying said evils, the luckless Kolchak also often ends up destroying the only proof he has of their existence.) All in all, this is pretty heroic behaviour for a guy who looks as if he hasn’t bought any new clothing in at least 30 years.Ĭarl’s roots were in an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice called The Kolchak Papers, written around 1970. In fact, Carl seems to spend most of his time either being scared out of his tennis shoes by exceedingly lethal monsters, or (because the proof of his wild stories always seems to get lost, destroyed or covered up) as being regarded as certifiably nuts by his long-suffering editor Tony Vincenzo. But it seems Kolchak took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a couple of 1970’s TV movies (and a subsequent short-lived TV show) in which he kept stumbling across increasingly outrageous news stories that not only put his life in imminent danger, but inevitably involved horrific - and unbelievable - supernatural or paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves and aliens. There, he could have uncovered a juicy corruption scandal at city hall and gotten the goods on the local underworld boss, all while making time with the flirty, sharp-as-a-tack secretary at the editor’s desk. A wise-cracking, would-be hard-bitten newsman in a battered seersucker suit and straw boater hat, Kolchak would have been right at home in a 1940’s newspaper flick. “I promised I’d show up with a haircut, a new hat, and a pressed suit… but I lie a lot.”
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