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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: All Right, let's go back back all the way to

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Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen seventy four on ABC. AH. There

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Speaker 1: it is the theme from Koleshack The Night Stocker. Kendall

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Speaker 1: Phillips is a professor of communication and rhetorical studies at

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Speaker 1: Syracuse University. Again. The book is Coleshack The Night Stalker.

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Speaker 1: He's also the author of Projected Fears, Horror Films and

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Speaker 1: American Culture, Dark Directions, Romero Craven Carpenter and the Modern

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Speaker 1: Horror Film. A Place of Darkness, The Rhetoric of Horror

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Speaker 1: in Early American Cinema, and A Cinema of Hopelessness, The

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Speaker 1: rhetoric the rhetoric of rage in twenty first century popular culture.

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Speaker 1: Kendall Phillips, Welcome to Coast to Coast AM. How are you.

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Speaker 1: I'm well, Richard, and I have to say, as a

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Speaker 1: person who's spent a lot of late nights early mornings

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Speaker 1: driving listening to Coast to Coast AM, it is an

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Speaker 1: incredible honor to be on the show, So thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for having me. Well, this is exactly where

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Speaker 1: you should be, I mean, writing this book about again

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite television shows. But before we talk

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Speaker 1: about this series, I want to talk about that made

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Speaker 1: for TV movie because it made such an impact, not

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Speaker 1: a pleasant one initially for me, because I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I know, people throw around that were traumatized a little

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Speaker 1: too much, so that might be going too far, but man,

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Speaker 1: I was. It impacted me for years. Talk to me

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Speaker 1: about the success of that. I think it set ratings

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Speaker 1: records for the movie of the week, didn't it. It

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Speaker 1: absolutely did so. January eleventh, nineteen seventy two, it was

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Speaker 1: a classics or a TV movie of the Week on ABC.

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Speaker 1: People probably still remember it was made for television movies

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Speaker 1: and how that was kind of a big deal. Every

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Speaker 1: week what was going to be the next ABC movie

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Speaker 1: of the week? And the night Stocker was this enormous

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Speaker 1: ratings success, surprising ABC and everybody else. It really did

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Speaker 1: capture the imagination. And it's interesting, actually, it's the data

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Speaker 1: suggest that the ratings actually improved as it went on,

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Speaker 1: which suggests back in the day before social media, that

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Speaker 1: people watching the movie, we're getting on the phone and

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Speaker 1: calling their friends and saying, oh my gosh, you got

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Speaker 1: to turn on the TV and check this out, but

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Speaker 1: absolutely captured the popular imagination and set the stage for

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Speaker 1: all the later Carl Kolchek adventures to come. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it was it was based on an Ann Rice novel

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Speaker 1: that had not yet been published, if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was actually Jeff Rice. So that's a good Jeff

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Speaker 1: would have loved, Jeff, Jeff, this was Jeff's. It was

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Speaker 1: an unpublished novel. You're exactly right. Jeff Rice had grown

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Speaker 1: up in Las Vegas. He had actually worked at a

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Speaker 1: newspaper and had lots of various jobs in and around Vegas,

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Speaker 1: so we'd seen all the different sides of the Strip

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Speaker 1: and every other part of that great city, and had

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Speaker 1: written this novel apparently based partly on a curmudgeonly old

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Speaker 1: reporter that he knew from the newspaper there in Vegas

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Speaker 1: and could not find a publisher. And somebody at ABC

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Speaker 1: wisely recognize the potential brilliance and then got the script

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Speaker 1: or got the novel into exactly the right hands to

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Speaker 1: turn it from a nice, but you know, not particularly

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Speaker 1: exciting manuscript into what would become television history. Right, And

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Speaker 1: you couldn't ask for a better person to adapt it.

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Speaker 1: For TV than the great Richard Mathieson. Absolutely, you know,

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Speaker 1: Richard Mathieson is maybe a name some folks who are not,

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Speaker 1: you know, deeply embedded in television history won't remember, but

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Speaker 1: they'll certainly remember some of his works. He wrote the

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Speaker 1: novel I Am Legend that's been adapted several times for movies.

