The Night Stalker

 

Recently, in my search for horror films I've not seen before, or have had a hard time tracking down, I turned to YouTube where I discovered a trove of films there. They are not always of the best quality, and I sometimes wonder about the legality of some of them on there, but its proven a fruitful vein to mine. 

Sometimes it doesn't pay off. For example, I have been trying to watch the 1961 William Castle film Mr. Sardonicus, which I have never seen. Of the two full versions of this film on YouTube that I've found, one is Spanish Dubbed with English subtitles, and the other has a soundtrack that went wildly out of synch to the point that watching it was impossible. 

Other times, you find some gems... I have been able to revisit the entire series of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, which has been a bit of a treat. I have also discovered a modern horror host show... Creature Features, which has some interesting content. 

Some history about horror hosts.... the original 3 (and most influential) were pretty much John Zacherly (The Cool Ghoul) in New York, Maila Nurmi (Vampira) in Los Angeles, and Ernie Anderson's Ghoulardi here in Cleveland. But as horror host became more common, they sprang up everywhere... and in the 1970s, San Francisco had 'Creature Features' which was hosted by Bob Wilkins, who eschewed the typical costumed persona of the horror host in favor of a rocking chair and a cigar while he spoke with dry wit about the movies he showed. After his retirement, John Stanley took over hosting duties for several years in the 1980s, and then Creature Features remained dormant until it was revived by actor Jeff Bodean around 2016, who took on the person of aging rock star Vincent Van Dahl to host the show that currently streams on YouTube (and, I believe other places). Van dahl is joined in his hosting duties not only by weekly guests, but by his charming sidekicks, the stoic butler Livingston (who is always drily sarcastic and slightly condescending to Van Dahl) and quixotic waif wraith, the silent Tangella. While Van Dahl himself is portrayed as a somewhat pompous idiot who is often confused by the films he shows, and his guests are often... puzzling eccentrics, he DOES manage to find some films that are somewhat rarely seen (often they are old Made-For-TV horror or thriller films from ABC's old 'Movie of the Week' show from the 70s). Plus the antics of Livingston and Tangella actually are amusing to me, in ways that Van Dahl is not. 

Consequently, there have been a few films I've caught there that either I have not seen before, or haven't seen in some time. Among these have been the films The Cat Creature, The House That Would Not Die, and of course, the classics The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler. 

The Night Stalker is one of my earliest horror memories. I remember watching this on TV, but not being allowed to stay up to see the end of it... so my dad had to tell me how it ended the next day. Carl Kolchak was my childhood hero, and even now is still up there. While I own the film on DVD (as well as the TV series), I've not watched the film in awhile, so I sat back to watch it.

It still holds up. 

The script is by the legendary Richard Matheson. The Producer is Dan Curtis at the top of his game, and the director is John Llewyellen Moxey. The film is studded with talent, from Darren McGavin in the lead, and Simon Oakland as his long suffering Editor Tony Vincenzo, to Claude Akins as his foil Sheriff Butcher, and bit parts by the likes of Larry Linville and Elisha Cook Jr. 

The script positively sparkles with just great dialogue, particularly the cynical and often sarcastic voiceovers by Kolchak.:

Kolchak (in voiceover): "Sherman Duffy of the New York Herald once said, "A newspaperman is the loneliest guy on Earth. Socially, he ranks somewhere between a hooker and a bartender. Spiritually he stands with Galileo, because he knows the world is round." <beat> Not that it matters much, when his editor knows its flat."

What's interesting about it, to me, is that we don't see the vampire all that much. When we DO see it, it is in the context of either a narrative flashback about the attack on a victim, or other point where he intersects with the story. The film is NOT about the Vampire. Its about the Vampire HUNTER and the impact the vampire has among the community. 

When we look at previous vampire films, the focus has been on the Vampire itself. In the Universal films, the focus was on Dracula and his handful of victims. They were cozy sorts of films, intimate in their nature. Dracula was focused on a particular family for the most part. Even in the Hammer films, you tend to see Dracula focusing on one particular woman or family over others, and even when they depict that there is a wider effect to the operation of vampires, it tends to STILL be a focus on a small subset. For example, 1963's Kiss of the Vampire dealt with a cult and its control over a certain town, but its focus was still on one particular couple. As we moved into the 70s, this formula didn't really change. 

