![The Night Stalker [VHS]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71P9ZR442TL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.gif)
This DVD exceeded my expectations. Enhanced in 2018, this movie is now very sharp, vibrant, and has great sound. The description said a 4K transfer, whatever that is. All I can say, is it is superb. Probably better than what I saw on the TV when I saw this 1972 film at age 7. The DVD has some great bonus features as well: an interview with the director, a separate run down by a film historian that spans the entire length of the film, and some other discussion.
The Night Stalker is the first of the physical vampires played by Barry Atwater that actually uses his tremendous strength to fights squads of police and is shot multiple times by them, but overpowers them each time. He has no dialog, which is much different than the Hammer film vampires with Christopher Lee or Bela Lugosi in the 1930's, both of which were centuries old European nobility with plenty to say. This vampire is purely driven by blood, and he kills constantly to get it. He even walks into a hospital and steals it, which also requires him to throw half the staff around the halls and out the windows.
This is another great story by Richard Matheson who wrote I am Legend, some of the Star Trek scripts, and other great TV and movies. Daren McGavin is perfectly cast as Carl Kolchak, the journalist that gives his all to figure out the truth no matter how bizarre, and no matter what people will think or say of him. McGavin really made this film work, and it apparently had the highest viewership of any TV film at the time, which was over 30 million. This resulted in a follow-up 1973 movie and TV series 1974-1975. Well worth the price for such quality in a remastered TV movie of great writing, acting, and directing.
Reviews with images
OUTSTANDING, Night Stalker was the highest rated tv movie ever aired in terms of viewing audiences
Journalist Carl Kolchak sits in a hotel room, narrating his story into a tape recorder. He was working on Las Vegas’s Daily News newspaper. His editor gave him the routine assignment of covering the death of a waitress from one of the casinos. Kolchak thought it odd that her body had been drained of all blood. Things became even stranger when other girls began turning up dead, also drained of all their blood. When the coroner stated that it seemed like an animal attack, Kolchak leapt on this and began calling it a series of vampire killings. He was ridiculed by the police department and city hall who demanded that he kill the story. However, as more murders and a series of blood bank robberies began occurring, Kolchak was left with no other conclusion that it was a real-life vampire in action. Believing the vampire to be a Janos Skorzeny, Kolchak determined to track him down at the same time as the authorities did everything they could to silence him.Darren McGavin (Carl Kolchak), Carol Lynley (Gail Foster), Simon Oakland (Anthony Vincenzo), Ralph Meeker (Bernie Jenks), Kent Smith (D.A. Thomas Paine), Claude Akins (Sheriff Warren Butcher), Barry Atwater (Janos Skorzeny), Charles McGraw (Chief Edward Masterson), Larry Linville (Dr Robert Makurji), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Mickey Crawford), Jordan Rhodes (Dr O’Brien)
Top reviews from other countries
peter faulds
He was the best vampire I have ever seen...
Reviewed in Australia on December 20, 2022
Mr. Robert Lismore
I just love these Night Stalker films
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2014