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Speaker 1: He wrote The Incredible Shrinking Man, and had a great

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Speaker 1: career writing in television. So he'd written for The Twilight

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Speaker 1: Zone and other sort of gothic sort of properties. So

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Speaker 1: absolutely Richard Mathieson with the script. And then you know,

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Speaker 1: the other person I think is really crucial to that

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Speaker 1: original success of the first and then even the second

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Speaker 1: television movie was the producer Dan Curtis, who actually has

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Speaker 1: a connection to me. Dan Curtis went to Syracuse University,

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Speaker 1: but he was probably also instrumental in pulling together the

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Speaker 1: success of those first two television movies. Right best known

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Speaker 1: for his work with The Dark Shadows. Yeah, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: Dan Curtis had actually started his career in television as

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Speaker 1: a sports guy, so he had produced a couple of

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Speaker 1: very successful golf shows. So yet apparently he tells the

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Speaker 1: story that he had a dream one night of this

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Speaker 1: woman standing on a clouded coast by some old Gothic

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Speaker 1: buildings somewhere in Maine, and suddenly this whole kind of

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Speaker 1: narrative appeared to him that would become the very very

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Speaker 1: influential daytime television show Dark Shadows, which began as a

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Speaker 1: kind of traditional Gothic melodrama and then increasingly for folks

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Speaker 1: who've seen it, no, it included vampires and doppelgangers and

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Speaker 1: old guys and HP Lovecraft and eventually became a very

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Speaker 1: very strange, surreal gossip television show, but certainly opened the

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Speaker 1: door for what was probably Curtis's biggest success in terms

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Speaker 1: of the broad history of television, and that was Colcheck.

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Speaker 1: And how did Darren McGavin, who played Colescheck, come to

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Speaker 1: be involved in the project? I mean, if you think

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Speaker 1: back and again, this may be for some of the

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Speaker 1: younger folks deep into television history, but Darren McGavin was

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Speaker 1: a kind of mainstay of American television screens in that

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Speaker 1: period in the late sixties early seventies. Interestingly, his first

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Speaker 1: major television role had come as a crime fighting newspaper photographer.

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Speaker 1: So we've already got this idea of Darren McGavin somehow

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Speaker 1: related to journalism. He was also known for a lot

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Speaker 1: of these kind of tough guy Mickey Spillane kind of

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Speaker 1: Mike Hammer detective figure. And again none of the series

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Speaker 1: McGavin was on went tremendously long period of time. But

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Speaker 1: this was back in the era where a lot of

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Speaker 1: shows would be one, two, three seasons and out. But

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Speaker 1: Darren McGavin was, you're kind of classic character actor. He

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Speaker 1: had all that kind of rugged good looks and that

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Speaker 1: cynical charm and that was immediately who Darren McGavin and

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Speaker 1: the network wanted to get in the role. And obviously,

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Speaker 1: as we've even seen later in history, you could put

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Speaker 1: a lot of people in that role, but Darren McGavin

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Speaker 1: is the person who really brought it to life. And

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Speaker 1: the accoutremont the cheap sear sucker suit, those dirty tennis shoes,

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Speaker 1: the strawboarder had that cheap instematic camera that he wore.

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Speaker 1: He had a little wrist band that he wore around

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Speaker 1: he dangled from his wrist that you know, and he

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Speaker 1: was always chasing the police down the corridor looking for

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Speaker 1: an interview, and he had the tape recorder. Did he

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Speaker 1: bring those to the series. You are all right, Rich,

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Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. The original plan of the set and

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Speaker 1: costume design folks was to have McGavin in sort of summerwear,

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Speaker 1: like a Hawaiian shirt and maybe shorts, because they were thinking, Okay,

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Speaker 1: he's a reporter in Las Vegas, and what would Las

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Speaker 1: Vegas reporter where they'd wear a comfort and cool But

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Speaker 1: McGavin was the person. And I think this is really

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Speaker 1: perhaps the key to Carl Colchack across the entirety of

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Speaker 1: the movies. In the series, he caught a line in

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Speaker 1: the script where Kolchak was talking about wanting to get

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Speaker 1: back to New York, wanting to get back to what

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Speaker 1: had been earlier success in his career. And I've always

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Speaker 1: thought that was one of the keys to Carl Colecheck.

