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