Day 3 is a wrap for The Third 'Favorite Stars in B Movies' Blogathon!

Before we dive into the last group of entries on this, the last day of the blogathon, I want to thank everyone who helped stitch together this event by contributing wonderful posts, promoting it on their sites and social media, and/or simply providing moral support.

It's a wonderful Frankenstein-like creation (and I mean that in the very best sense of the word), pieced together from the parts of exemplary performances in B movies, drive-in flicks and and various other low-budget pics spanning multiple decades.

Bloggers: If you signed up (or even if you didn't) and your piece isn't quite ready, relax, there's plenty of room on this page once you're done (you know the drill -- comment below or email me, brschuck66@yahoo.com).

Don't forget to check out Day 1 and Day 2 if you haven't already.

Now, on with the third act!

Dustin at Horror and Sons examines the careers of actors who were rising, falling or just coasting when they made Zombie Nightmare (1987):

Sally at 18 Cinema Lane fishes for things to like about Orca (1977), and finds good performances by Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling as they battle a vengeful killer whale:

Marianne at Make Mine Film Noir sings the praises of the low-budget neo-noir Save the Tiger (1973), in which Jack Lemmon plays a harried businessman who is trying to save his failing company, but who really needs to save himself first:

Rebecca at Taking Up Room marvels at how masterfully Vincent Price handles all the horror movie tropes in The Haunted Palace (1963):

Grand Old Movies wonders how the deliriously gorgeous Ava Gardner didn't get even one close-up in her first credited role in the East Side Kids programmer Ghosts on the Loose (1942):

Catherine at Thoughts All Sorts shines a spotlight on the films of Christian Slater's that weren't box office smashes, but are highly watchable due to his presence:

Barry at Cinematic Catharsis celebrates Joan Crawford's last feature film role as a scientist who befriends a throwback caveman in the throwback "Saturday matinee" B-thriller Trog (1970):

Kayla (and co-reviewer Buddy) at Whimsically Classic laugh out loud at the comic antics of horror icons Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone in The Comedy of Terrors (1963):

Yours truly at Films From Beyond the Time Barrier cheers on Maureen O'Sullivan, who tries to protect a lost alien family from clueless earthbound authorities and an extraterrestrial assassin in Stranded (1987):

Raiders of the Lost Aliens: Maureen O’Sullivan in Stranded

Now Playing: Stranded (1987)

Pros: A low-budget sci-fi thriller that masterfully builds suspense, respects its audience and features solid performances
Cons: Fans of CGI and big budget effects won’t find much to like

Thanks to everyone who has participated in the ‘Favorite Stars in B Movies’ blogathon! This post on Maureen O’Sullivan is my contribution to the effort. If you haven’t already, please explore all the other marvellous posts on famous film stars and their B movie appearances: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

I have reminisced many times here at Films From Beyond about my Monster Kid days, before the internet era and streaming, before VCRs and time shifting, and even before the advent of basic cable.

Yep, it was just me and the family’s black and white console TV with the rabbit ears antenna that brought in 3 clear channels and maybe another fuzzy one on a good day. But, as an eager young member of the Monster Kid Club, that was good enough. At the height of those salad days, growing up in a small university town in the midwest, I was in TV reissue/syndication heaven.

On Friday nights I had my ‘50s sci-fi movies (broadcast from the big city station 30 miles to the south), and on Saturday nights I eagerly watched the classic monsters (broadcast from the university station in my hometown). While weekend nights generally belonged to the monsters, there were plenty of opportunities to catch family friendlier, but still watchable, action-adventure movies on a number of TV movie matinees (not to mention the local downtown theater).

The Tarzan movies starring former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller were among the more memorable offerings on those lazy weekend afternoons. Sure, Tarzan was no Frankenstein, Dracula or Wolf Man, but there were enough thrills and chills in those movies to get my 10 year old heart beating just a little faster. (There were even monsters here and there, like the time Boy was trapped in a giant spider’s web in Tarzan’s Desert Mystery).