The question that The Night Stalker poses is not so much "How do we defeat the vampire?" it is "How would the modern world respond to a vampire?".  We KNOW how vampires can be defeated, we've seen hundreds of movies about that. WHO will defeat them though, and what will the consequences be?

That was the thing that stood out to me about this, even then. The traditional vampire film, to this point, tend to end, right after the vampire is defeated. Even when we see the consequences, its never really driven home how serious they are. In Dracula's Daughter (1936), we pick up right at the end of Dracula, with Van Helsing being arrested for murder. But while this is a serious consequence, its not really a focus. The same can be said of 1943 film The Return of the Vampire where Lady Jane faces a murder investigation for the destruction of the vampire Armand Tesla. But again, she doesn't feel very concerned about it. She, like Van Helsing in the other film, seems content with the idea that authorities will simply understand that it was a vampire, and had to be destroyed. 

Not so in The Night Stalker. The vampire, Janos Skorzeny, is found and destroyed by reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) and his FBI contact Bernie Jenks (Ralph Meeker) ... and is promptly arrested and blackmailed by the police into keeping the truth of the affair a secret. Because Kolchak did the right thing, and destroyed a vampire, he loses his job, his home, his girl, and cannot tell anyone why or the arrest warrant for murder will be served against him. 

This was a vampire story for the Post-Watergate world, where journalists were the heroes, getting the dirty truth out there for people while the elected officials covered everything up. However, it must be said that Kolchak is not entirely motivated by truth an altruism here. His interest in the story is partly to get the truth out to the public, but it is also to secure for him the exclusive rights to the story which he will then parley into a return to a newspaper in a major market... in this case, New York. 

He is a flawed hero. Confident to the point of arrogance, bullheaded and stubborn even if he is open-minded, and grudgingly acknowledged as a decent reporter by his colleages... he still can't hold on to a job. His girlfriend here, Gail (played by Carol Lynley) lists his checkered career history: Fired twice in Washington, three times in New York, twice in Chicago, and "once... or was it twice in Boston?" to which a weary Kolchak holds up three fingers.... (For the record, we can now add once in Las Vegas and once in Seattle to this record after the two television films... his final stint, during the TV series seems to have got him into a stable, if underappreciated home with a News Service in Chicago again.) 

The vampire here, Janos Skorzeny as played by Barry Atwater, is a curious one. We never really learn what he is all about. He is a monster, plain and simple... but there are curious hints. He never speaks in the film, though we hear about him speaking from witnesses. Whenever he is on screen, he seems almost bestial, growling and attacking like a wild animal. But we also see that he is no mindless brute. He is cunning enough to rob a blood bank, and canny enough to keep one victim alive in his lair to harvest blood from. We hear from the police that not only is this the case, but he also spent time in London where he lived and worked as a doctor studying blood disorders, and so he's actually quite brilliant. We do not learn why he came to Las Vegas, but we do know that he has traveled extensively, and left a trail of corpses behind him. We know he has money to burn.

In short, what we see of the vampire is ONLY what Kolchak turns up. there is literally no other information for the viewer. The vampire is a news story, and what we learn is what we learn in the news. The way the story plays out though, we are told that what we see in the news should be questioned as much as anything else, because the powers that be manipulate it to their own ends.

Which is honestly still one of the most timely messages ever, especially with claims over the last few years of 'fake news'. The news doesn't always lie... but it doesn't always tell the truth either. There is bias there, and the question becomes one of who is putting the pressure on the news. 

An interesting point of trivia is that the vampire here was originally intended to be played by Robert Quarry instead of Barry Atwater, but Quarry's contract with AIP prevented him from appearing. Quarry previously appeared as Count Yorga, a vampire in 2 films, and as the semi-immortal foil for the title character in Doctor Phibes Rises Again... which was itself originally intended to be a reprisal of Count Yorga. I think that would have been a very different sort of film... I think I prefer Atwater. 

