In
“The Vampire,” an old friend of Kolchak’s (Darren McGavin), James “Swede”
Brightowsky (Larry Storch) visits Chicago’s INS office and tells Carl about a
series of vampire-like killings in Las Vegas.
This piques his interest, and when Kolchak is assigned to interview a
Far Eastern transcendental guru in Los Angeles, he makes some side-trips to Las
Vegas.
When
Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) demands the story about the guru, Kolchak gets a
former bush-league journalist-turned-real estate agent, Fay Krueger (Kathleen
Nolan) to write it, while he investigates the vampire. In this case, the
vampire is a woman, Catherine Rawlins (Suanne Charny), a former show-girl who
is now using her job as a call-girl to claim victims.
Although
the local police detective working the case, Lt. Mateo (William Daniels) grows
enraged with Kolchak’s insistence that a vampire is responsible for the body
count. But Carl tracks Catherine down to her baronial estate in the Hollywood
hills and plans to drive a stake through her heart.
Relatively
early in the series run, Kolchak returns to a rerun monster: the vampire. Here,
the “night stalking” takes the journalist back to the very haunts where he
killed another vampire, Janos Skorzeny (in the popular TV movie, The
Night Stalker). The story is
not particularly memorable in terms of the details, but “The Vampire,” like
many episodes of the series, features a lurid, sleazy quality that separates it
from most of the homogenized programming of the series’ era.
Here,
the vampire is a showgirl turned hooker turned vampire, which is a descent from
dreams to nightmares, if I’ve ever witnessed one. In some way, it’s a
commentary on Hollywood, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. These are all places of
enormous wealth, and also enormous vice. People like Catherine Rawlins go from
pursuing a job in the entertainment industry to using their bodies to satisfy
vices. Eventually, they become a bottom-feeding vampire, eking out a meager
existence on the periphery, as a vampire.
As
we have seen before, the supporting cast can make or break an episode. William
Daniels -- the voice of KITT on Knight Rider (1983-1988) -- is
Kolchak’s police detective foil this week, Mateo. Daniels is great at playing a
slow-boil, and one can practically see the rage taking over his face, a
step-at-a-time, as he contends with Kolchak’s wild theories. Kathleen Nolan is
also great as Faye Krueger, a real estate agent who traveled west to pursue her
dreams of wealth. In her previous life, she was a small-time journalist in
North Carolina. Here, Kolchak teams up with Faye to write the article for
Vincenzo that he doesn’t have time to write, but Faye sprinkles her news story
with the architectural details one might expect of someone trying to sell
houses. Mateo and Faye add a lot of
quirky humor to the story, and elevate “The Vampire” above its familiar monster
of the week.
Perhaps
the biggest disappointment in the casting is that Larry Storch only gets one
scene as Kolchak’s slick friend, Swede, and doesn’t play a larger role in the
overall adventure. Storch, of course,
would soon have his own supernatural investigations to handle on the Filmation
Saturday morning series, The Ghost Busters (1975).
One
weird note about “The Vampire:” the episode culminates with Kolchak burning a
giant cross on the equivalent of the vampire’s lawn. That’s a loaded image,
historically-speaking. Though it makes a
powerful visual, the story doesn’t really merit the use of such a
racially-coded visual.
Next
week: “The Werewolf.”
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