Speaking of hearts beating a little faster, beautiful Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane Parker joined Weissmuller for a decade-long run in six of the MGM Tarzan films, starting with Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932 and ending with Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942). The skimpy outfits she wore in those films revealed as much skin as ‘30s audiences were ever likely to see (or for that matter, naive ‘60s TV viewers during the height of Tarzan’s syndicated popularity). O’Sullivan undoubtedly was the first movie crush for thousands (if not a whole generation) of fans (and yes, I was a member of that legion).

In an interview with film historian Tom Weaver, O’Sullivan had a good laugh over the fan mail she received as a result of the Tarzan costumes:

"[Weaver:] In the earliest Tarzan movies, your wardrobe was very skimpy. Did that make you self-conscious at all?
[O'Sullivan:] I didn’t think it was so skimpy. What was it now, I’ve forgotten… the outfit torn up the side? No, I thought it was appropriate for where I was. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to wear at Buckingham Palace, or to church or something [laughs], but it was appropriate for what I was doing. So no, it didn’t worry me at all -- until I started getting mail about it. And I thought, 'Well, people are crazy. They have to write about something.' If they didn’t write about that, then they wrote about how they liked me -- it was one thing or the other. I did get a lot of mail on my costume and I thought, 'Do people really have nothing to do except write to strangers?' [Laughs]" [Tom Weaver, I Was a Monster Movie Maker, McFarland, 2010, p. 185]

Fortunately, the talented Miss O’Sullivan got roles that required more than just baring her legs and keeping Tarzan out of trouble. Even as her mailbox was filling up with fan letters appreciative of her jungle wardrobe, she was donning elaborate period costumes in such prestige films as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), David Copperfield (1935) and Anna Karenina (1935).

After the last Tarzan film in 1942, O’Sullivan took a break from acting to devote time to her husband, writer/director John Farrow, and her growing family (ultimately having seven children, six of whom -- including Mia Farrow -- went on to work in movies and TV).

Upon returning to acting in 1948, O’Sullivan made a splash in a starring role opposite Ray Milland in the film noir classic The Big Clock. Several undistinguished B movies later, O'Sullivan settled into guest shots on TV shows and theater appearances until she played an alcoholic show business mother to her real life daughter Mia Farrow in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

While Hannah and Her Sisters and the obscure, low-budget sci-fi drama Stranded (released a year later) might seem to be worlds or even universes apart, they both share the theme of families weathering adversity.

In Stranded, O’Sullivan’s movie family is a small one. She plays Grace Clark, an elderly but scrappily independent woman living with her granddaughter Deirdre (Ione Skye) in a farmhouse on the edge of town (later on we learn that Deirdre’s parents were killed in a car crash).

On a dark and stormy night, what seems at first like a lightning hit that takes out the power instead turns out to be a weird energy beam that has delivered something very strange to the Clark house. Deirdre and Grace, who are upstairs, notice a weird blue light shining from the parlor on the ground floor. Grace bravely grabs a shotgun to confront the intruders, but when it becomes apparent these are no garden variety burglars, Grace and Deirdre hide in a bedroom.

Alien travel advisory: In the U.S. there are more guns than people, so exercise caution!

A tense situation turns tragic when Deirdre’s would-be boyfriend Jerry (Kevin Haley) and his dad Vernon choose exactly the wrong time to stop by the Clark house on their way home from a fishing trip. When no one responds to his calls from the darkened house, Jerry gets worried and grabs a gun from the glove compartment.

Instead of finding Deirdre and Grace, Jerry and Vernon are startled by a tall humanoid figure with long white hair standing in the parlor, a glowing blue crystal hovering in front of her. A weird gnome-like humanoid suddenly jumps up and hisses, and before you can say “guns and surprise alien visits don’t mix,” a panicked Jerry shoots the tall figure. In turn, another figure at the top of the stairs blasts Jerry with some sort of energy beam, sending him flying out the front door. Vernon, grief-stricken and vowing revenge, drags his son’s body back to the truck and hightails it out of there.

The only thing Deirdre and Grace have to fear is fear itself.

When things get quiet, Deirdre and Grace tiptoe down the stairs, lamp and shotgun in hand. The creature that blasted Jerry suddenly intercepts them in the hallway, grabbing Grace’s shotgun and then herding them into the front parlor.

