Writing by Jamie Evans

Tag: reviews

  • Carl Kolchak: An Appreciation

    Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak

    It’s my esteemed and correct opinion that Carl Kolchak is one of popular culture’s greatest characters. As brought to life by Darren McGavin in a shabby seersucker suit and straw hat, he’s a lovably shambolic, rough-edged crusader for the truth. The reporter started out life as the main focus of Jeff Rice’s novel The Kolchak Papers. It tells of a foul-mouthed drunk who had a remarkable story to tell about a vampire loose in Las Vegas, who used Rice to get his story out. As he was working unsuccessfully to get the book published Rice was also inking deals with those who could put his story on the screen. This was the early 70s and television movies were a huge deal, bringing in massive audiences. So when ABC optioned the book you can imagine Rice’s excitement at the prospect of bringing Kolchak to homes all across America. Ultimately it would be the hugely talented Richard Matheson who would write the script, slightly softening Carl’s gruff edges but keeping the humour and commentary that pops off the pages of Rice’s book (I don’t think Stephen King was a fan, however).

    Dan Curtis was onboard as producer and it might be hard to get just how big now, but Curtis’ previous project Dark Shadows which had finished in 1971 was huge. It turned the reluctant Jonathan Frid into an unlikely middle-aged sex symbol and had a generation of monsters kids running home from school to follow plots of vampires, werewolves and all sorts of supernatural chicanery taking place.

    Title card for The Night Stalker (1972)

    John Llewellyn Moxey was brought in to direct and in early January 1972 Carl made his screen debut. It was a smash hit and brought in the biggest ever audience for a TV movie at the time.  There’s a reason it was a hit: it’s near perfect, a mix of serious scares and humour centred around McGavin’s effortlessly charming performance, ably supported by Simon Oakland as his suffering editor Tony Vincenzo. At first here Kolchak is a beat reporter, using his police scanner to show up as quickly as possible at crime scenes and generally making himself a nuisance to the powers that be.

    When young women start turning up murdered, Kolchak thinks he’s got a killer on the rampage, but soon he finds out this killer might not even be human. Carl’s the type of guy who goes where the leads take him and so when the pieces start to fit that it’s a vampire that is killing these women, Carl thinks something must be done. Those powers that be aren’t buying it and they set about making Kolchak’s life even harder work. But that’s not going to stop him getting to the truth and doing what it takes to stop the bloodsucker from getting away with it. The thing about Carl is that he believes the people have a right to know and he’ll protect that right no matter the cost to himself. It’s not that he’s particularly noble, it’s more a compulsion that truths hidden should be revealed. If you haven’t ever enjoyed this classic go and find it now.

    Carl holding a cross up to repel something nasty

    When The Night Stalker was a huge hit, inevitably talk of a sequel followed. That talk turned to action in double time and in 1973 The Night Strangler followed this time directed by Curtis. In this one Kolchak has relocated (not through choice) to Seattle and comes into contact once again with a despondent Vincenzo. At the same time another killer is murdering people by strangling them (but of course) and using their blood to stay alive, something they have been doing for over a 100 years. Kolchak discovers the truth but again narrowly avoids getting killed for his troubles and is railroaded out of town for good.

    The same year Rice finally got his novel published as a tie-in to the first film. A reverse of the first film’s process next year found Rice adapting Matheson’s Strangler script for a tie-in book that would be published in 1974, the same year the series started. Before that Kolchak had nearly made it into a third film, in a script by Matheson and William F. Nolan called The Night Killers which would have had Carl in conflict with android replicas. McGavin was tiring of the formula and didn’t want to do it. Curtis wasn’t apparently impressed either and things cooled for a while, during which Curtis and Nolan went off to do spooky TV movie The Norliss Tapes, which could easily have been a Kolchak case. 

    A police sketch of the undead killer in The Night Strangler (1973)

    Eventually after negotiation, McGavin was tempted back for a weekly series which he could produce, although Curtis was finished with it and opted out. In September 1974, after multiple protracted negotiations and fallouts, and in a season ABC desperately needed success in, Kolchak: The Night Stalker hit small screens as a weekly show. The first episode was ‘The Ripper’, and it finds Carl now set up in Chicago, still working for Vincenzo. It’s almost a remake of sorts of the two films with its story of a madman killing people off who turns out to be THE Ripper, a maniac of unusual longevity.

