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Some enjoyable macabre stuff has risen
from the pop-culture graveyard this
season in the form of DVD box sets, just
in time for creepy Halloween fun.
The longest-buried and most eagerly
awaited of them is the complete run of
Kolchak: The Night Stalker, the
short-lived but fondly-remembered ABC TV
series from 1974-75 starring Darren
McGavin.
McGavin played Carl Kolchak, a sort of
20th Century Van Helsing in a
frumpy seersucker suit. Kolchak was a
reporter for a Chicago wire service who
somehow couldn’t show up to even the
most routine story without stumbling
across the modern-day manifestation of
some paranormal horror—vampires, demons,
witches, ghosts, zombies, werewolves,
space monsters, killer robots,
prehistoric lizard-beasts.
Carl seemed to have this beat all to
himself, and to be almost exclusively
devoted to it, much to the chagrin of
his bellowing, ulcerated editor Tony
Vincenzo (Simon Oakland).
Nor was our hero shy, in the
journalistic manner, about making
himself part of the story.
Almost every episode ended with Carl,
having consulted some expert on the
occult and learned the Achilles heel of
the monster-of-the-week, creeping into
its secluded lair for a desperate
showdown with the forces of evil.
The Night Stalker’s
20 episodes vary widely in quality, from
genuinely witty dark comedy to
ludicrous, corny camp.
Probably the best of them is “Horror in
the Heights,” in which Carl faces an
Indian monster who appears to his
victims as whoever they trust the most.
But even the silliest is made amusing by
McGavin, that extravagantly droll,
eccentric ham best known as the father
in A Christmas Story.
When he works opposite guest stars like
Jim Backus, Larry Linville, Hans Conried,
Severn Darden, Keenan Wynn, John Dehner,
Tom Skerritt, Phil Silvers, Scatman
Crothers, Nina Foch and Eric Braeden, to
name only a few, the result is some
shameless and highly enjoyable
overacting.
Also recently released is The Hammer
Horror Series: The Franchise Collection,
featuring eight gems, all from the early
‘60s, from the British studio which
specialized in slightly prurient
shockers. Included is such spooky fare
as Brides of Dracula, The Evil
of Frankenstein, Kiss of the
Vampire and the 1962 version of
The Phantom of the Opera featuring
Herbert Lom in the title role. There are
also some lesser-known thrillers, like
the 18th Century costumer
Night Creatures and two lively
psychological yarns in the Psycho
vein: Nightmare and Paranoiac,
the latter featuring fine
scenery-chewing by Oliver Reed as a
demented playboy.
Finally, there’s a box set celebrating
arguably the greatest of all horror
stars, albeit celebrating him
imperfectly: The Bela Lugosi
Collection offers five vintage
films, all of them entertaining but only
three of them with Lugosi in a lead
role.
Lugosi has the first selection on the
disc, Murders of the Rue Morgue,
all to himself, and he has a grand time
in the juicy part of the mad Dr. Mirakle.
In the other five, he shares the screen
with his frequent costar and longtime
rival Boris Karloff—he flays Karloff
alive, avenging the murder of his wife
and daughter, in Edgar Ulmer’s splendid
The Black Cat, purposely
disfigures Karloff as a mad plastic
surgeon in The Raven, and tries
to cure Karloff of radiation poisoning
in The Invisible Ray.
His role in 1940’s Black Friday
is minor, but it was connected to a bit
of studio ballyhoo—he agreed to be
hypnotized in order to play his death
scene, with the idea that we would see
him truly suffer the terrors of murder!
The DVDs:
These box sets are all stripped-down
affairs: The Lugosi Collection offers a
few trailers—including the hokey one for
Black Friday—while the Hammer and
Night Stalker sets have no extras
at all, apart from subtitle options. But
for chiller-buffs, these collections are
such prizes that no frills are required.
Older
children of the right sensibility are
likely to enjoy any of these, but
they’re probably a bit much for younger
kids.
Happily, there’s first-rate Halloween
fare for the littlest ghosties and
ghoulies to be found at the theaters
this year: Wallace and Grommit in
Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Tim
Burton’s Corpse Bride.
M.V. Moorhead is a former New Times film
writer who now contributes regularly to
Wrangler News. |