The sight that greets them is surreal: The gnome creature and two other slender, pale humanoids with high foreheads and long, flowing hair are huddled around their stricken companion who is lying on the floor. They look like they could be a family -- one of the uninjured aliens is a young, almost androgynous-looking male, and the other is older, with a stiff, regal bearing. Grace whispers, “They almost look like angels!”, to which Deirdre responds “I don’t think so…” The film’s credits list them simply as Prince (the young alien; played by Brendon Hughes), Sir (Dennis Vero) and Queen (the gunshot victim played by Florence Schauffler).

Surprise alien visits and guns don't mix.

There’s alien-looking, and then there’s alien-looking. In the latter category is the short, squat gnome with a huge creased dome of a head and long whiskers growing out of the bottom of his chin-less face (played to great effect by Michael Balzary, aka Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame). The creature seems more like a humanoid pet to the aliens, and just wants to please. After the initial shock, Grace takes to the adorably homely creature, dubbing him “Jester.”

But most alarming is the creature that seems to be the alien family’s bodyguard. Despite having female curves, Warrior (Spice Williams-Crosby) is malevolent-looking, dressed in a form-fitting suit (or is it her skin?) and is mostly faceless with the exception of two large, glowing eyes (not to mention the deadly energy-beam weapon she wears on one arm).

This is not something you want to see in your house at night.

Meanwhile, the aliens and the Clarks are attending to the mortally wounded Queen. Grace deescalates the tense situation, exhibiting clear concern for the alien she calls “dear lady,” saying they need to get her to a hospital (Deirdre patiently explains to her grandmother that “they can’t go to a hospital.”) The Queen passes a brightly glowing blue crystal to Prince before expiring (Sir doesn’t seem to be in the line of succession -- you have to wonder if he’s the Prince Andrew of this royal alien court).

And before you can say “gee, that’s a surprisingly quick response time for a rural area,” multiple Sheriff’s squad cars are pulling up to the house. Even before the sheriff himself (Joe Morton) has had a chance to arrive, Vernon, with nothing but bloody revenge on his mind, goads one of the deputies to seize the day, with predictable results -- the deputy is zapped to death by Warrior, who is only defending her group.

When Sheriff McMahon finally arrives, he realizes he has inherited a cluster-you-know-what, with a dead deputy on the grounds, Deirdre and Grace bewilderingly shouting from the house that they’re not in danger, and deputies who are either too spooked to think straight or are ready to charge the house like brain-dead Rambos.

As if that situation wasn’t bad enough for a newly installed African American sheriff, a caravan of Vernon’s redneck buddies arrive just itching to blast them some aliens to kingdom come. The coup-de-grace is the sudden appearance of a solitary federal agent, Helen Anderson (Susan Barnes), complete in trenchcoat, warning McMahon that if he doesn’t quickly get control of things a military “clean-up” team will do the work for him. It just isn’t his day.

Guns and angry mobs really don't mix.

The best thing about Stranded is that the people behind it realized they didn’t have the budget to make something even remotely resembling Star Wars, so they settled for good writing, believable characters and solid performances. Not only that, but they decided to respect the intelligence of their audience.

For something so low-budget and small scale (just a single location), the film manages to pack a lot of suspense and unease (as well as pathos) into the proceedings. Much is left to the imagination. The visitors don’t arrive in a conventional spaceship, but rather some sort of transporter beam/wormhole that is never explained (and doesn’t need to be).

The aliens don’t speak English, nor is there a convenient Star Trek-style autotranslator. They are mute through most of the film (the implication being that they communicate telepathically), so the actors portraying them have to rely on facial expressions and gestures. Most expressive of all is Jester, the aliens’ “pet,” who wears his simple emotions on his sleeve, so to speak. The “angelic” aliens are a mix of the uncanny (human-looking, yet somehow not), a royal-like reserve, and gentleness.

The visitors’ backstory is communicated first to Deirdre through a series of telepathic images (aided by the blue crystal manipulated by the Prince). The rapid-fire succession of other-worldly images tells a tale of the aliens’ imprisonment, and a daring escape and pursuit by mysterious captors who aren’t shown in their entirety -- just their repulsive, reptilian legs. The sequence is simple and imaginative without requiring expensive effects or indulging in extraneous exposition.