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Speaker 1: He wasn't some young reporter, he wasn't some cub reporter.

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Speaker 1: He was a veteran. He had been closer to the

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Speaker 1: top and now had kind of felt, at least he

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Speaker 1: felt his career had fallen down to where he ends

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Speaker 1: up in Vegas working for a smaller paper. And so

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Speaker 1: that ambition of Carl Colescheck to get back to New

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Speaker 1: York led Darren mcga havan to ask what would a

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Speaker 1: newspaper reporter from New York in the late sixties early

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Speaker 1: seventies what would they have been wearing? And it was

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Speaker 1: the sear sucker suit and the straw hat. And McGavin

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Speaker 1: was the person who insisted that's what Carl looks like.

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Speaker 1: He still imagines himself just one plane right away from

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Speaker 1: stepping back to New York and getting back in with

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Speaker 1: the Times or one of the big papers there. And

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Speaker 1: I think that kind of burning ambition really helps to

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Speaker 1: explain why Carl was consistently willing to go into those

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Speaker 1: basements or those tunnels looking for something because he thought

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Speaker 1: that was going to be the key to getting him

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Speaker 1: back on top. So, if memory serves the movie, the

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Speaker 1: TV movie begins with Cole Shack in a motel room

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Speaker 1: speaking into a tape recorder and it ends the same way.

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Speaker 1: So this kind of journaling and well journaling, I guess,

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Speaker 1: is the term uh, that's very reminiscent of what Bram

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Speaker 1: Stoker did in the novel Dracula, because that that that

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Speaker 1: book is all about, you know, journals and documents, and

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Speaker 1: it's that that's the way the story unfolds so I'm guessing,

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Speaker 1: I mean, was that what Matheson. Did he make a

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Speaker 1: conscious decision that he was going to use that same

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Speaker 1: sort of literary device of Bram Stoker and bring it

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Speaker 1: to television. Absolutely, and Richard, you're exactly right. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: it was fairly common of those early Gothic novels. Certainly

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Speaker 1: Dracula is the most prominent of those, but even earlier,

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Speaker 1: U like the early late eighteenth century Gothic novel like

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Speaker 1: Castlo Tronto and the Monk, and these very first novels

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Speaker 1: that were bringing these kind of mysterious castles and ghosts

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Speaker 1: to English reading audiences. They often used that letter format

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Speaker 1: where someone is saying, let me tell you the story

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Speaker 1: of what happened, or I had this strange thing happened

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Speaker 1: to me last night. I'm going to write about it

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Speaker 1: here in my diary or send a letter off and

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Speaker 1: that kind of creates this interesting frame. So, and this was,

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Speaker 1: you know, consistent throughout the Night Stalker movies and then

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Speaker 1: the television series, is that we would usually begin with

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Speaker 1: Carl saying, let me tell you the story of this mysterious,

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Speaker 1: strange thing. Then we see this story, and then we

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Speaker 1: get to the end. And it's also of course reminiscent

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Speaker 1: of you know, TV and film noir, where we often

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Speaker 1: had the hard boiled detective coming to say, let me

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Speaker 1: tell you a story, and then we get to see

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Speaker 1: the story unfold. All right, we have to talk about

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Speaker 1: the vampire Barry Atwater, And what I think I found

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Speaker 1: maybe most most frightening was he had a name, this vampire.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he just it wasn't just the vampire, right yao, Scorzony,

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Speaker 1: what a what a name? Okay? Exactly, So tell me

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Speaker 1: about the casting of Barry Atwater as the vampire who

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Speaker 1: has no lines in the in the in the movie. No,

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Speaker 1: It's interesting across the Kolchak series as well as the

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Speaker 1: TV movies, many of the monsters don't actually get any lines.

