Immediately’s film, The Evening Stalker, is a few veteran reporter who has come to consider a vampire is behind a sequence of grotesque murders plaguing Los Vegas. His dogged investigation encounters resistance from his editor in addition to from the authorities who don’t consider such a factor is feasible.
Opinions:
It is extremely a lot an early Seventies TV film. The funds was clearly very restricted – there may be hardly any set design, or lighting design, or any design of any form. The violence is usually off-screen. There are a couple of tussles and fairly a couple of cops capturing blanks on the killer (they don’t even hassle with squibs), however nothing notably visually fascinating. The plot performs fairly quick and unfastened with something near how issues would truly go. Though the police and politicians hate Kolchak they maintain inviting them to their non-public conferences to debate the case after which ask everybody to maintain quiet about it. As if a reporter, particularly one as nutty as Kolchack, will maintain quiet a few serial killer.
I did take pleasure in that it was shot in Las Vegas and there are a variety of exterior scenes. I really like getting glimpses of a metropolis from years passed by. Each time they drove by the Stardust On line casino I questioned if Lefty Rosenthal (portrayed by Robert DeNiro in On line casino) was there.
Regardless of all of this, I actually moderately loved it. McGavin is a variety of enjoyable to observe and all of it performs out with this goofy type of pleasure to it.
A reviewer at letterboxd writes:
That is unquestionably the whole lot I need from a movie, a pulpy 70s detective-type story set within the seedy underbelly of a giant metropolis, taking part in the thriller angle utterly straight all of the whereas speculating on a underlying supernatural trigger. It’s incredible, precisely what an excellent story needs to be, I instantly need 20 or so of those and by chance they exist. Even past the essential premise and writing it’s onerous to not admire how good this movie appears, the midnight POV driving photographs by way of Vegas, the aggressive jazz through the poolside battle, the silent creeping by way of the previous home, there’s one thing unsettling about this complete factor and it’s magnetic, I’m immediately obsessed. I truly wish to use this story as a basis for one thing I’m writing, I wish to examine this as a grounded thriller in a world firmly off the bottom. That is the Rosetta stone to understanding a number of the finest media of the final fifty years, I can’t stress sufficient how a lot I really like this movie.
Roy Webber, creator of The Dinosaur Movies of Ray Harryhausen and occasional content material contributor to Svengoolie, writes:
A really acquainted made-for-TV vampire film, by Dan Curtis of DARK SHADOWS fame. Nice motion and some real chills, although it can not completely escape a low-budget tinge which exhibits up right here and there. This film and its follow-up, THE NIGHT STRANGLER, helped launch a one season NIGHT STALKER sequence from 1974-1975 with Darrin McGavin once more because the investigative reporter; it nonetheless airs on the MeTV community Saturday nights at midnight. Barry Atwater, the vampire, performed the Vulcan Surak within the Season 3 STAR TREK TOS episode “The Savage Curtain”.
This can be a unusual movie, pleasing however unusual. It’s a type of chimera, on one hand you’ve gotten the hoary story of a pugnacious reporter scorching on the path of a giant story and alternatively you’ve gotten, effectively, a vampire. It really works, make no mistake, however the transition from vampiric concept to vampiric certainty on the a part of Kolchak (Darin McGavin) is moderately sudden and is dropped at an pleasing apex when he argues with the authorities in no unsure phrases that they should be coping with a vampire. It’s as if he had encountered one earlier than, as if THEY are the loopy ones for not contemplating this chance within the first place. That oddness provides an fascinating taste to the movie and it will need to have appealed to the audiences of the day because it was wildly standard and spawned a sequel, which can be offered right here at a later date, in addition to a tv present.
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Notable actors: Darin McGavin, Claude Akins, Barry Atwater
Spoilers!
Synopsis: A veteran reporter Kolchak, attempting to rebuild his profession after being fired from quite a few former positions, latches on to the case of a girl viciously murdered on the Strip in Los Vegas. The authorities are clueless as to why her throat is torn as if by an animal and there’s no blood on the scene or in her physique. The reporter has a concept that they’re coping with a killer who thinks he’s a vampire.
The murders proceed, violently and with out the presence of blood. The reporter pushes his concept on his editor and the authorities who dismiss him as a crank. His job is threatened and the authorities warn him they’re operating out of persistence with him and his crackpot notions of vampirism.
After a blood financial institution is robbed, the authorities encounter a suspect who tosses the apprehending officers apart like rag dolls. A number of photographs are fired however the robber brushes them off and makes his escape. Based mostly on the person’s prodigious energy and immunity to gunfire, together with the urging of his girlfriend, Kolchak involves consider that they’re in truth coping with an actual vampire.
When the authorities once more fail to seize the killer, now recognized as one Janos Skorzeny, they’re pressured to contemplate Kolchak’s unorthodox concepts. In the meantime, Kolchak is tipped off as to the whereabouts of Skorzeny and sneaks into the creepy home on the deal with he’s given. Poking round for proof, he discovers bottles of blood in a fridge in addition to a girl tied to a mattress together with her blood being drained. The sudden return of the killer results in a battle. A good friend of Kolchak’s arrives and the 2 handle to have interaction Skorzeny till daybreak arrives. Weakened, the now confirmed vampire is staked by way of the guts by Kolchak.
Happy with his victory and excited on the prospect of a giant story, Kolchak proposes to his girlfriend. However his editor and the authorities produce other concepts. Reasonably than run his story, they plant a much less supernatural story within the paper and threaten Kolchak with being charged with homicide if he doesn’t get out of city. Now alone, as his girlfriend has already been chased away by the authorities, he relocates to New York. The film ends with him laying on his mattress and ending his taped information of the case, noting that there aren’t any witnesses left to confirm his account.
