Kolchak: The Night Stalker

I give this episode a slightly higher classification, than my fellow reviewer, soley because of Richard Kiel. One week after portraying the Diablero, he puts on a costume made of (prosthetic?) seaweed, and portrays a bogeyman out of Cajun folklore!*



My older brother watched this, with me, at the time it first aired. And, I semi-rhetorically asked him, in astonished admiration: "How do they so much research on this stuff, so fast?"



You see, back then, I had never heard of videotape delay.



Within a year of the series cancellation, I came to the conclusion that the writers had just made up this particuliar monster. Imagine my surprise, then, when I tuned into the syndicated Leonard Nimoy series "In Search Of...," roughly two years later. The ep I watched dealt with a creature called the Honey Island Swamp Monster. Sort of an amphibious Bigfoot...reputedly native to the bayous of Louisiana.



Insert "Twilight Zone" theme song, here!



Could "Kolchak's" writers have been better researchers than we were led to believe? As Carl, himself, might have said: "That, dear reader, I leave up to you."



*Yes; "bogeyman" is the correct spelling.

The idea of dream study fit really well with this story. Like every episode, Kolchak puts the pieces together to find the cause of the murders. It is only by chance that he finds out the story of Peremalfait from the little guy he interviews. After the dreamer dies, Kolchak assumes that the monster won't come after him. But, when he finds Spanish moss in his desk, he knows that it is still alive. The only thing is how did Kolchak know which part of the city sewers to look for the monster? As soon as he gets down into one, he finds it. I find that really unlikely. Maybe if he found a pattern to where the murders took place, or maybe it was near where the sleep study took place? Regardless, this was an entertaining episode. I recommend it for people who remember the boogeyman from their childhood.