THE NIGHT STALKER
Production: USA, 1972
Director: John Moxey
Category: Horror
One of the best-ever TV horror movies, scripted by Richard Matheson and starring Darren McGavin as Kolchak, a reporter who is relentless in his pursuit of unusual or supernatural news stories. Here he is in Las Vegas on the trail of a reported vampire, Skorzeny, a feral and remorseless blood-drinker. The Night Stalker became the biggest money-spinner ever for a TV movie and quickly spawned its own TV series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which ran for 20 episodes from 1974-75. The best stories include The Ripper, The Zombie, The Werewolf, and The Vampire, a sequel to the original film in which a female vampire, one of Skorzeny’s victims, is unearthed by a Vegas road gang. Horror In The Heights, a Lovecraftian tale by Jimmy Sangster, was perhaps the darkest of the series.
Posted by Moonchild Zero
THE NIGHT STRANGLER
Production: USA, 1973
Director: Dan Curtis
Category: Horror
TV movie, a follow-up to The Night Stalker, again scripted by Richard Matheson, in which reporter Kolchak pursues an ancient alchemist through the tomb-like subterranean vaults of old Seattle. Curtis next tried to replicate the success of his Kolchak franchise with a pilot movie called The Norliss Tapes (1973) but, despite being an effective zombie story, the envisioned series never took off. The idea would finally come round again with The X-Files, a series which commenced in 1993 and achieved huge popularity. Curtis and Matheson collaborated again on Scream Of The Wolf (1974), a werewolf movie of the hunters and the hunted, once more made for TV.
Posted by Tomb Star
