Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.
If you are or were a fan of The X-Files, you should find the time to learn about The Night Stalker. There was a one-season television show from the mid-‘70s that I remember in part. The show followed a reporter who, every week Scooby Doo-like, encountered something strange or paranormal. The difference was that, unlike Scooby Doo, the villain was never Old Man Jenkins who ran the old carnival, but actually were supernatural or otherworldly. I particularly remember an episode that was a play on the Headless Horseman story, featuring instead a headless motorcyclist. What I didn’t know was that the show came from a pair of made-for-television movie, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.
There is a certain continuity here. The Night Stalker, the original movie, takes place in early ‘70s Las Vegas, where reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) is working a beat. Kolchak, we learn over time, has been released from large market papers all over the country, with Vegas simply being the latest place he’s decided to ply his gadfly/fly in the ointment brand of journalism. Actually, this only becomes evident after a few minutes. The actual opening of the film is Kolchak sitting in a cheap motel room listening to a tape recording of his own voice narrating the story we are about to hear.