The choice of Las Vegas is very good. If you are going to move a vampire into the modern day, there are few cities better suited, even over New York or London. No, its not Gothic, but it is a genuinely 24 hour city, and it is not known as 'Sin City' for nothing. It is a genuinely modern city, with NONE of the trappings of past history there. It represents not only a perfect modern hunting ground for a vampire, but also a perfect place to display the corruption of city officials as well. 

For a TV movie, the performances are surprisingly nuanced and top notch. I think in many way, the closing scene in the District Attorney's office is one of the strongest in the entire film, and it occurs AFTER the destruction of the vampire. But even the leadup is fantastic... Carl is gleefully putting the finishing touches on his article as he writes it, and is so happy about it that he proposes to Gail (Carik Lynley) before heading into the office. When he gets to the office he turns the story and photos over to a curiously subdued Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) and reiterates the instructions for printing the story, all of which the editor agrees to. And then, if what is the first warning that all is not well, he looks at Kolchak before he leaves the office and calls him 'a hell of a reporter'... possibly the only kind words he's ever said to him, and then says that the DA's office called and would like Carl to stop in. This slows Kolchak slightly as he's too perceptive to not realize something is going on. When he arrives at the District Attorney's office, the body language of everyone there says it all. DA Pierce sits behind his desk with a smug smile, Sheriff Butcher is like a coiled spring and seething with restrained anger, and FBI Agent Bernie Jenks is slouched against the wall looking defeated, ashamed, and avoiding all eye contact. When Butcher reads out the warrant for Kolchak's arrest for murder, Carl is dumbfounded, and when the DA lays out the deal for Carl to leave town or they will serve the warrant, Carl switches to furious. But his immediate reaction is to reach for the phone and demand to call Gail. When he is told she was also "told to leave" because she was "an undesirable sort", Kolchak seems to have all the fight go out of him.... he's got nothing left in Las Vegas. As he picks up his bags and starts out, Jenks tries to soothe things with him... and asks Carl to let him know where he ends up. Carl can't even look at him, and rather unconvincingly agrees to keep in touch. The body language of McGavin and Meeker in this scene is amazing, as is their vocal performance. Both seem like they are on the verge of breaking down in tears, but they are both putting on a 'tough' performance for everyone else in the room. We know what Carl has lost... and we can guess that something similar has happened to Jenks. Jenks was with Carl when he staked the vampire, and its clear that is being held over him as much as they hold the murder warrant over Kolchak. Perhaps he was allowed to stay in Las Vegas under the condition that he help them coerce Kolchak into leaving town with his story unpublished... or perhaps he was tasked with making Gail leave, as he is the one to tell Carl that she is gone. Its a great performance by both of them.

It is also interesting to compare this to what the sequel and the television show became. Kolchak here is a bit colder, a bit more detached than he would later be. While he cares about getting the truth out there, he is also interested in advancing his career. He's a bit more hard drinking, and his contacts are less colorful (with the possible exception of Elisha Cook's Mickey Crawford). I found it interesting that the coroner, Dr Makurji (Larry Linville) doesn't actually dismiss Kolchak's early speculations about the nature of the killer, and encourages the police to think along those same lines by citing historical precedent. Kolchak seems almost dismissive of him, even though he supports the reporter. This seems almost counter to what occurs later on, with the likes of "Gordy the Ghoul" (John Fiedler) who is a mere morgue attendant who can be bribed in the series. Makurji is a genuine, no-nonsense expert in his field, who sides with Kolchak. 

That seems a parallel relationship with Bernie Jenks, who provides FBI support. What I found interesting about his role is, when it comes to a press conference and he provides the FBI gathered information on the killer, it ALSO supports Kolchak's outlandish theories, much to the annoyance of the local authorities. It is interesting to speculate what the FBI themselves thought of this, since the data they uncovered pointed to a active serial killer that was almost 80 years old. 

I say outlandish, but quite honestly, Kolchak himself is somewhat dismissive of the idea of a vampire... though he is willing at first to go along with the idea that the killer merely THINKS he is a vampire. Kolchak does not go looking for the supernatural first off, but becomes convinced over time of its reality. It is interesting that in the sequel movie, he starts looking for the supernatural angle much earlier in the case, and by the time of the series is willing enough to start entertaining these theories early on.