The Night Strangler (1973)

The Night Strangler is a made for television movie which first aired on ABC on January 16, 1973 as a sequel to The Night Stalker.


'The Night Strangler' proved almost as popular as its predecessor garnering strong ratings and eventually prompting ABC to order a TV series (neither writer Richard Matheson nor producer/director Dan Curtis was involved in the TV series). In the United States the TV movie ran (without commercials)approximately 74 minutes. ABC planned to release the film overseas as a theatrical release and had additional footage shot rounding out the movie to 90 minutes In 1973 reporter Carl Kolchak(Darren McGavin), now in Seattle, Washington (having been run out of Las Vegas at the end of the last film) is hired by his old editor, Tony Vincenzo(Simon Oakland) assigned to the story of a series of killings, in which the victims, all exotic dancers, are strangled, their necks crushed, then drained of a few ounces of blood.

Researcher Titus Barry(Wally Cox) discovers that there was a similar rash of killings in 1952, setting Kolchak on the trail of another unbelievable story. Kolchak investigates further murders(with the reluctant support of Vincenzo), but is stonewalled by the police, wanting to have certain details of the murders kept secret. Out of 'burning curiousity' Barry researches further back and he learns of another series of murders in 1931; Kolchak notes that it is twenty-one years from 1973 to 1952 and another twenty-one years from 1952 to 1931; together they look further back to 1910 and discover another series of murders; it turns out that they have been occurring every twenty-one years since 1889. Kolchak discovers that every series of murders took place over a period of eighteen days; after further investigation it seems the killer needs the blood for a kind of elixir of life which keeps him alive for twenty-one years at a time. Of course no one believes Kolchak, and the powers that be want to silence him. Mr. Barry uncovers further clues in an old interview with Mark Twain and a vital clue leading a Dr. Richard Malcolm, a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War who was one of the original staff at the Westside Mercy Hospital. Though the hospital is long gone, Kolchak goes to the clinic standing on the site, in the hopes thy might have the hospital's old records, but he finds something far more important just inside the front door: a painting of the clinic's founder, a Dr. Malcolm Richards, who is the spitting image of Richard Malcolm.Kolchak calls Barry to meet him there, and proceeds to alter the painting to make the similarity more obvious; Mr. Barry is amazed, but the police are less than impressed and Kolchak is arrested.Finally, Kolchak and Barry convince the police(and their boss) of he facts: that the killer really is practically immortal, and that he will kill again. But the story is once again suppressed. The killer gain his last victim and Kolchak enters into a race against time to stop the killer before he is able to complete the creation of his elixir and disappear for another twenty-one years.


THE NIGHT STRANGLER
DAN CURTIS  (1973)
ABC TELEVISION
141 MINUTES
USA