Who needs Star Wars-style holograms when you can just beam what you want straight into somebody's mind?

Somehow, in a cosmic stroke of luck, the escapees managed to beam themselves to just about the only farmhouse in rural America where intruders -- especially such weird-looking ones -- wouldn’t be shot on sight. With their own history of tragedy and loss, Deirdre and Grace aren’t about to greet visitors, especially “angels,” with shotgun blasts.

As a result of their forbearance, Deirdre is given a telepathic glimpse of worlds no human has ever seen before -- not to mention forming a proto-romantic attachment to the angelically handsome Prince -- and Grace forms her own special bond with the alien goofball Jester. But with rival alien assassins on their trail and uncomprehending police with guns encircling the house, the peace won’t last long.

It's the Clarks and their alien visitors against the world (and part of the universe).

Joe Morton as Sheriff McMahon is in a position where, as the new sheriff in town (and an African American one at that), he is made to feel somewhat like an alien intruder in a rural area where racism is still rampant. In his confrontation with the would-be lynch mob, Vernon keeps calling the sheriff “boy,” but McMahon maintains his cool, and his deputies back him up, forcing the mob to back down.

In another example of coolness under pressure, McMahon enters the house to size up the situation and possibly negotiate what looks like a hostage situation. With Deirdre’s encouragement, the aliens give him the same telepathic briefing through the crystal. Outside the house, federal agent Barnes, who has some sort of hidden agenda of her own, suggests to the chief deputy that the aliens are using mind control on the sheriff, and that he needs to be prepared to take charge. With friends like these…

Interestingly, just a few years before, Joe Morton played the title role in the cult hit The Brother from Another Planet (1987), in which he was the alien being pursued by extraterrestrial bounty hunters.

Joe Morton has a moment of sci-fi-induced deja-vu.

Stranded was only the second movie role for UK-born Ione Skye (daughter of ‘60s pop-rock singer Donovan), who debuted in the gut-wrenching River’s Edge (1986). Although she is still working, the height of Skye’s career came with her appearance in one of the great coming-of-age comedies, Say Anything (1989), opposite John Cusack.

On the career flip side, Stranded was the second to last feature film Maureen O’Sullivan made (not counting three TV movies and a series guest shot). With the Grace Clark role O’Sullivan proved she hadn’t lost any of her acting chops, as she seemed to effortlessly combine a bit of steely resolve, a bit of elderly naivete, and a lot of empathy. Perhaps her best scene in Stranded is at the end credits, which are superimposed over footage of a local TV reporter interviewing Grace and Deirdre about their amazing alien encounter. O’Sullivan is completely natural and even a little impish in answering the reporter’s questions. It’s a delightful scene.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other, behind-the-scenes talents that contributed to this stand-out (but highly neglected) sci-fi drama. Jeffrey Jur’s cinematography is exceptional, making expert use of light and shadow, and avoiding the overly dark, muddled night photography characteristic of other low-budget films. Subtly, the early scenes with the aliens -- when it’s not clear if they're dangerous or not -- are tinged with red, and then gradually, as they gain the trust of Deirdre and Grace, calming blues take over.

The alien design and make-up (credited to Vera Yurtchuk and Brian Wade) is simple yet effective. The Prince and his family seem to be inspired by the Nordic aliens of UFO lore. Warrior looks to be wearing a modified wetsuit, but the large eyes that dominate an otherwise featureless face make her very intimidating. Much less intimidating is Jester, who looks like he could be a cousin to the Ferengi, who were introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation around the same time.

Separated at birth? Top row: Nordic aliens and the Prince. Bottom: a Ferengi and Jester

According to IMDb, director Fleming B. Fuller only directed two other feature films and one TV movie. Stranded is a solid sci-fi thriller that masterfully ratchets up the suspense, stimulates the imagination, and delivers some very good, affecting performances. I don’t know Fuller’s story, but it seems a shame he didn’t do more.

Where to find it: A soft-looking, but still watchable stream can be found here.

Day 2 has dawned on The Third 'Favorite Stars in B Movies' Blogathon!

A new day has dawned, and another set of talented bloggers has labored through the night (okay, maybe not last night, but sometime fairly recently) to bring you accounts of actors and actresses who lent some extra class and charisma to the B movies in which they starred.

