I have every single NIGHT STALKER episode on video. What an awesome show, full of comedy and thrills and monsters, with a reporter turned monster hunter who always has time for a wisecrack or a pretty girl.
But Demon in Lace . . .
Set on a college campus, bad idea. The angry Sixties had just ended, yet the big muscled goofs on campus all wear letter sweaters and look ten years out of date, like refugees from a Beach Boys music video/orgy. (Needed some ultra masculine group harmony, like the fade on "This Car of Mine." Diddly-hup, hup!) Kolchak has a one-shot female side kick, bad idea. Where was the superb Monique Marmelstein, his regular female rival/assistant? This poor girl is given nothing to do but look pained and embarrassed while Kolchak ignores her, treats her rudely, and gives full rein to a 40's era sexism that (thankfully!) is never shown in any other episode.
Basic premise of a succubus that "needs" a dead female body to play around in, very very bad idea. How dumb is it to have a monster that has to wait around for a pretty girl to trip and fall down the stairs, turn on the gas, slip on a banana peel? So much better if the girls could simply "black out" and wake up their normal selves, with no memory of having killed!
Okay, here are some strong points.
Vincenzo the editor has an angry tirade in every episode, whenever he finds Kolchak has turned a cut and dried story into something eerie and inexplicable. This episode he really gets it right, howling, "oh, that's great Carl. That's what we need, another vanishing corpse. Another vanishing corpse!" Simon Oakland had magic. More than just a blowhard, he could go right into bigger than life, Jackie Gleason or Rodney Dangerfield territory.
The smarmy archaeologist, with his leisure suit and bandanna . . . what a great character! He's clearly a closeted homosexual who lusts after his male lab assistants and gets voyeuristic thrills by watching them couple and then die in the arms of the succubus. His fights with Carl are brittle, brilliant, and bitchy . . . less THE FRONT PAGE and more WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF!
Salem Mozart . . . the wonderful scene where Kolchack needs information on the succubus and meets an old man in the campus basement who falls . . . asleep . . . while trying to sell him steak knives!
So-so episode by Kolchak standards, but still great fun to watch!
