Thanks for jotting down all these cool Kolchak thoughts! Night Strangler really was pretty awesome - by the tail end I was thinking how much it reminded me of a Dario Argento movie, with its crazy lighting and the hero busting into the boarded-up undercity to confront an immortal alchemist. Obviously there's a strong connection here to Argento's Inferno, but also to Deep Red, especially with the bantering teamwork of the male and female leads.
Kolchak definitely does end up being the Boy Whose Job Is Crying Wolf, which seems rather appropriate. If the Big Bad Wolf lies at the very bottom of every horror-movie monster archetype, as we've discussed, then perhaps the various types of horror hero can be likewise classified based on their reactions to the wolf. We have the Kolchaks who expose the wolf, the Larry Talbots who are the wolf, the Beowulfs who slay the wolves that nobody else can or will, and so on and so forth. (In this case, I guess Buffy is a Beowulf and Angel is a Larry Talbot.)
There's one detail, however, in which Fox Mulder differs from Carl Kolchak. Mulder is someone who wants to believe--he's predisposed to seek supernatural or esoteric explanations, and one gets the feeling he'd be pretty disappointed if they ever had a case where Scully was able to solve everything with rational, mundane explanations. (Fortunately for him, this happens maybe once throughout the entire series.) But Kolchak doesn't have any predispositions. He's just following the clues wherever they lead him, always opting for the simplest and most logical explanation no matter how nutty it might sound to other people. While Mulder is trying to prove his view of the universe, Kolchak is just trying to dig up the truth on a case-by-case basis, and I don't think he really cares whether or not it involves moss monsters and headless ghost bikers. Like the detective in John Landis's Deer Woman, he's just looking for the best explanation based on the available evidence.
Maybe it's this slight variation that makes Kolchak a recognizable Richard Matheson character. While Nigel Kneale's heroes tend to be exceptional people driven by insatiable curiosity, Matheson's heroes are usually ordinary guys thrust into crazy situations. As curious and meddlesome as Kolchak may be, he's not driven to seek out ghosts and ghouls and vampires--they're coming to him, and he's just using his reporter's instincts to deal with them as rationally as he can, much like Neville in I Am Legend. I note that the TV series, in which Kolchak becomes something of a monster specialist, doesn't seem to have any Matheson involvement.
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Kolchak definitely does end up being the Boy Whose Job Is Crying Wolf, which seems rather appropriate. If the Big Bad Wolf lies at the very bottom of every horror-movie monster archetype, as we've discussed, then perhaps the various types of horror hero can be likewise classified based on their reactions to the wolf. We have the Kolchaks who expose the wolf, the Larry Talbots who are the wolf, the Beowulfs who slay the wolves that nobody else can or will, and so on and so forth. (In this case, I guess Buffy is a Beowulf and Angel is a Larry Talbot.)
There's one detail, however, in which Fox Mulder differs from Carl Kolchak. Mulder is someone who wants to believe--he's predisposed to seek supernatural or esoteric explanations, and one gets the feeling he'd be pretty disappointed if they ever had a case where Scully was able to solve everything with rational, mundane explanations. (Fortunately for him, this happens maybe once throughout the entire series.) But Kolchak doesn't have any predispositions. He's just following the clues wherever they lead him, always opting for the simplest and most logical explanation no matter how nutty it might sound to other people. While Mulder is trying to prove his view of the universe, Kolchak is just trying to dig up the truth on a case-by-case basis, and I don't think he really cares whether or not it involves moss monsters and headless ghost bikers. Like the detective in John Landis's Deer Woman, he's just looking for the best explanation based on the available evidence.
Maybe it's this slight variation that makes Kolchak a recognizable Richard Matheson character. While Nigel Kneale's heroes tend to be exceptional people driven by insatiable curiosity, Matheson's heroes are usually ordinary guys thrust into crazy situations. As curious and meddlesome as Kolchak may be, he's not driven to seek out ghosts and ghouls and vampires--they're coming to him, and he's just using his reporter's instincts to deal with them as rationally as he can, much like Neville in I Am Legend. I note that the TV series, in which Kolchak becomes something of a monster specialist, doesn't seem to have any Matheson involvement.