Night Stalker (2005) - The Complete Series
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C Episodes: C-
Reimagining. That
has been the latest attempt to recycle and gut out great ideas and classics,
cult and otherwise to squeeze a buck out of them. As we have noted before, one of the most imitated and ripped-off
TV properties of all is Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which was inspired
by the great hit TV movies Night Stalker and Night Strangler. Producer Dan Curtis did the films, but not
the series, yet they are tied together forever. After several attempted revivals with star Darren McGavin, Morgan
Creek almost did a theatrical feature film with Nick Nolte as Kolchak, but that
fell through. Years later, after The
X-Files became the one imitator that was a hit, ABC decided to revive Night
Stalker as a series with some of that show’s minds and the result made
every single mistake one could have made.
Forget the bad humor and bad pop culture references;
forget that the show wasted the talents of its cast. From the rushed pilot, to its deservedly early cancellation, to
its universal panning, the new show actually started to pick up a bit towards
the end as the chemistry between Stuart Townshend as Kolchak and Gabrielle
Union as new character Perry Reed kicked in, but it was too late with far too
many mistakes already made. Had the
show began with that, it might have had a chance.
The episodes that did get made are as follows, with a *
marking the shows with an audio commentary track:
1) Pilot*
2) The Five
People You Meet In Hell
3) Three
4) Burning
Man
5) Malum
6) The
Source
7) The Sea*
(concludes previous episode)
8) Into
Night
9) Timeless (a lame
remake of The Night Strangler)
10) What’s The Frequency, Kolchak?
The casting is mostly of
unknowns, character actor Cotter Smith is wasted as a barely, rarely seen Tony
Vincenzo with no humor, wit or point.
The only thing that made half sense was having the great character actor
Stephen Tobolowsky cast as newspaper researcher Titus Berry; a role played by
the great Wally Cox, best known for the sitcom Mr. Peepers and as the
original voice of Underdog.
Tobolowsky is the kind of distinct character actor the original
telefilms and TV show episodes were loaded with. Along with humor, wit, heart and soul that is what viewers were
looking for. Instead, we got a very,
very bad rehash of X-Files, Millennium, it imitators and
spin-offs that were past their prime and long over. Even with a rushed pilot, that does not excuse the bad shifts
from the original show to the new one.
This included a tired conspiracy
plot that was nowhere as good or interesting as the one X-Files set up
and idiotically abandoned, some good/evil dichotomy garbage with Kolchak as a
possible bad person he obviously would not become later, the supplanting of
Kolchak’s individuality with a team (versus his constant mantra of “I Work
Alone” from the original series), the humorlessness, the dark gold-yellow
paintjob on the new Ford Mustang versus the lemon-yellow from the original
series that was not a brand new model and the abandonment of the overall
supernatural world for one that has less-convincing supernatural elements
underlining the tired, semi-snuff world of torture and mutilation that was a
hallmark of X-Files and Millennium that are now cliché, silly,
stale and even offensive at this point.
The original versions were original and groundbreaking. All this show can do is very badly repeat
the worst possible history, which is the trouble with “reimagining” great ideas
as if they were your own.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot in
digital High Definition and looks especially poor in the pilot before they got
to use the Panavision Genesis HD camera, which employs film lenses superior to
those for video. Even in the later
shows, the quality is not great and to be frank, the 1972 and 1973 TV movies
and 1974-75 original TV series looked better and the DVDs of both have better
picture performance. The Dolby Digital
5.1 mix is sometimes more compressed than it should sound, but is able to be
just better than the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono from the 1972 and 1973 TV movies
and 1974-75 original TV series, though they often had more character in their
mixes and better music scores. Philip
Glass did the new theme, but for such a key composer, it is
uncharacteristically dull.
Extras include commentary tracks on the pilot and The
Sea, three deleted scenes more in line with what the series needed to
succeed, a DVD-ROM section to print scripts that were never shot like Ascendant
and The M Word and Spotnitz on camera discussing the film. It should be noted that the original series
had three completed scripts that went unfilmed and two only recently become
comic books! Both had further
undeveloped ideas before ABC dropped the ax.
Spotnitz explains that they only had the rights to telefilms, which
Disney owns through their acquisition of ABC, while the series is with
NBC/Universal. Still, that is no excuse
to have this “reimagined” disaster turn out the way it did. The result was a show that was the biggest
bomb of the 2005 –2006 season and there are those very few, thin number of
people who liked the show joining executives in hoping the series will be a
latter-day hit on DVD and even cable TV broadcasts, but I very highly doubt
it. The ball was dropped very early and
the show and audience never recovered.
Ironically, Darren McGavin and Dan Curtis passed away
during this show’s rise and fall. They
never totally got the respect and recognition they deserved despite some
landmark successes. The show does not
desecrate their legacy, especially since that was not the intent and no one is
going to remember it as long as the originals.
Stick with them. You can find
the reviews of both on this site at the following links:
The Night Stalker/Night Strangler Double Feature
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1379/Night+Stalker/Night+Strangler+(MGM/remaster)
Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75): The Complete Series
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2888/Kolchak:+The+Night+Stalker+(1974-75+series)
- Nicholas Sheffo
