Kolchak: The Night Stalker

All the ingredients that made "Night Stalker" such a rare gem are here: wit, kitsch, moments of sheer fright and Darren McGavin, the archetypal TV anti-hero.

There are little threads that lead nowhere, including the subplot back at the newsroom, serving only to provide co-star Simon Oakland with a few scenes (but who's complaining? Oakland is another top-notch tube star)and what the heck is with Andrew Prine? He's got Sonny Bono's hairdo, a mod expedition jacket (for indoor wear!) and plays an obsessed college professor with such vigor that you can almost see spittle forming at the corners of his mouth! Wonder if Prine was at any time uncomfortable, what with the story of pretty young women dying young and the trail, rightly or wrongly, leading to him?

After all, his girlfriend Karyn Kupcinet died violently and mysteriously on Thanksgiving Day, 1963, and though the case remains unsolved, Prime was the prime suspect for a time.

But I digress...Solid work from all involved, including vets Keenan Wynn, Ruth McDevitt, Milton Parsons, Carmen Zapata, Donald Mantooth (brother of Randy) and Maria Grimm, a ravishing beauty who provides one of the episodes most chilling moments with no more than a spirited giggle. Great goofy, ghoulish stuff!

Kolchak investigates why men at Illinois State Technical College are dropping dead of heart attacks next to women who were dead beforehand. His associate in this episode is a girl who works on the college newspaper. It is discovered that the women are being possessed by a female demon known as a succubus, which possesses the bodies of dead women and scare men to death. Kolchak learns that all of the victims are all somehow connected to a college professor who is trying to decipher an ancient stone tablet from Iraq. Meanwhile, back at INS, Vincenzo decides that they should concentrate on more positive news instead of the kind of stuff that Kolchak lives to investigate. Kolchak narrowly escapes being locked up again. It is not as exciting as most of the episodes, but it is pretty good.