Jump to content

The Night Strangler (film)

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Floggolozzo (talk | contribs) at 18:06, 12 October 2012 (→Plot: spelling). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Night Strangler
Jo Ann Pflug and Darren McGavin in The Night Strangler
Written byRichard Matheson
Directed byDan Curtis
StarringDarren McGavin
Simon Oakland
Jo Ann Pflug
Richard Anderson
Music byBob Cobert
Country of originUSA
Production
ProducerDan Curtis
CinematographyRobert B. Hauser
Running time74 minutes (TV Premiere), 90 minutes (Dvd version)
Original release
NetworkABC
ReleaseJanuary 16, 1973

The Night Strangler is a made for television movie which first aired on ABC on January 16, 1973 as a sequel to The Night Stalker.

'The Night Strangler' proved almost as popular as its predecessor garnering strong ratings and eventually prompting ABC to order a TV series (neither writer Richard Matheson nor producer/director Dan Curtis was involved in the TV series). In the United States the TV movie ran (without commercials)approximately 74 minutes. ABC planned to release the film overseas as a theatrical release and had additional footage shot rounding out the movie to 90 minutes. [1]

Plot

In 1973 reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), now in Seattle, Washington (having been run out of Las Vegas at the end of the last film) is hired by his old editor, Tony Vincenzo(Simon Oakland) assigned to the story of a series of killings, in which the victims, all exotic dancers, are strangled, their necks crushed, then drained of a few ounces of blood.

Researcher Titus Barry(Wally Cox) discovers that there was a similar rash of killings in 1952, setting Kolchak on the trail of another unbelievable story. Kolchak investigates further murders(with the reluctant support of Vincenzo), but is stonewalled by the police, wanting to have certain details of the murders kept secret.

Out of 'burning curiousity' Barry researches further back and he learns of another series of murders in 1931; Kolchak notes that it is twenty-one years from 1973 to 1952 and another twenty-one years from 1952 to 1931; together they look further back to 1910 and discover another series of murders; it turns out that they have been occurring every twenty-one years since 1889.

Kolchak discovers that every series of murders took place over a period of eighteen days; after further investigation it seems the killer needs the blood for a kind of elixir of life which keeps him alive for twenty-one years at a time. Of course no one believes Kolchak, and the powers that be want to silence him.

Mr. Barry uncovers further clues in an old interview with Mark Twain and a vital clue leading a Dr. Richard Malcolm, a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War who was one of the original staff at the Westside Mercy Hospital.

Though the hospital is long gone, Kolchak goes to the clinic standing on the site, in the hopes thy might have the hospital's old records, but he finds something far more important just inside the front door: a painting of the clinic's founder, a Dr. Malcolm Richards, who is the spitting image of Richard Malcolm.

Kolchak calls Barry to meet him there, and proceeds to alter the painting to make the similarity more obvious; Mr. Barry is amazed, but the police are less than impressed and Kolchak is arrested.

Finally, Kolchak and Barry convince the police (and their boss) of the facts: that the killer really is practically immortal, and that he will kill again. But the story is once again suppressed.

The killer gain his last victim and Kolchak enters into a race against time to stop the killer before he is able to complete the creation of his elixir and disappear for another twenty-one years.

Third TV film sequel

A third film was planned which was based on a story by Richard Matheson but completed by science fiction and horror novelist William F. Nolan (the two share credit on the unproduced script). The third film was set aside when ABC elected to order the TV series and have it produced by Universal (none of the original participants aside from actors Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland appeared in the TV series).

Entitled "The Night Killers" and set in Hawaii, the script had Tony Vincenzo hiring Kolchak to work for him. Once again Kolchak discovers a cover up—this time involving a mysterious UFO, a nuclear power plant and important people being murdered and replaced by androids. Kolchak ties all of this together believing that the aliens on the UFO landed on Earth intending to set up a colony and replacing key government figures with these androids to assist them in their secret colony.[2]

Cast

Release

The film was released on a double feature DVD with The Night Stalker by MGM Home Entertainment in 2004. It is currently out of print.

See also

References

  1. ^ The Night Stalker Companion," by Mark Dawidziak
  2. ^ www.darrenmcgavin.net/unproduced_ns_scripts.htm
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Night_Strangler_(film)&oldid=517440288"