The Night Strangler Blu Ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Timothy Bodzioney]

Timothy Bodzioney submitted a new blog post

The Night Strangler Blu Ray Review

Continue reading the Original Blog Post.

 

[stinky fitzwizzle]

Jo Ann Pflugh as a dancer? Include me in!

 

[Darby67]

Timothy:

Thank you for posting this terrific review!

 

[dpippel]

Definitely. Thanks for the review!

 

[Flashgear]

A very fine and insightful review, Timothy! I agree on all counts, the film is a mixed bag, but essential to have for the Darren McGavin classic tv collection. I have both Night Stalker and Night Strangler on KL's new Blus, and am happy to have them. We have been blessed for the most part in having McGavin's tv and occasional movie work on disc, but wouldn't it be wonderful to have Darren McGavin's single season P.I. series THE OUTSIDER (1968-69, Universal) released? I thought it was a very enjoyable show...witty, offbeat and definitely a spiritual precursor for the brilliant ROCKFORD FILES, as both shows were created and produced by Roy Huggins. And speaking of ROCKFORD FILES, Simon Oakland played a hilariously obnoxious P.I. adversary for James Garner on that show too...the notorious Vern St. Cloud. Ah, I love classic tv...

 

[Jeff Flugel]

A good, in-depth review, very well written...to my mind, an overly harsh take, but fair.

I happen to really like The Night Strangler myself, and rate it at just a notch below the original The Night Stalker. Sure, it follows many of the same beats, but IMO Matheson rings enough changes to the formula to keep things fresh. The comic moments work well (perhaps more so due to the skills of the actors rather than the script), the Seattle locale is interesting, there are lots of good character bits that are nicely fleshed out with the longer running time, and the finale - though the depiction of the Seattle Underground is laughably grandiose in comparison to the reality - is atmospheric and creepy. This has one of my all-time favorite Kolchak lines, something like: "It's NEWS, Vincenzo. NEWS! And this is a NEWSpaper!" McGavin's delivery is, as usual, flawless.

Both movies are top tier TV horror, as far as I'm concerned. The TV series is a hoot but here I'm forced to agree 100% with Timothy - the basic concept, confined mostly to one location, is flawed. A rotating, NBC Mystery Movie type of scenario would have been a perfect solution to that problem. Still a lot of fun, though, thanks mainly to McGavin. Can't wait to get a hold of this disc!

 

[JohnMor]

I actually prefer Strangler. It’s a bit richer and even as a kid I found it the scarier of the two for me.

 

[Timothy Bodzioney]

A good, in-depth review, very well written...to my mind, an overly harsh take, but fair.

I happen to really like The Night Strangler myself, and rate it at just a notch below the original The Night Stalker. Sure, it follows many of the same beats, but IMO Matheson rings enough changes to the formula to keep things fresh. The comic moments work well (perhaps more so due to the skills of the actors rather than the script), the Seattle locale is interesting, there are lots of good character bits that are nicely fleshed out with the longer running time, and the finale - though the depiction of the Seattle Underground is laughably grandiose in comparison to the reality - is atmospheric and creepy. This has one of my all-time favorite Kolchak lines, something like: "It's NEWS, Vincenzo. NEWS! And this is a NEWSpaper!" McGavin's delivery is, as usual, flawless.

Both movies are top tier TV horror, as far as I'm concerned. The TV series is a hoot but here I'm forced to agree 100% with Timothy - the basic concept, confined mostly to one location, is flawed. A rotating, NBC Mystery Movie type of scenario would have been a perfect solution to that problem. Still a lot of fun, though, thanks mainly to McGavin. Can't wait to get a hold of this disc!

Yeah, maybe I was a little hard on the movie. I love Darren McGavin. He had a weird career, it a two year span he works once with David Lean and Otto Preminger twice and then fills in for Dean Martin in Jerry Lewis' first solo picture and then goes straight to B pictures and television where he spends the rest of his career until his later character roles. It's also weird that for such a beloved television presence he never lucked into a hit show. If I had known he was in such 80s movies as Raw Deal, Dead Heat, Turk 182!. and From the Hip I would have seen them in theaters.

 

[Flashgear]

Does anybody remember Darren McGavin's short lived sit-com from 1983, Small & Frye? I don't, but it apparently lasted 13 episodes as a late winter replacement show on CBS. Sounds rather bizarre, but likely charming enough because of McGavin...he plays his Mike Hammer P.I. persona as a tough old school gumshoe beyond redemption for his many bad and obnoxious habits. He could do that in his sleep. His young partner is some kind of mutant, who by virtue of being exposed to the usual superpower inducing chemical concoction, can shrink himself to only 6 inches high. But his ability to do that is occasionally induced involuntarily, hopefully yielding genuine laughs along the way. Bill Daily (I Dream of Jeannie) was a regular in this series.

