TERROR TEE-VEE: A Countdown to Halloween (Day 31)

Well, here we are again at the end of another Halloween Season, nothing but candy in a bag and tired feet to show for it. Sure the ride was an amazing, sure the knowledge gained was great, but now comes the hard part...

Saying goodbye to the holy day of holy days, putting the Halloween Tree away until next year.

KOLCHAK

What makes Carl such a great protagonist is that he's your average Joe in a seersucker suit and straw boater hat whose only mission is to be a truth-teller, to find the facts and report them to his audience, the reader.  What makes him even greater is that he not only uncovers great supernatural evil on a regular basis on his own, but he usually either dispatches or destroys it.

Sure, he does all of this while being scared out of his gourd, but he overcomes it, in part due to his sense of fact-finding—but there clearly is a sense of civic responsibility, too. Course, he’s also a silver-tongued, wittily sly guy who can usually talk himself into more trouble than he needs and out of more trouble than you would expect.

Born in an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice entitled The Kolchak Papers, the story was adapted by Richard Matheson into the 1972 film The Night Stalker and starred the great Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, hunting down a vampire killer.  This TV movie was the most highly rated of all time and led to a sequel (The Night Strangler).

The series began on Friday, September 13, 1974 and ran for 20 episodes. Some of these are great and some are less than good. Don't worry, Carl knows what to do with stories that just don't fit and ideas that stretch the imagination beyond the breaking point...