I’m still working my way, slowly, through the 1974-75 TV series KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, wherein a wisecracking, straw-hat-and-powder-blue-suit-wearin’ reporter, played by actor Darren McGavin (who would go on to lasting fame as the father in A CHRISTMAS STORY) pursued scoops involving paranormal threats, and typically ended up having to dispose of those threats himself, since the police never seemed to figure out what was going on. Any time one of the episodes features anything vampire or werewolf related, I hurry to bring it to your attention here. A couple’a days ago I watched an episode called PRIMAL SCREAM, and it qualifies.
Though featuring murderous ape-men who are skulking around Chicago tearing people’s arms off (you never see any blood, it goes without saying, but the gruesomeness of the murders is described in detail), this installment actually takes a cue from THE THING (FROM ANOTHER WORLD). The hirsute homicidals come not from some deep, dark jungle but from the Arctic, where an oil company discovered some microcellular organisms that, when the freezing unit in which they are stored malfunctions, start to grow, not into shape-changing plant monsters but into the shaggy antagonists of the story. Why not?
