If 1972’s The Night Stalker was the pilot light that sparked the age of monster-of-the-week television, then 1973’s The Night Strangler is Dan Curtis pouring gasoline on it with a grin, letting it all burn — slowly, atmospherically, and with enough vintage charm to light a Lucky Strike in hell.
Written by horror maestro Richard Matheson and directed with fog-drenched flair by Dan “Gothic or Bust” Curtis, this made-for-TV sequel picks up where its predecessor left off — with everyone’s favorite rumpled reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) exiled from Las Vegas for being right about a vampire and still somehow wrong in the eyes of every suit-wearing bureaucrat in America. So where does he land next? Seattle. Land of drizzle, coffee, and, apparently, 144-year-old serial killers with a taste for exotic dancers.
Plot? Oh, there’s a plot. Sort of.
Kolchak stumbles his way into a new job at a Seattle paper, courtesy of editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland, returning in peak “I’m too old for this crap” form), who hires him reluctantly, like a man adopting a raccoon out of pity. It doesn’t take long before Kolchak — still rocking the off-white suit and straw hat combo like a sweaty gumshoe at a linen sale — starts sniffing around a new series of murders: young women strangled to death in the city’s underbelly, all drained of blood and missing a specific gland or two. You know, the usual weird stuff they don’t mention on the evening news.
The twist? These murders are happening precisely every 21 years — going back over a century. Kolchak, who’s apparently done nothing with his time in between movies except perfect the art of pissing off everyone in a newsroom, begins connecting the dots with the subtlety of a freight train. He starts digging up old police records, pestering morgue attendants, and breaking into abandoned parts of the city like a man who’s never heard of trespassing laws or tetanus.
What he finds is a killer who might not just be repeating history — he is history. Dr. Richard Malcolm, a Civil War-era physician turned immortal creeper, is alive and unwell, living in Seattle’s subterranean ruins and keeping his youth alive with a concoction made from the pituitary glands of the freshly strangled. It’s like Re-Animator met Frasier, and then both passed out in a moldy basement.
Let’s talk about Kolchak.
Darren McGavin owns this character. He’s less a reporter and more a sweaty bloodhound in human form. He barrels into every situation like a man powered entirely by caffeine, nicotine, and unresolved trauma. He questions suspects with all the grace of a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. He’s fearless, abrasive, and wildly inappropriate — the kind of guy who’d show up to a vampire’s funeral just to ask about their dental hygiene.
And yet… you root for him. He’s the only sane man in a world that’s given up trying to explain the supernatural. Everyone else is busy covering their asses or rolling their eyes, and Kolchak’s the only one still shouting, “Hey, there’s a 144-year-old ghoul living under the Space Needle, maybe we should do something about that?”
The banter between Kolchak and Vincenzo remains a highlight. Simon Oakland plays the eternally exasperated editor like a man slowly dying of secondhand stress. Their arguments are less “workplace drama” and more “married couple fighting over which road to take during a road trip to hell.” It’s oddly sweet, in a “shut up and get in the car” kind of way.
Dan Curtis, meanwhile, does what he does best: drown everything in atmosphere. The Seattle underground — an actual historical labyrinth beneath the city — becomes a character unto itself. It’s all cobwebs, broken beams, and flickering lights, like someone tried to build a haunted house inside a sewer. The killer’s lair is a set designer’s fever dream: preserved Victorian furniture, decaying walls, and medical equipment that looks like it’s been borrowed from Frankenstein’s Home Gym.
There’s a creeping dread throughout, a kind of elegant rot that Curtis does better than most. He doesn’t rely on gore or cheap scares — he builds tension with pacing, music, and the knowledge that somewhere, just around the corner, something very old and very bad is waiting with gloved hands and a scalpel.
And yet, there’s humor, too. Dark, dry, often delivered under Kolchak’s breath like he’s too tired to care if you catch it. He mocks authority, stumbles through bureaucracies, and handles most supernatural events with the grizzled sigh of a man who just wanted a quiet drink but found a werewolf instead.
Of course, it’s not perfect.
It’s a TV movie, and it shows. The budget’s modest, the action sequences are occasionally clunky, and the monster reveal feels like it was shot in the three minutes between commercial breaks. But honestly? That’s part of the charm. The limitations force the filmmakers to rely on atmosphere, writing, and character — all of which are firing on enough cylinders to make you forget you’re watching something originally broadcast between episodes of Marcus Welby, M.D.
The ending, in classic Kolchak fashion, is bittersweet. He uncovers the truth, nearly dies doing it, and then gets shut down by the powers-that-be before he can expose anything. It’s like All the President’s Men if the president was a centuries-old strangler with a laboratory under a comedy club.
Final Verdict: 4 out of 5 suspicious glands in a dusty drawer
The Night Strangler is what made-for-TV horror should be: eerie, witty, and just pulpy enough to stick to your ribs like a late-night chili dog. Curtis and Matheson make the most of their limitations, building a world where monsters wear lab coats and reporters wear mustard-colored suits. It’s creepy comfort food with a trench coat and a flask of bourbon.
Watch it for McGavin’s masterclass in disheveled charisma, for Curtis’ commitment to low-budget dread, and for the wonderful realization that sometimes the scariest thing in the dark isn’t the monster — it’s the guy still asking questions when everyone else stopped caring.
