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YMMV / Kolchak: The Night Stalker

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  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Just how sympathetic are Leslie, Mr. R.I.N.G, and Tyrell Institute? Kolchak admitted at the end he's not sure himself how strong his recollection is as his memories were chemically erased.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The intro, which perfectly captures the series’s tone and mix between lighthearted comedy and dark and horrific.
    • The melancholic tone composed by James Horner's and the show's other episodic composer Jerry Fielding's Production Posse orchestrator Greig McRitchie that plays intermittently throughout “Horror in the Heights”.
  • Complete Monster: Karel "Carl" Kolchak has faced numerous unpleasant characters, but several stand out:
    • "The Ripper": Jack the Ripper himself is a Serial Killer who is at first believed to be a Ripper copycat, but is soon revealed to be something far more sinister. First seen butchering numerous women, mostly hookers and strippers, throughout Milwaukee and Chicago, the Ripper cannibalized his third victim in Chicago, carving out her kidneys to eat. Sending taunting letters of his crimes to the press, the Ripper arranges a meeting with a young reporter while claiming he won't kill anyone the night they would meet, however he kills her anyway. After escaping police custody and brutalizing many officers and innocents who try to restrain him, the Ripper is revealed to be the actual Jack the Ripper, having spent the past decades traveling the world and always murdering 5 women in each location he terrorizes, having killed over 70 women over the years. Jack the Ripper was a mysterious figure whose crimes were never given justification beyond sheer sadism and hatred.
    • "The Devil's Platform": Robert Palmer is a senator obsessed with gaining as much personal power as possible, and to this end, made a deal with the Prince of Darkness for supernatural abilities. Using these abilities, for which he pays for by regularly sacrificing animals and "higher forms of life", Palmer kills off all of his political opponents, with their wives and friends being casualties as well. When Palmer's campaign manager plans to reveal his crimes to the public, Palmer sends the elevator his manager is on plummeting to the ground, killing him and the numerous other innocents onboard. A secretary, aware of Palmer's part in the elevator crash, tries to blackmail him into paying her to keep quiet about it, and Palmer responds by trying to maul her in his hellhound form; when she survives and is sent to the hospital, Palmer pursues and kills her in her weakened state. After murdering another of his opponents in a car crash, Palmer tries to manipulate Kolchak into signing his soul over to Palmer, and wastes no time in trying to butcher Kolchak when he refuses. Smug and power-hungry, Robert Palmer stood out even to Kolchak as one of the most wicked villains he ever faced.
    • "Bad Medicine": The Diablero was a native shaman cursed for his greed to seek out treasure. Now an undead monster, the Diablero has stalked treasures through history, killing anyone who gets in his way. Slaughtering numerous victims in Chicago for priceless valuables, the Diablero murders numerous people before trying to make Kolchak the 13th victim.
    • "The Youth Killer": Helen of Troy, alias Helen Surtees, has the longest Historical Rap Sheet in the series. A beautiful demigoddess who made a deal with the powerful goddess Hecate for eternal life, Helen is required to drain the life out of physically perfect individuals on a regular basis to retain her youth, a process that inevitably kills her victims, something sadist she takes pleasure from. Having lived for hundreds of years, Helen uses a computer dating service in the present to find victims, and drains the life out of three of them throughout the episode, nearly getting Kolchak killed when he tries to interfere. Defined by her callousness and lust for beauty, Helen of Troy was the most beautiful, and most self-centered, foe Kolchak ever faced.
  • Cult Classic: A textbook case. It faltered in its day, but the humor and supernatural stories attracted a niche audience that guaranteed the show a long life in reruns and tie-in novels.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Captain "Mad Dog" Siska is the most popular of the numerous unhelpful cops Kolchak ran into, thanks to his funny interactions and chemistry with Kolchak and having more depth to him than the usual Police Are Useless Obstructive Bureaucrat, and was the only one to get a return appearance. Being played by legendary character actor Keenan Wynn helped.
    • Other contenders are Captain Vernon Rausch in "The Knightly Murders" and actor John Dehner's eccentric performance. And Irene Lamont in "The Sentry", because she's the only female captain, relies more on charm than threats to get her way, and is played by Darren Mc Gavin's wife Kathie Browne.
    • The Diablero is one of the series's most popular monsters, thanks to a menacing performance by Richard Kiel and his creepy and creative powers.
  • Evil Is Cool: Harold "Swordsman" Baker, a Headless Biker who wields a BFS that he uses to decapitate his killers in the middle of doing badass motorcycle stunts.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In "The Zombie" (the show's second episode), Vincenzo tries to butter up Kolchak, who sees it as a ploy to stick him with an unwanted assignment. Kolchak lists some of the other times this happened (such as having to rewrite a co-worker's piece), capping off by saying this usually ends with him getting stuck with all the work and frustration. That ended up being a complaint of Darren McGavin; not only was he the star and featured in most scenes, but he purportedly did a lot of extra work writing and producing the show without proper credit.
    • Not long after The Night Strangler came out, Ted Bundy started preying on young women in Seattle.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Carl Kolchak is abrasive, rude, and often treats his coworkers as burdens on him. He also is treated like crap by everyone, who deliberately tries to sabotage his efforts to help or ignores any suggestion he might have, often falsely arrested, and is never given proper credit for the times he's risked his life to save others. After what he dealt with in the first two movies and what he currently deals with in the show, it's easy to interpret his behavior as a defense mechanism to get his job done by any means necessary.
  • Moment of Awesome:
    • The way Kolchak defeats Catherine Rawlings in "The Vampire": by setting a giant cross on fire and trapping her in a ring of flames so she can’t escape. Then he stakes her. When the cops arrive and arrest him, he clearly doesn’t give a damn, and he gets off free because the coroner’s report said she had been dead for 3 years.
    • In "Firefall" he manages to defeat Frankie Marnoff by giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Then, after being arrested for arson committed by Marnoff, he simply decides he’ll take the opportunity to fall asleep, and does so while inside a police car.
  • Retroactive Recognition: A behind the camera example: David Chase wrote several episodes decades before he created The Sopranos.
  • Seasonal Rot: The last few episodes are widely seen as terrible, although there are several exceptions.
  • Special Effects Failure: In "Bad Medicine" there are a couple times where they try to show a dog that's been savaged to death by the evil metamorph. Unfortunately, they're ruined a little by how the dead dogs move.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • The death of Mr. R.I.N.G., who is fatally wounded when he is shot, and spends his last moments calling out to his mother.
    • The ending of The Night Stalker.
    • The Rakshasha killing lovable old Harry Starman.
  • Vindicated by History: With the rise in popularity concerning the Urban Fantasy genre since the 1970s, the series has gotten a significantly more positive critical and commercial appraisal as time has gone on.
  • The Woobie: Kolchak at the end of The Night Stalker

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