Day 1 featured a choice set of performances: Joan Crawford managing a circus with a serial killer on the loose; Oliver Reed negotiating with a crazed hostage taker; Roddy McDowall morphing from a precocious child actor into an intellectual chimpanzee; Carol Lynley dealing with Oliver Reed and something else equally strange in an old, haunted mill; Ray Milland battling wartime spies while looking absolutely stellar; and Rod Taylor breaking his nose at the end of William Smith's fist.

Day 2 promises to be equally wild and crazy, so, on with the show!

John at tales from the freakboy zone muses about the career path not taken by young Leonardo DiCaprio after his appearance in Critters 3:

Kristina at Speakeasy commiserates with academy award winner Dorothy Malone as she puts up with supernovas, vortexes, UFOs, and stop-motion creatures in The Day Time Ended (1980):

Mike at Mike's Movie Room wonders how William Shatner survived to become a starship captain after his harrowing stint teaching hormonal teenagers in The Explosive Generation (1961):

Eric at Diary of a Movie Maniac goes on a vicarious ride with Medieval reenactor Ed Harris and his band of merry Knightriders (1981):

Christianne at Krell Laboratories lauds the deliciously comic performances of Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel in Eating Raoul (1982):

Don't bail on us now, there's more to come on Day 3...

Day 1 of The Third 'Favorite Stars in B Movies' Blogathon has arrived!

Ringmistress Joan and yours truly are ready to introduce all sorts of great posts on your favorite stars as they assemble under the Big Top.

Late in her career, Joan Crawford, referring to one of the stars of Planet of the Apes, once quipped, "Sure, I'd play an ape. Maurice Evans did." [IMDb] Here at Films From Beyond we celebrate the tenacity of actors and actresses who were willing to do anything to keep on working (or alternately work their way up from unassuming B movies into the big leagues).

Joan never wore monkey make-up in any of her later roles, but she did share the spotlight with an ape-like troglodyte in her last feature film, Trog (1970). (Joan is the subject of two posts this year, including Trog and the mystery-horror-thriller Berserk.)

The talented bloggers participating this time around have dipped into every sort of genre from a wide range of decades to bring you the best examples of tenacious B movie acting. And just like the last two installments of the blogathon, some posts feature overviews of careers spent in the Bs.

Hey bloggers! When your post is ready, use the comments below, email me at brschuck66@yahoo.com, or message me on X, @brschuck66. If you've sent me your link and it doesn't appear here, don't worry -- I'm posting in the order I receive them, and I will be spacing them out over three days.

Without further ado, grab your popcorn and peanuts and enjoy the three-ring cinematic circus we call Favorite Stars in B Movies:

The Flashback Fanatic marvels at all the mayhem that is part of the Joan Crawford-run circus in Berserk (1967):

Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews admires Oliver Reed's style as a police detective who indulges in a six pack of beer while negotiating a hostage situation in Tomorrow Never Comes (1978):

Joey at The Last Drive In chronicles the nearly six decade-long acting career of Roddy McDowall, including his forays into horror and B movies:

Daffny at A Vintage Nerd opens the door to The Shuttered Room (1967), airs the place out, and discovers an intriguing performance by Carol Lynley:

Ruth at Silver Screenings finds that even a poor quality public domain streaming copy can't diminish Ray Milland's performance as a "gentleman adventurer" in Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937):

Frank at Smoke in the Library tallies up all the broken ribs and busted noses that resulted from a fight between Rod Taylor and William Smith on the set of Darker Than Amber (1970):

That's not all folks! Check out Day 2 and Day 3...

A Rolling Reporter Gathers Some Moss: “The Spanish Moss Murders”

Now Playing: “The Spanish Moss Murders,” episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker (S1, E9; first aired Dec. 6, 1974)

Pros: Everyman hero Kolchak runs circles around not one but three clueless authority figures in this episode
Cons: The monster design is just average

This post is part of The 11th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode blogathon, hosted by the talented and knowledgeable Terence Towles Canote at A Shroud of Thoughts. This year's offerings run the gamut of TV genres, and have something for just about everyone.

