ABC plans to launch a new series in the Fall.
I’ve never seen the original, but I know there’s some fans of the show who post here, and since there’s not a thread about it, I figured you folks might like to know.
I loved the original when it first ran. A couple of years ago, I caught a few episodes on Sci Fi, and cringed at how cheesy it was. I wonder if they’re going to keep the cheese, or try to make it more serious.
Stuart Townsend as Kolchak! I don’t buy it.
I’ll reserve judgement - this was one of my faves when I was a kid. I loved (and still love) Darren McGavin…it’s going to be difficult to fill his gumshoes.
VCNJ~
I’ve never heard of the two people mentioned, so quickly googled and found they’re both about 30-and good looking of course. McGavin wasn’t good looking, and wasn’t 30. He played the part so well. It might be interesting for a while, but I have a feeling it will pale in comparison.
Yeah, he was cool in the role. He mentioned in an interview that he wouldn’t do it again because it was “The Night Stalker” and they were filming in the dark at 2:00 and 3:00 AM. 
I’m more worried about that “Honeymooners” remake 
It should be remembered that McGavin with all the tongue-in-cheek manner he played Kolchak (including using a silly 110 camera and wearing that hat) was a well-trained actor having begun with the Auctors’ Group (which later evolved to the Actors Studio) did Broadway and Off Broadway (before it was known as such). He had done a number of films and also had two pretty successful televison shows. He played Mike Hammer and was the star of Riverboat.
These two “stars” combined (and probably along with the director, producer, key grip, best boy, and roommates) do not bring that much experience to the project.
A little side note here: My favorite Magnum PI was the one where McGavin played the Hemingwayesque writer who was dying of an incurable disease and ended the show by attempting to hang glide to Mawi (I think) while wearing a cast on his arm.
Not to mention that Kolchak’s boss was played by Simon Oakland, a highly experienced character actor at the time (best known as the psychologist in Psycho who “explains” Norman Bates).
I watched the show when it was first on. It was quite good, actually, because they stuck with an important principle: avoid showing the monster. It was scarier because you went through the show not seeing what exactly was going on.
I just noticed: David Chase, writer/producer of The Sopranos was a writer for the show.
A footnote in TV history is that one day, network executives on WB were talking and agreed that they loved Kolchak: The Night Stalker (to give its official title*) and wished they could program something like that. The next day, Joss Whedon showed up. 
*It was originally a one-shot TV movie The Night Stalker that was wildly successful. A second TV movie, The Night Strangler was made as a sequel to good ratings, so they decided on a series. But since the Night Stalker was killed in the movie, they decided to name it after the main character, keeping “The Night Stalker” so people would know its origin.
My favorite episode of the old series involved a large, hairy creature who would appear as the person his victim most trusted. Kolchak figured HE was safe, because he didn’t trust anyone.
So here he is out in a dark alley somewhere, armed with a magical crossbow (the only way of killing the Rakshasa), and lo and behold, here is Miss Emily, the elderly advice columnist from his office!
Later, he thought about telling her about it, but decided that he couldn’t tell her how, even though he trusts her, he shot her in the stomach with a crossbow!
I havn’t seen the show in years, but the weekend before last there was a marathon on SciFi, and I saw three episodes. Great, cheesy fun.
I loved that series, but I’m glad it ended on a high note before the writers ran out of ideas.
MacGavin and Oakland pretty much made the show IMHO.
The scene where he kills the vampire in front of the police and they run him out of town to keep it quiet was great.
I watched this show when I was around six or seven years old. One episode will live in my mind forever – “Chopper.”
This one featured a headless motorcycle rider who decapitated people. I later learned that this was considered one of the stupidest, cheesiest, worst shows in the history of the universe.
But when you’re six (or seven) years old, and you’re me, that damn show scared the CRAP out of you. You considered it one of the creepiest, most frightening, leave-the-light-on-all-night type of shows EVER.
I loved watching The Night Stalker, but I quit after that episode for a while.
I think regardless of what they do with it, if it is done at the level of “X Files,” then it has a good chance of being a good show – on the other hand, it has next to no chance of surviving given the pablum networks pass on to us.
It won’t be Kolchak though without McGavin – he is that character and there are none can fill those shoes.
I loved Kolchak. And the fact that the new producers felt that Kolchak had to be A) young and B) have a sidekick, tells me that they don’t even remotely understand what made the original show work. This is going to be a lame knock-off of the X-files, if you ask me. The Night Stalker was about a lone newspaperman with an attitude. His being alone was a big part of the appeal, as was the fact that he was an older, crotchety guy.
If they really wanted to do a remake, they should have gotten someone like Billy Bob Thornton to play Kolchak.
Some people are just so perfect in their roles that no one else can ever play them believably (IMHO, of course). Raymond Burr as Perry Mason; Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn; Sean Connery as James Bond; Darren McGavin as Kolchak.
But most of the unfortunate actors who’ve tried to reprise the roles these actors so personified have the burden of trying to do so while the original is still fresh in the audiences’ mind. Perhaps enough time has passed that the potential audience for the new Night Stalker won’t already have McGavin’s wonderful portrayal already imprinted on them.
angrily points at vampire
“NottaFinga!”
I remember being forbidden from watching this show even though I loved it, because my mom thought it would give me nightmares. Of course it did, but I loved it anyway. I think the only episode I saw involved Kolchak trapped in the sewers with a giant monster. (A car had parked on the manhole where he’d entered.) The fact that I can remember it so clearly 30 years later shows what an impression it made.
I didn’t remember the name quite as clearly though, and was very disappointed some years later when Kojak turned out to be some oily, bald guy.
I watched this show when I was a little kid. I had a 9" B&W TV set that I would put just outside the sliding glass doors. I had a hammock strung between two posts of the patio. I’d lie in the hammock, wrapped in a sleeping bag, and watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker every week. Scared the hell out of me! I loved it.
I, too, have caught a couple of episodes recently. Very cheesy indeed. I remember one episode (which I haven’t seen since it was broadcast in the '70s) that had a dinosaur in it that was living underground. Typical plot, which was used in Star Trek years earlier. Monster kills people, turns out that it’s only protecting its eggs. Man, was that a bad creature! Guy-inna-suit.
But there were a couple of episodes with good monsters – at least as far as I can recall. There was one called the ‘paramaffet’, or something like that. It was a swamp creature. The part that scared me was when Kolchak returns to his office and there’s Spanish moss in his chair. :eek: It had been there! :eek: Pretty scary when you’re a kid.
There was another episode I really liked. It involved a biker (?) that’s going around chopping off people’s heads. Kolchak figured out that the guy had been beheaded, and his head and body separated. He had to find the head and put it back with the body.
I’d like to catch some more of these old episodes, even as cheesy as they are. Unfortunately, whenever I happen to see one playing it’s usually the Werewolf On The Ship pilot episode.
Pretty much what I was going to say. Still, I’m looking forward to the new version.
I think for me the real charm of those shows was McGavin himself and the way he played that role, the somewhat dissolute but spunky nature of the character and the contentious relationships he had with his boss and the police. The monsters were almost incidental.