    Like many an episode of Kolchak it has its good and bad elements. Plotting in the episodes is frequently perfunctory, low budget monster-of-the-week stuff that holds few surprises. But the series still had it’s star in McGavin and he’s reliably excellent no matter if he’s being chased around a cruise ship by a ‘werewolf’ who resembles more a guy who fell face first into some hair-restorer as opposed to a beastly lycanthrope, or sowing a zombie’s mouth shut and hoping it’s not going to wake up while he’s doing it. There’s many reasons to love McGavin but there’s a great little moment in ‘The Ripper’ where you just know he’s doing it the way you would too. Trapped in the Ripper’s room all Kolchak has to do is stay quiet and he’ll make it out unseen. But when the Ripper gets too close Kolchak lets out a yelp and makes a run for it, blowing his cover. By grounding Carl in recognisable flaws and humour, he became more real to us. Not an impervious hero but instead a dude who’s scared shitless but can’t turn away from the truth or doing what needs to be done.  

    Carl with microphone and puzzled expression

    When you go back to the series now one of its strengths is just how infrequently it chose to stick with the usual screen horror villains. Sure, there’s the Ripper and a werewolf and another zombie. There’s even another vampire but it links in with The Night Stalker in an interesting way and is one of the best episodes. But others included witches, prehistoric monsters, a haunted knight’s armour, robots, aliens and demonic spirits. This level of creativity always fought against the network drive to make every week’s entertainment broadly the same as the week before and is representative of what eventually brought the series down before it’s first season had finished, with a few scripts un-produced. Ratings were never massive and as the series went on McGavin got restless and the network could see it was not the hit they hoped for, with the various attempts at meddling causing friction between star and studio. In 1975 the episode order was cut by two and Kolchak limped to a sad end. But it was not the end really.  

    Reruns of the series would find more receptive viewers in the late 70s and this would continue through the 1980s until the series found a new home on the cable Sci-Fi Channel at roughly the same time a new series called The X-Files on Fox was moving from cult hit to mainstream sensation. Chris Carter has spoken before of his memories of Kolchak in part inspiring Fox Mulder and Dana Scully’s adventures and this helped continue to build an interest for newer viewers as to who this Carl Kolchak was. Home video releases of the first film and series started to surface too, along with the reruns allowing people to get to know McGavin’s intrepid reporter again. Mark Dawidziak, a critic for an American newspaper, wrote a guide book on Kolchak that arrived in 1991 called Night Stalking: A 20th Anniversary Kolchak Companion. This led in turn to a new deal between Rice and the same book’s publisher for new Kolchak novels. To kick it off Dawidziak was tasked with writing the third book (to follow on from the films and series) and Grave Secrets duly arrived in 1994. The deal for more faltered when the publisher was unable to actually get anything else in print and nothing more would arrive for some years. But thanks to Dark Shadows actor Kathryn Leigh-Scott’s publishing company Pomegranate Press an updated and now illustrated 25th anniversary edition of Dawidziak’s definitive book would arrive in 1997. 

    Cover for Jeff Rice’s The Night Stalker novel

    After this, the new century found Carl in surprisingly good health. Universal released a (sadly totally extras-free) box set of the entire series. The two TV movies came out on a dual disc release.  A book with Matheson’s three scripts (including The Night Killers) was released with introductions by Dawidziak. Moonstone Books began publishing comics based on the character in 2003 and these became almost an industry in their own right, covering Kolchak through comics (with adaptations of the first film and unfilled scripts), novels and short story compilations. More comic adventures have followed.

    In 2005, a short-lived revival series aired starring Stuart Townsend as Carl in an updated version taking in modern TV’s story-arc concerns. Low ratings and inevitable but unfair comparisons to The X-Files did for Night Stalker after only 6 episodes were aired, but it’s a remarkably good and interesting series in its own right. Frank Spotnitz was show runner and took influences from the original but filtered it through a style more influenced by Michael Mann that left us with an unfinished show that is significantly more interesting than its reputation suggests. It’s not all been good news. Back in 2012 Disney announced a film adaptation was in the early stages with Johnny Depp as Kolchak and Edgar Wright directing.  This (with or without Depp and Wright) turned out to be just an idea and so far Kolchak has yet to return to the screen. Perhaps this is for the best, given the debacle of Depp’s Dark Shadows film and…you know…everything else.

    Carl with a makeshift cross and an angry looking vampire

    But if his history has taught us anything it’s that Carl is a tenacious sonofabitch and it’s likely we’ll have him back on the screen someway, somehow. For now though, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure, go find The Night Stalker and get introduced.

    (Recent years also found the original films and series getting American Blu-ray releases, another resurrection for Carl)

    Further suggested reading:

    The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler by Jeff Rice (published variously as separate books and a one-volume compilation)

    The Night Stalker Companion by Mark Dawidziak (Pomegranate Press, 1997)

    The Kolchak Papers: Grave Secrets by Mark Dawidziak (Cinemaker Press, 1994)

    The Moonstone Books various comics, graphic novels, short story compilations and full-length novels.  

