Kolchak: The Night Stalker

After getting a visit from an old acquaintance, Kolchak learns that there has been a rash of killings involving blood loss on a path to Los Angeles, California. After some neat deception, Kolchak gets a story in Los Angeles about a fifteen year old guru, and the chance to check out this blood loss lead. When Kolchak arrives, he goes out to Barstow to check out a lead on a murder. He discovers that the victim's car was stolen in Las Vegas an that the windows were taped with black paper from the inside. He then precedes to get a story on the guru. Unfortunately, he misses him and instead meets Faye, a real estate agent who just happened to study journalism. While she works on the guru piece, Kolchak investigates Catherine Rawlins, a prostitute from Las Vegas who he discovers is a vampire. Receiving interference from the police and grief over the phone from Vincenzo, Kolchak must find where Catherine is hiding and kill her before he is run out of town. Many vampire references are made in this episode: crosses, stake through the heart, sunlight, bats. I liked the chemistry between Carl and Faye. They seemed to work well together, and Faye is one of the few people I've seen Kolchak take a liking to. I think that this story is an extension of Kolchak's vampire adventures in Las Vegas.

Woodward and Bernstein never did as good a job at revealing the dark secrets and hypocrisy of the political elite as Carl does in stripping the hypocrisy off the face of Hollywood in this episode. For "The Vampire" actually serves up a "message". The gritty, what you see is what you get Carl Kolchak is the only person in a town of charlatans, whores, and exploiters who can see beyond his own self interest and identify the threat to everyone. And the threat is? Namely, a Hollywood industry that values mere surface appeal, which has underneath it a grotesque appetite for sucking out the very essence of what makes life worth living in the first place. Beneath the "six layers of cosmetic skin cake" thrives something you really don't want to see in your living room at night. That's what Catherine Rawlins really is.



One of the very best episodes in this series.