At the height of the New Jersey Drones flap, while thousands were peering into the night skies, unnerved by all the weird lights that made it seem like there was some sort of alien superhighway above their heads, and the Feds were dismissively insisting “there’s nothing to see here,” I was thinking, where is Carl Kolchak when we need him?

Acclaimed physicist and professional skeptic Carl Sagan once famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Through two made-for-TV movies and a short-lived TV series, intrepid investigative reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) kept unearthing extraordinary evidence of a parallel, paranormal world undreamt of by sober-minded people, from classic vampires, demons, zombies and werewolves, to such exotic manifestations as shape-shifting entities and headless, sword-wielding motorcyclists.

If Kolchak had been on the New Jersey drones case, there’s no doubt he would have discovered the weirdest, most exotic explanation possible for the phenomenon… like flying, shape-shifting Jersey Devils with neon lights for eyes. 

While Kolchak only got two TV movies and one 20 episode season to dig around the dark underbelly of the paranormal world, his exploits would inspire the far longer TV careers of Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. The key to the FBI duo’s success was their Yin and Yang relationship, where Mulder’s insatiable curiosity and Scully’s innate skepticism formed an effective, if often contentious, team. Plus, the sexual tension between the two certainly helped the ratings. By contrast, Kolchak was always going it alone, relying on his own wits and worn shoe leather to bring it all to light.

Carl Kolchak specialized in shining a light into the dark corners of conventional reality.

Kolchak’s editor and foil at the Chicago-based Independent News Service, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) was certainly no help. Week after week, the relentless reporter would glom onto hints of something unworldly, then nose around like a bloodhound until the uncanny secrets were exposed in spectacular fashion -- and all the while, his boss would huff, puff, wince, gnash his teeth, and plead with Kolchak to stop wasting his time. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Carl Kolchak was born out of an unpublished novel, The Kolchak Papers, by long-time Las Vegas resident Jeff Rice. Rice’s agent recognized the novel’s potential, and before long, it was being adapted by producer Dan Curtis (of Dark Shadows fame) and acclaimed fantasy writer Richard Matheson for a TV movie. Directed by TV and film veteran John Llewlyn Moxey, The Night Stalker (1972) -- featuring newspaperman Kolchak trying to convince unbelieving Las Vegas authorities that they have a super-powered vampire in their midst -- generated the highest ratings ever for an original made-for-TV movie at the time. [Wikipedia] 

Naturally, another TV movie, The Night Strangler (1973) and the TV series followed in quick succession. “The Spanish Moss Murders,” the 9th episode of the series, follows the Kolchak formula to a T.

In classic Night Stalker fashion, the episode opens with Kolchak, looking like he’s been dragged through a mud bath, sitting in a hospital emergency room, narrating recent events into his omnipresent tape recorder.

As always, there are mysterious killings involving unwary victims wandering the streets at night and paying with their lives. The first victim, a young grad student and sleep research lab assistant is accosted on a dark street and crushed to death (make a note of her occupation -- it will be relevant later). The police brush it off as the aftermath of a hit-and-run accident, but Kolchak is skeptical.

It's never a good idea to go wandering the streets at night in a Night Stalker episode.

Which brings us to the puzzling clues that only Kolchak, with his reporter’s sixth sense, recognizes as crucial to the mystery -- in this case, small pieces of vegetable matter that inexplicably show up on each of the victims’ bodies. Relying on shoe leather in an age before Google, Kolchak finds out from a local botanical expert that the stuff is Spanish moss, not exactly common in the northern climes of Chicago.

But the real lifeblood of the series was the intrepid, relentless reporter going up against bumbling, dissembling authority figures, deflating their pretentions with his pointed questions and driving them to distraction with his “What, me? What did I do?” disingenuousness.

Kolchak came into his own during the Watergate revelations and the subsequent collapse of public trust in government. He was a rumpled, one man Watergate committee, making endless runs around authorities sputtering that there was “nothing to see here,” and seeing things -- especially paranormal things -- with a special clarity. (It’s perhaps no coincidence that another rumpled everyman from the era, Columbo, gained huge popularity matching wits with arrogant elites.)