Speaking of Mike Hammer, I'm sure glad that A+E gave us that 1958-60 syndicated series on DVD. It's a well written and witty show, sometimes darkly hilarious too, with loads of familiar faces, urban sleaze, hot dames and gunplay. Episode titles like Just Around the Coroner, Music to Die By, My Fair Deadly, Scar and Garter, Accentuate the Negative, Stocks and Blondes, Now Die in It and Merchant of Menace, so you know what you're in for, ha, ha...Glad also that Timeless gave us Riverboat, the 1959-61 NBC series too. It has it's signature McGavin moments as well.

And I didn't know that Darren McGavin won an Emmy for his work on Murphy Brown, a show I never watched in the '90s.

 

[bigshot]

I STILL haven't received these Kolchak movies from Kino. I preordered them, they delayed in shipping them to wait for Trilogy to be released, then when it was, the Kolchak movies were out of stock. Kino sucks.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

This one just lacked the intensity of The Night Stalker. Still fun though.

 

[Wayne Klein]

I enjoy both The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler but the latter is definitely inferior to the first. I agree that the padding added to the theatrical version does the film no favors.

I also think that Matheson was truly stuck with coming up with an adequate villain and someone that audiences could truly be frightened of. He had such a hard time for a proposed third TV movie (which became moot when ABC decided to make a series) that William F. Nolan was brought in to finish his work.

McGavin always struck me as a mercurial figure. His work in "A Christmas Story" remains a highlight as well as his earlier work both in film and TV.

The problems with "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" were many including conflicts between McGavin and Cy Chermak, the programming of the show (Friday nights at 9pm when most preteens and teens were hanging out with friends, going on dates, etc.), McGavin reportedly doing uncredited rewrites because some of the scripts were so bad, McGavin being cheated out of his ownership of the show and Executive Producer credit (which Universal agreed to but never put into writing).

There's a couple of good episodes in the series particularly the episode with a former victim of Janos from the first film, etc. but the cheap production values and single setting (agree with you on this) worked against the series.

 

[Matt Hough]

I enjoy both The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler but the latter is definitely inferior to the first. I agree that the padding added to the theatrical version does the film no favors.

I also think that Matheson was truly stuck with coming up with an adequate villain and someone that audiences could truly be frightened of. He had such a hard time for a proposed third TV movie (which became moot when ABC decided to make a series) that William F. Nolan was brought in to finish his work.

McGavin always struck me as a mercurial figure. His work in "A Christmas Story" remains a highlight as well as his earlier work both in film and TV.

The problems with "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" were many including conflicts between McGavin and Cy Chermak, the programming of the show (Friday nights at 9pm when most preteens and teens were hanging out with friends, going on dates, etc.), McGavin reportedly doing uncredited rewrites because some of the scripts were so bad, McGavin being cheated out of his ownership of the show and Executive Producer credit (which Universal agreed to but never put into writing).

There's a couple of good episodes in the series particularly the episode with a former victim of Janos from the first film, etc. but the cheap production values and single setting (agree with you on this) worked against the series.

In my head, I know and acknowledge all of the things you've said about the series, but I can't help it. I love it and never tire of watching it, even the poor episodes. McGavin always makes it fun. I would love to have it on Blu-ray though the added resolution would really reveal the thrown together nature of the series.

 

[Matt Hough]

I watched this movie tonight. Though the first one is more original, this one is closer to the tone of the TV series and is the one I prefer a bit more. The Blu-ray transfer is very, very nice.

Interestingly, since I knew this was the theatrical cut of the movie rather than the TV version, I zoomed the picture to no seeming ill effect and thoroughly enjoyed seeing it look like a real movie (not a 1973 TV-movie) and in such beautiful color, excellent clarity, and cleaner than I've ever seen it since the original broadcast.

I also listened to the excellent commentary and watched the bonus features, too.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Was the TV cut issued on the previous DVDs, or have we only ever had the theatrical version on home media?

I remember the pilot movie for Spider-Man also being padded for cinema release. In one of the books on my shelf, the producer was interviewed and he said they went back to the cutting room to re-insert every single unused scrap of film they could find. Since this longer version was the only one ever released on home media formats, I wonder if it would've been less of a bore in its original TV length.

 

[Matt Hough]

Was the TV cut issued on the previous DVDs, or have we only ever had the theatrical version on home media?

I remember the pilot movie for Spider-Man also being padded for cinema release. In one of the books on my shelf, the producer was interviewed and he said they went back to the cutting room to re-insert every single unused scrap of film they could find. Since this longer version was the only one ever released on home media formats, I wonder if it would've been less of a bore in its original TV length.

In the commentary, it's stated that the TV-version of The Night Strangler is not known to exist, so I believe the DVD version is the 90-minute edition, too.

 

[bigshot]

New Years is upon us and I still haven't received the two Kolchak titles I preordered from the Kino online store.