The Norliss Tapes (Horror Telefilm)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Telefilm: C+
The late
Dan Curtis was best known for Dark
Shadows and the original Night
Stalker telefilms, but actually made a career of ambitious and different
Horror adaptations and new programs throughout his career. After Night
Stalker and Night Strangler were
made and were both huge hit TV movies, Curtis skipped the Kolchak: The Night Stalker series and went out on his own to do
more of his own Horror projects. One of
the non-literary projects that followed was The Norliss Tapes, an ambitious 1973 telefilm he directed right
after Night Strangler in an attempt
to launch his kind of TV Horror series.
This
time, a book writer named David Norliss (Roy Thinnes, best known for the Irwin
Allen Sci-Fi series The Invaders)
had approached a publisher (Don Porter) about doing a book on all the fraud
behind supernatural gimmicks and psychic rip-offs. He promises to deliver a great piece of
journalism that will blow the lid off of the victimizers and make a great
read. Sanford T. Evans (Porter) agrees
and even gives him a big advancement knowing the sales potential. However, just over a year later, Norliss is
not well and it looks like he has found things he never dreamed existed.
The two
talk on the phone with Norliss needing to see Evans ASAP. Reluctantly, Evans goes to Norliss’ place,
only to find him gone. However, he has
left behind a pile of analog audiocassettes and Evans beings to listen,
starting with tape one. This telefilm is
the first story as a widow (Angie Dickinson, just before Police Woman hit) who swears she saw her dead husband kill their
pet dog and has disappeared again despite shooting him with a shotgun. Norliss knows her sister Marsha (Michele
Carey) and that is how he gets involved, much to the chagrin of the local
Sheriff (Claude Akins, in a far from comic role) who wants to keep the bizarre
events explainable and inoculated to causing public panic.
The film
tries to do a severe variation on the Night
Stalker films, but the film only did so-so ratings, leaving NBC to reject a
series intended to follow leaving it never produced. The idea is that the publisher would listen
to each tape and that would be an episode and piece of the puzzle. Writer William F. Nolan had written the Logan’s Run novel, which was about to
become a big budget film and he did try to do something different with the
teleplay based on the Fred Mustard Stewart story. It is not dumb or too jokey, but smart,
though still to derivative of the Kolchak films.
Vonetta
McGee (Blacula) plays a woman who
knows a key clue to what is going on, Robert Mandan (Soap) plays Norliss’ attorney who also wonders what has happened
(also intended as a regular for a series), Stanley Adams does another one of
his memorable character cameos and stuntman Nick Dimitri is not bad as the
monster. Though this moves more slowly
than the Kolchak films and series, it has its moments and holds up nicely,
especially after so many Kolchak and
X-Files imitators. For those who suffered through the recent,
miserable Kolchak revival, they will find it a breath of fresh air. Thinnes is not bad, but maybe a bit more
energy in his performance would have helped the film, including on those
voiceovers.
The 1.33
X 1 image looks good for its age, though the print is not as amazing as those
on the MGM reissue of the Kolchak telefilms, yet Cinematographer Ben Coleman
does a nice job here. He had also lensed
Curtis TV projects like Frankenstein,
The Picture Of Dorian Gray and The Turn Of The Screw, all shot on NTSC
analog video. This film was shot in 35mm
film and that helps. He also did solid
work on crime shows like McCloud, Dan August, Barnaby Jones, Switch, Quincy and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, plus Sci-Fi shows Buck Rogers and the original Battlestar Galactica. We get some great moments of color, depth or
field and even detail that shows up the current digital and digitized junk we
see too often, especially in this genre.
Ironically, Anchor Bay had issued the Kolchak films among their earliest
DVD product.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono has some distortion here and there that is unfortunate, but it
is clear for the most part, featuring yet another Horror score by Curtis’
longtime composer/conductor Robert Cobert.
It is too similar to the work he did on the Kolchak telefilms, but has
its moments. There are no extras, but
the film is worth seeing in what is easily the best playback available to date
for the film. It harkens back to a time
when telefilms were more literate and challenging. Too bad NBC was not convinced the publisher
listening to each supernatural run-in would not work. ABC went forward with Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which was not initially a big hit, but
a big influence in the long term. Who
knows what would have happened if NBC had went with the show. That might have made both shows bigger hits
and who knows what influence Norliss could have had on the genre. Oh well.
For more
information on the original Kolchak on DVD, try the following links:
Night Stalker/Night Strangler
Double Feature (MGM)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1379/Night+Stalker/Night+Strangler+(MGM/remaster)
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
(1974-75 original series)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2888/Kolchak:+The+Night+Stalker+(1974-75+series)
- Nicholas Sheffo
