Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or even science fiction, including fantastic creatures.
Trailers & Videos 1
"Kolchak: The Night Stalker" TV Intro
Episodes
A serial killer who preys on women haunts Chicago, and Kolchak comes to believe that the killer is in fact the original Jack the Ripper, a seemingly i...
A voodoo priestess animates her dead son to take revenge on the gangsters that killed him.
A bizarre alien presence invisibly sweeps through Chicago, killing a petty thief and a UFO nut. The alien or aliens have the strength of a hurricane,...
Catherine Rawlins, a female victim of Janos Skorzeny (the vampire from the original Night Stalker TV movie) is accidentally resurrected outside Las Ve...
Bernhardt Stieglitz, a NATO soldier bitten by a wolf, leaves a string of murder victims behind him. When Vincenzo is forced to abort his long-awaited...
A series of mysterious deaths plague the life of conductor Ryder Bond. In each case, the victim is incinerated by supernaturally hot flames. As Kolcha...
Kolchak discovers a young rising politician, has made a deal with the Devil to murder off his competition through incidents made to look like accident...
A series of suicides among high-society matrons coincides with a bizarre jewel theft by a towering Indian who mysteriously disappears when cornered. K...
A series of apparently unrelated deaths involve each victim being crushed to death, and covered in wet, slimy Spanish Moss. Upon investigation, Kolcha...
Several Indian construction workers are killed during high-rise work on a new hospital. They leave the job, and the hospital is completed. However, a...
Kolchak’s investigation of a series of grisly deaths in a once-plush neighborhood, leads him to a creature who lures its victims by making itself appe...
Kolchak writes an obituary for a deceased scientist, but soon becomes involved in further investigation when no one can give him a straight answer on...
In a oil company's laboratory, the air conditioning fails, and a primate creature attacks a scientist. The creature, and others like it, begin going o...
A fashion industry spy is thrown to his death from a room filled with nothing but mannequins as Carl looks on from the street below. This is but the f...
The strange disappearance of an antique motorcycle is the first indication of trouble. What follows are a rash of murders where each victim is decapit...
On a college campus, young men are dying of heart attacks. According to witnesses, they are last seen with young women who apparently died shortly bef...
Physically fit specimens (an Air Force pilot, a football player, a cop) are all being targeted for a grisly death: their hearts are being cut from the...
Various Chicago citizenry are being killed with medieval weaponry. Upon investigating, Kolchak finds that they were all tied to the conversion of a sm...
Young swinging patrons of an exclusive dating service are turning up, dead of old age. The police don't believe they are the same persons, but Kolchak...
The government is keen to hush up a series of mysterious deaths at the Merrymount Institute, an underground archival facility. When Carl investigates,...
Cast
Ratings & Reviews
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TMDB Reviews
8 years ago
The influential Kolchak TV series from 1974-1975
The TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker ran for one season in 1974-1975, consisting of 20 episodes. Two additional episodes were scheduled to be filmed, but star Darren McGavin was becoming disillusioned with due to an exhausting schedule and the fact that he was rewriting scripts plus doing much of the production work without compensation. The ratings were mediocre so he asked to be released from his contract with two episodes yet to be shot. The network granted his request in light of the ratings. I wish Darren would’ve persevered and finished out the season because then we’d have two more episodes to enjoy. He was too fatigued at the time to see that this unique and groundbreaking series would be his most well-known role, along with “A Christmas Story” (1983).
If you haven’t seen the two pilot movies, “The Night Stalker” (1972) and “The Night Strangler” (1973), I encourage you to view them before checking out the series. The debut movie was the best of the batch with “The Night Strangler” almost as good and even better in some ways (see my reviews for details). Both movies established the template (formula) for the TV series and myriad books that followed.
The 20 episodes are more of the same, but condensed into 51 minutes and all-around inferior. They’re all of about the same quality with favorites emerging depending on how interesting the Monster-of-the-Week is, as well as the guest stars, both of which are a matter of taste. The first episode, “The Ripper,” is a quality beginning for the series but it’s too much like the two pilot movies for its own good, particularly the first film. It’s basically a compressed version with a slightly different ‘monster.’
“Horror in the Heights” is usually cited as the best segment because of the intriguing monster, which can mimic a person its victim trusts. It’s actually pretty chilling for mid-70’s television. “The Trevi Collection” is one of my personal favori...
3 years ago
This could have been a witty show instead of a depressing one that borders too much on Hitler worship. Kolchak is an obnoxious reporter and terrible role model. He does anything for a story. Trouble is, the writing for the series seems to always degenerate into some Nazi ideology where all the murder victims are women with dark hair and dark eyes. It's impossible not to notice this worship of Hitler's genocide program. You feel like you're watching the reels of Nazis taking beautiful brunettes out to be executed. That's the weakest part of the series, and it's impossible not to notice. It appears either the writer or director was jilted by too many brunettes in his life and couldn't get over it. Simon Oakland almost salvages this series with his matter of fact character who has the sanity that Darren McGavin's Kolchak totally lacks. But it isn't enough to save the poor writing.
