UNCUT - The Night Stalker (1972)

Shut up Ralphie!

I was today days old when I realized 1973’s Kojak (Telly Savalas) and 1974’s Kolchak (Darren McGavin) were not the same character. One is a New York police officer who says “Who loves ya baby?” and one is a Las Vegas reporter. Cool that this was produced by Dan Curtis, who also created the supernatural soap opera “Dark Shadows.” Robert Cobert did the music for both Dark Shadows and The Night Stalker.

This Movie was part of the fantastic ABC movie of the weeks, every we we'd get a movie and they were mostly Genre Pictures, mainly horror, and they all written very well, Movies Like Isn't it shocking, Crowhaven Farm, The Little Girl that lives down the Lane, Gargoyles, Duel and On and On it was a great time

and this show inspired Chris Carter who created X-files. He wanted to bring Kolchak into that show but couldn't secure the rights to the character, he did bring in McGavin thou playing an origination X=files Agent

I watch this every Halloween, I Hope you do the Sequel The Night Strangler

yeah seems like you guys skipped the end credits where they showed all the actors, you especially forgot Larry "Frank Burns eats Worms" Linville From MASH

Daren McGavin was such a natural actor and gave so many great performances in his career. He was Excellent inMike Hammer a series based on the private eye, that they lifted his narration here from, and so many other shows from Gunsmoke to Bonanza

Finally sat down to watch this and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. It first aired when I was 11 or 12 in junior high, and it was a big topic around school afterwards. So was The Night Strangler and the following series. Carol Lynley, who played the girlfriend, was in what seemed like every TV show and TV movie from the 60s through the 80s as well as some theatrical movies, but she never did any Star Trek.

This was a first-time watch for me as well. Great film, I really enjoyed it.

love it I don't usually watch the movie reviews I'll watch this one

Shot on 35mm film. It's a beauty.

Another Star Trek connection: Richard Matheson, the teleplay writer for The Night Stalker, also wrote a little episode called The Enemy Within for TOS.

Could I recommend "The Norliss Tapes" (1973) and "The Questor Tapes" (1974) this one was written and produced by Gene Roddenbury. Both excellent.

This might be my favorite non Star Trek reaction you guys have done, can’t wait for the full discussion

The great Darren McGavin. 12 year old me thought Carl Kolchak was cool. I understood that he was a third-rate writer at a less than respectable ragsheet. Still thought he was cool.

Dan Curtis (the producer) helmed many great horror projects: Dark Shadows, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both these movies starred Jack Palance), Burnt Offerings. The main law enforcement guy with the cowboy hat was Claude Akins. He appeared with Barry Atwater in the great Twilight Zone episode called “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”. Thanks for reacting to this movie. It’s one of my favorites. “Night Strangler” is also very good.

As a kid, I watched this show on "CBS Late Night" - an anthology of popular police procedural and detective dramas at the time. Imagine watching an episode of, say, Columbo (set in the "real" world) immediately before this. It made you feel like it was all happening in the same universe - yours.

Oh, I grew up on late night re-runs of this series when I was a kid. I love Kolchack (sp). I'm looking forward to watching this with you!

My introduction to Kolchak was via a short-run, very late night series we had over here in the UK in the early 90s called Mystery Train, hosted by Richard "Rocky Horror" O'Brien. O'Brien was a sort of Crypt Keeper type, haunting a deserted underground station and introduced weird animations, a 50s B-movie and always an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker series. I made a point of staying up later than I was supposed to, just to catch it.

I saw this when it came out when I was a kid, I begged/convinced my folks to let me stay up because it was a vampire movie. The whole family ended up watching it and loving it. Darren MacGavin is great and the TV show that followed was a lot of fun.

If you guys want to watch an entertaining TV movie, you should try "The Horror at 37000 Feet" it's an ensemble that can best be described as Airport Meets The Exorcist... & Alex, the defrocked priest is played by a man you and I know to be the greatest hero of all time and a personal role model. You guys would laff your tails off.

I first saw this in the UK, I was around 16, watching it with my dad and trying to pretend I wasn't frightened. People were recommending this to friend for weeks afterwards and of course no one had personal video recorders back then. Roddy McDowell was mentioned earlier. One of my favourites of his apart from "Planet of the Apes" was "The Legend of Hell House". Scared the Hell out of me at the time, well worth a watch along if you haven't seen it.

The chief coroner who gave testimony at the press briefing was the late Larry Linville, who would shortly go on to play the hated and incompetent surgeon Major Frank Burns in the TV M*A*S*H. He would also appear in another role in the Kolchak series.

The used car sales man was played by Stanley Adams. He was Cyrano Jones in the Trouble With Tribblee. Went for the end credits I wouldn't have known. The mustache he had made him look very different.

That was a lot of FUN!!

The Night Stalker absolutely terrified me as a kid (10-11 when this aired). "Grounded in reality" is probably why it was so frightening. I was a scaredy-cat kid anyway, but at least with old b&w chiller movies they seemed "long ago" and couldn't happen in our world. The newspaper reporter angle also lent itself to making it seem like a legit story to a kid - newspaper reporters wouldn't lie about this stuff, right? This really happened and this guy is spilling the beans! (Ah, young and dumb.) Yeah, there were usually wide-awake nights after each episode.

Great movie. Spawned another movie and series. I pull these out to watch at least yearly. Really enjoyed your reactions to this movie.

Of course the biggest Trek connection was Darren McGavin, who was married in real life to beautiful Kathie Browne (Queen Deela from TOS Wink of an Eye) until her death.

Guys there are only 20 episodes of thus show… just sayin’

Surak from the TOS episode The Savage Curtain returns. And so does Cyrano Jones from The Trouble with Tribbles and Samuel T. Cogley, attorney at law from Court Martial.

Written by Richard Matheson, a genius (Nightmare at 20,000 ft., The Enemy Within). Next: The Night Strangler. Commissioned hours after the success of this film.

My personal favorite piece of trivia about Night Gallery…the pilot episode “Eyes” starring Joan Crawford is the directorial debut of my favorite director of all time and one you’ll both recognize!! This episode is the very first thing he ever filmed professionally!

Also tons of recognizable actors on this show with lots of Star Trek Connections including at least one future Star Trek main character! Nimoy is in and episode as well as John Colicos…

I've been waiting for this one. Looking forward to watching it with you guys.

Now you need to check out Rod Serling’s Night Gallery series, it’s really good and an anthology series

I’m super excited to watch this movie with you guys tonight! Great movie, great series too. It inspired the X-Files, there’s even a direct reference in the X-Flies