And it seems to be almost the role he was born to play - I can't imagine anyone else playing Kolchak.
This show came in the 1970's, making it the primary form of entertainment for me any my high school friends. Preceded by some rather scary TV movies (or so it seemed at the time), we were thrilled to watch this show every time it came on. Since it was television, there were unfortunately limits on how scary the show's producers could make it - but with every episode you got the distinct impression that the show could very easily be much scarier than it was. And indeed this show seemed to push the very limits of what the American censors of the 1970's would allow.
Ultimately every show usually turned out to be much less scary then we hoped it would be, and this was what kept us tuning back in every week - we wanted to see just how dramatic this episode would be. From zombies, to underground monsters, to vampires we never knew what to expect, the format being what X'Files producers called "monster of the week". Naturally Kolchak was usually unharmed after every monster encounter, of course - he was the star of the show and this demanded the thickest possible plot armor. But younger viewers, like me and my friends, found it to be just the right amount of scary. Older people though, generally found it too corny to watch for long, and corny it was - in the Haitian zombie episode, for instance, Kolchak tricks the zombie into killing itself (again) by jumping through a conveniently placed wire noose.
Coming from the "vast wasteland" of television that was the 1970's, "The night stalker" was a welcome break from boring dramas and unfunny sitcoms and I watched every episode. Unfortunately its easy to see the show had no future and unsurprising it was cancelled after one season... you can only have so many monsters-of-the-week until you run out of monsters for Kolchak to stalk!
This show came in the 1970's, making it the primary form of entertainment for me any my high school friends. Preceded by some rather scary TV movies (or so it seemed at the time), we were thrilled to watch this show every time it came on. Since it was television, there were unfortunately limits on how scary the show's producers could make it - but with every episode you got the distinct impression that the show could very easily be much scarier than it was. And indeed this show seemed to push the very limits of what the American censors of the 1970's would allow.
Ultimately every show usually turned out to be much less scary then we hoped it would be, and this was what kept us tuning back in every week - we wanted to see just how dramatic this episode would be. From zombies, to underground monsters, to vampires we never knew what to expect, the format being what X'Files producers called "monster of the week". Naturally Kolchak was usually unharmed after every monster encounter, of course - he was the star of the show and this demanded the thickest possible plot armor. But younger viewers, like me and my friends, found it to be just the right amount of scary. Older people though, generally found it too corny to watch for long, and corny it was - in the Haitian zombie episode, for instance, Kolchak tricks the zombie into killing itself (again) by jumping through a conveniently placed wire noose.
Coming from the "vast wasteland" of television that was the 1970's, "The night stalker" was a welcome break from boring dramas and unfunny sitcoms and I watched every episode. Unfortunately its easy to see the show had no future and unsurprising it was cancelled after one season... you can only have so many monsters-of-the-week until you run out of monsters for Kolchak to stalk!