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Speaker 1: It's occasionally they do, but certainly that starts with Jano Scurzoni,

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Speaker 1: who was, by the time you get to nineteen seventywo

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Speaker 1: already fairly well known to audiences as a slightly supernatural,

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Speaker 1: strange character. He probably folks would remember him from Star Trek,

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Speaker 1: where he played the spot's father. He'd also appeared in

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Speaker 1: a variety of sort of you know Twilight Zone episodes,

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Speaker 1: and the Nights Gallery and things, So audiences watching would

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Speaker 1: have recognized Berry Atwater both as a kind of familiar

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Speaker 1: character actor, but also as a character actor, often playing

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Speaker 1: those slightly strange alien or Gothic figures. Also, if memory

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Speaker 1: serves I don't I don't know. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: this was as Richard Matheson's doing or who made the decision.

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Speaker 1: But Janos sort of broke with the vampire code. I remember.

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Speaker 1: I mean he walked around in the daytime. He would

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Speaker 1: he could, he would break into people's homes, you know,

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Speaker 1: to find his victims. He didn't have to be invited

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Speaker 1: into his homes, into their homes. Talk to me a

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Speaker 1: little bit about that, you know, breaking that that vampire code. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think honestly, the thing that the TV movie and

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Speaker 1: again enormously successful popular TV movie, I think what it

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Speaker 1: did that was the most important and influential and part

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Speaker 1: of what really brought audiences and and and really set

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Speaker 1: Colcheck of the night Stalker into the popular imagination was

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Speaker 1: it took this old traditional Gothic monster, the vampire. And

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Speaker 1: again we've seen it all the way back to bram Stoker.

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Speaker 1: We've seen all kinds of iterations of this Victorian era

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Speaker 1: wearing a cape I will drink your blood sort of vampire.

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Speaker 1: But rather than get wrapped up in those old folklore,

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Speaker 1: they took that character or that monster and put it

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Speaker 1: very much in nineteen seventies America, so that the vampire

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Speaker 1: has to rent a car, or he has to rent

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Speaker 1: a house, he has to walk around the Vegas Strip

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Speaker 1: looking for victims. When he kills someone, the police look

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Speaker 1: for him, reporter, there's autopsies. It's in the newspaper. And

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Speaker 1: so you really took that very old traditional monster that

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Speaker 1: we've all seen with Bella Lagosi and in brom Stoker's novel,

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Speaker 1: but put it in a modern America where there's reality,

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Speaker 1: Like it's not just some mysterious figure magically appearing and disappearing.

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Speaker 1: They have to live in the real world. And that's

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Speaker 1: I think what really made the night Stalker so terrifying.

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Speaker 1: It didn't seem like something that happened over there or

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Speaker 1: back then. It seemed like something that really could be

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Speaker 1: happening right now down the street, in that alleyway just

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Speaker 1: behind the Vegas Strip, right Yano Scoreseny was totally devoid

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Speaker 1: of charm. There was no you know, there was no

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Speaker 1: romantic subtext or anything like that. He was just a vicious,

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Speaker 1: a vicious, ruthless killer, absolutely and and and he robs

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Speaker 1: the blood bank, which is a now classic joke, but he,

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Speaker 1: you know, to find food. So this is much more

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Speaker 1: a predator in the serial killer mode than it is

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Speaker 1: Frank lam Zella or Bella Laghosti in this kind of

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Speaker 1: romantic figure. And that again, I think that's one of

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Speaker 1: the things the series was consistently good at doing is

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Speaker 1: taking mystic figures from the past and putting them into

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Speaker 1: the very real world of today, which of course makes

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Speaker 1: them all the more terrified. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast am dot com for more