    Progeny of the Adder by Les Whitten (Doubleday, 1965).  This is a book at some points rumoured to have ‘inspired’ Rice as it tells the story of a modern vampire terrorising a city (in this case Washington DC) and the desperate attempts to stop the killings.  

  • Ghoulishly Good Times – The Shorts Edition

    We all love a long movie, right? Two hours, three hours, lost in the magic of cinema. Well…maybe not all the time. Fortunately, the art of the short film has been there since the earliest days of the medium. There’s a wealth of funny, moving, weird, creepy, thrilling and adventurous entertainment that won’t numb your arse or sap your will to live. And so, I welcome you to this spooky short (mostly) silent film specific edition of Ghoulishly Good Times.

    Bluebeard attempting to woo his entirely – and correctly – unenthusiastic bride to be

    Barbe-bleue (aka Bluebeard, 1901, dir. George Méliès) retells the French legend of a dubious – but very rich – old dodger courting his eighth wife, the seven before her having died ‘in mysterious circumstances’. His new wife is not impressed with being dumped with the danger, nor is she too happy being left bored in his castle while he buggers off. He does leave her, however, with the key to the place and instructions not to get curious, after which she stumbles on the truth of what befell his other wives. What starts as a broad comedy of over gesticulating takes a hard swerve into serious darkness about halfway through. Surreal nightmares, ghosts, a demonic sprite and some deeply unsettling imagery drive it to the reveal of whether wife number eight is destined for the same fate. What we have here, for me, is some of the first flourishing of narrative horror with a bravura shift in tone from ‘oh this is fun’ to ‘holy shit that’s dark’ that became familiar to movie-going horror audiences across the following decades, done here early and in style.

    A totally, absolutely convincing skull with a shroud hanging from it during a séance

    Alongside the development of photography and film and the tantalising prospect of recorded proof (or the lack of it), the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th continued a pronounced split between people who wanted to believe in an afterlife and that people we had lost could be reached there, and those that saw it as a grift designed to exploit vulnerability and grief. This can be seen in the differing beliefs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini (two men who were nevertheless friends) as fraud and debunking entered into a new phase, and the urgency to believe was shaped by the scale of previously unimaginable loss of life world conflicts inflicted. The UK short Is Spiritualism a Fraud? – The Medium Exposed (1906, dir. J.H. Martin) isn’t really asking a question, but instead presents a couple of con artists getting caught in the act of faking communication with the dead, after which those duped take their revenge in an escalating sequence of slapstick violence. It’s not subtle stuff, but it is a fascinating and entertaining example of the innovation happening in Britain at the time, giving us some startling horror-informed imagery along the way. Enjoyably vicious too, reflecting the way some people felt about the cruelty of offering a bogus way of contact with people lost to them.

    The spectre of the title in his grotto, using magic to torment people and looking pretty pleased with himself.

    Le Spectre Rouge (aka The Red Spectre, 1907, dirs. Segundo de Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca) is a trick film, ostensibly comparable to the Méliès style. Though it’s easy to say everything followed his work, like D.W. Griffith inventing and perfecting every cinema technique you’ve ever heard of, it’s neither true nor fair. This one is its own thing, and has a demonic magician hanging out in his underground lair, dicking about with tricks that seem largely designed to torment women. His attempts are interrupted by a good sprite who intervenes, stopping or reversing the mischief he has wrought. That’s pretty much it, the premise being an excuse to have fun with tricks and special effects, something the film does well. It’s a frequently beautiful film that plays as an inventively crafted window into another world, full of splashes of vibrant imagination.

    Delightful French poster for Haunted Spooks

    Haunted house movie (and theatre) tropes were already well known by 1920 and ripe for comedic parody. Haunted Spooks (1920, dirs. Hal Roach, Alfred J. Goulding) does just that. But before we get to the titular spooky abode, the film starts with a remarkable sequence where Harold Lloyd’s would-be suitor fails to secure the affections of the woman he loves. This drives him to decide to <ahem> resolve the problem of life permanently through several failed attempts that escalate in a darkly amusing fashion. He’s distracted from any further tries when he runs into a lawyer working on behalf of a young woman who urgently needs a husband to claim her inheritance from her grandfather. Part of that inheritance is a beautiful house that the woman’s uncle covets, and so he does what any reasonable person would: fakes a haunting in the hope it will scare her off. When the couple arrive, we get another sequence of escalating events as the uncle’s ill-considered scheme unravels. There’s a lot to enjoy in this one, not least an intertitle A-game, which doesn’t only complement the action but enhances it (as the best examples did). Lloyd and co-star Mildred Davis make a winning central couple as things get truly hair-raising (makes sense when you see the film). It’s also fair to note that there are some disappointing, tiresome racial ‘gags’ in the second half, so be advised.

