Carl Kolchak, The Detective of the Supernatural
Carl Kolchak is an eccentric journalist who keeps stumbling on to strange supernatural cases all around America. With his pushy personality and curious nature he keep finding himself in situations involving vampires, werewolves, ghost or other mystical beings and more than often wind up singlehandedly fighting these creatures since no one believe his theories, but he is always right, obviously.
Charming Darren McGaving portrays Kolchak in the two tv-movies and twenty amazing episodes, which followed after the success of the movies. Richard Matheson, whom I know I'm constantly raving about, wrote the teleplays (based on the Jeff Rice Novel) for the movies. The first one was called The Night Stalker from 1972, in which Kolchak cross paths with a seventy year old vampire. In Las Vegas several people are found dead, drained of blood and Kolchak sets off an investigation and quickly start to suspect vampires.. And vampires it is, or A vampire in the shape of a seventy year old man who is jumping and running like a young man in his twenties. Now he has to convince the police of his findings or worse, face the vampire himself.
In the second film, The Night Strangler from 1973, Kolchak has now relocated from Las Vegas, where he is practically blacklisted after the vampire story, to Seattle. It doesn't take long before Kolchak stumbles upon a string of bizarre murders where the victims had their spinal fluid drained from them. Kolchak discovers other similar killings which occured every 21 years for over 100 years in the Seattle area, and when he actually finds the killer he finds out that the man needs the spinal fluid every 21 years to stay young. Again Kolchak has to persuade his surroundings of this extraordinary case, and of course no one believes him so as always Kolchak has to face the terror alone.
The year after these films, Kolchak was picked up as a series called Kolchak: The Night Stalker in which he resides in Chicago, working for the Independent News Service and is a magnet for cases with a touch of the supernatural. Kolchak encounters practically everything in the realm of the supernatural, like werewolves, ghosts, doppelgängers and other monsters which are all just a regular monday for him. The series lived for 20 great episodes and gained a cult status with a new version of the series in 2005 and numerous comic books adaptations.
Carl Kolchak is a great character and every episode is a thrilling string of clues, suspicion and the ultimate showdown with some weird creature, so if you like Supernatural, X-Files or shows like that kolchak really is a must.
Sidenote: The character, Senator Richard Matheson in X-Files, was named after the master writer of the films and Kolchak is the very show that inspired Chris Carter's own stroke of genius, The X-Files. Carter also credited my all time favourite show, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits as inspiration. So a mix of all that, it just can't fail.