“The Spanish Moss Murders” presents not one but three sputtering, clueless authority figures for Kolchak to run rings around. Police Captain Joe “Mad Dog” Siska (Keenan Wynn), investigating the second strange death involving Spanish moss, is not quite mad, but he’s teetering on the edge, and Kolchak nosing around is not helping matters. He’s so stressed out, that he admits to Kolchak in an unguarded moment that he’s in group therapy. (This was the first of two appearances Wynn would make on the show.)

Capt. Joe "Mad Dog" Siska is driven mad by Kolchak's relentless prodding.

Medical science comes in for a roasting when Kolchak makes the connection between the first victim and a sleep research laboratory that is conducting some sketchy experiments with a subject who has been put in an extended period of REM sleep. (Yes, the victims all have something in common besides Spanish moss, and it all traces back to the sleep lab, but I’ll leave it there.)

The lab director, Dr. Pollack (Severn Darden) is so wrapped up in his research that he seems blithely unconcerned about the health of his prize sleep subject, and he has to be reminded by a colleague of the name of the recently deceased grad assistant who was working for him.

Darden, who made a career out of playing effete doctors, professors and assorted politicians (and was in two Planet of the Apes movies, Conquest of and Battle for), amps up the pompous condescension as his character wearily lectures Kolchak on his all-important research.

(In an amusing epilogue, after all the dust has settled on the murderous events that Dr. Pollack unwittingly set in motion, Kolchak relates that the good doctor “had lost his taste for pure research. He’d shaved off his beard and gone back to Long Island to work in the family shoe business.”)

"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the opportunity for lots of grant money..."

And then there’s Kolchak’s boss at the news service, Tony Vincenzo. Simon Oakland’s character spent most of the series screwing up his face and blustering at Kolchak as if every interaction with the reporter was the equivalent of a root canal. And yet, Kolchak always returned the next week with his job intact, so there had to be some grudging respect there.

In “The Spanish Moss Murders” we see a somewhat more relaxed boss, determined this time around to be clueless as to Kolchak’s latest crusade (presumably for his mental health). Instead, Vincenzo is fixated on a speech that he will be giving to a civic organization on freedom of the press, to the point that he corrals everyone in the office to drop what they’re doing and listen to him rehearse. In an amusing bit of business, Kolchak distractedly butters up Vincenzo while maneuvering around the office, trying to figure out how to steal away without being noticed.

Tony Vincenzo wears his signature skeptical frown along with a natty tie and vest.

If the lifeblood of the series was Kolchak’s defiance of authority, then the heart that kept it all pumping was the monster of the week. Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a delectable (detestable?) smorgasbord of night creatures, some familiar, like werewolves and vampires, some more obscure.

The obscure monster in "The Spanish Moss Murders" is the Père Malfait (roughly translated as “father of mischief”), popularly known as the Cajun Boogeyman. According to an article on "Louisiana Cajun Folklore" at The Moonlit Road website, the myth of the Père Malfait was imported to Louisiana Cajun country from France, where generations of parents used it to keep their children in line. A cross between Swamp Thing of comic book fame and Bigfoot, the Cajun Boogeyman crushes its victims to death before mysteriously vanishing, leaving only fragments of moss and leaves behind. Like the cinematic vampire, it can only be killed by driving a stake made from the swamp gum tree through its heart.

7’2” Richard Kiel, who made a career out of portraying imposing villains and creatures (and was most famously known for his Jaws character from the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker), was enlisted to step into the Père Malfait suit. Interestingly, he had just been seen the week before as the “Diablero” in episode 8 of the series, “Bad Medicine.” [IMDb]

The Père Malfait prefers the Louisiana bayous, but in a pinch Chicago's sewers will do.

Besides the plethora of monsters, another endearing feature of the series was that for all the effort the intrepid reporter put in exposing and thwarting the various paranormal perils, at the end of each week the evidence would conveniently disappear, and Kolchak would be left with nothing but his verbal notes on his trusty tape recorder. True to both series form and myth, after Kolchak’s encounter with the Père Malfait in Chicago’s dank sewer system, all traces of the creature disappear down the drains.

So, how exactly did a folkloric monster from Louisiana bayou country end up in Chicago’s sewers? You’ll have to watch the episode to find out!

Kolchak and his trusty tape recorder live to fight another day.

Where to find it: DVD | Streaming