    Poster for The Haunted House, 1921

    Buster Keaton also got in on the haunted house parody gig in the following year’s…uh…The Haunted House (1921, dirs. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline). In this one, bank teller Keaton has a day start badly (gluing cash to his hands) and get worse (on the run from the police, hiding out at a ‘haunted’ mansion). It’s not actually haunted, however, but instead the hideout of a gang of thieves using fake ghosts and ghouls to keep people away from their lair. The entire film is a great example of Keaton’s often bizarre, off-kilter humour. When we get to the hideout, it gets increasingly wrapped up in a building run of visual gags and repeated refrains that land in a final sequence that pays off beautifully. There’s one gorgeous frame after another along the way in this gem. I could write more, but I just recommend seeking it out and enjoying it.

    Herbert Stern as Roderick Usher

    The Fall of the House of Usher (dirs. James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber) was one of two adaptations of Poe’s tale in 1928, both of which traded in surreal visuals (the other a feature-length French version). This one was an American production and gives us an avant-garde take on the story, existing for the purposes of experimenting with imagery, mood and technique. It’s a remarkably close approximation of the recognisable feel of a nightmare. The narrative is still straightforward enough to follow but it’s not the point of the film: that is to use images to make you feel unsettled and unbalanced and it does this very well. I wouldn’t say it’s an enjoyable experience, but it certainly qualifies as horrific and, alongside the range of techniques used here, it’s definitely worth seeking out.

    Screenshot of an excellent intertitle from Habeas Corpus

    The first Laurel and Hardy film to be released with synchronised sound (here a musical score with sound effects), Habeas Corpus (1928, dirs. Leo McCaret and James Parrott) has the duo knocking on the door of an insane professor (in the hope of work or money, or in Stan’s case, a slice of buttered toast). He offers them $500 to bring him a body back from the cemetery, and despite their misgivings, they accept. They go down to the graveyard, but unbeknown to them, the police are also aware of the potential crime being committed, and head down there too, aiming to pretend to be a ghost and put the duo off. What follows is a film packed with arguably predictable gags and slapstick somehow, as so often the case with these two great performers, made fresh and appealing by the talent and chemistry of Ollie and Stan. There’s also a wilful drawing out of sequences like them trying to scale the wall into the cemetery that makes that something familiar become something fresh – like a different, more cuddly, less confrontationally weird version of the off-kilter Keaton approach. Again, a Laurel and Hardy hallmark. Great fun.

    Screenshot from The Haunted House (1929)

    At the end of the decade that started with Lloyd and Keaton encountering fake ghosts, Mickey Mouse ran into the real thing in The Haunted House (1929, dir. Walt Disney). During a storm, Mickey seeks refuge in an abandoned house, only to find himself forced to soundtrack (by playing the organ) a delirious dance-off between the skeletal inhabitants. When he tries to escape, things get weirder still. A horror-comedy building on the same year’s The Skeleton Dance* (1929, dir. Walt Disney), this comes from Disney’s emerging days, when it wasn’t tethered to its later image, and it’s pretty wild, nightmarish stuff. For me, much of this has the feel of a Fulci-esque circular nightmare of the seventies or eighties, where if you found out the mouse was dead and trapped in his own private hell, it would need no further explanation. A ‘happy’ conclusion is inevitable (it is a cartoon after all, you know – for the kids) but if it cut off a few seconds earlier, or ended with Mickey lost in the storm again, discovering the house, that could only make it (slightly) better.

    *That one, as the NYT reported in 1931, banned in Denmark for being ‘too macabre’

    A POV shot of the intruder from Suspense. looking up at the woman inside the house

    Though not a horror, a bonus mention for Suspense. (1913, dir. Lois Weber), an excellent home-invasion thriller which finds a woman and her young child in their remote house, abandoned by their maid, and menaced by a passing stranger who finds his way inside. With her husband alerted and racing back from work to try and get there in time, the stranger makes his way through the house, up to her room where she has barricaded herself and her child in. Like several of the above films, the elements are familiar but Weber makes stylish use of technique, frames the story imaginatively, and adds in little shorthand character notes that bring them to life despite the brief running time. An outstandingly good, and perfectly named, film.