kolchak: the night stalker -- episode 6: firefall
part of being able to digest a critical review of a piece of art is knowing a little something about the reviewer. what are that person's tastes? what are their sensibilities? what eccentricities do they harbor that color their view of the world? personally, i have a fascination with the idea of spontaneous human combustion. the thought that someone could be sitting on their sofa and unexpectedly and inexplicably burst into flames simultaneously titillates and terrifies. i arm you with that knowledge as we embark upon another journey in Carl Kolchak's Haunted Chicago.
speaking of which ... we're back in the windy city after two weeks out on the pacific coast. this week, i have no clue what time of year it is. after going from october to spring back to christmas, this episode could take place in september or it could be march. who really knows?
(actually, i feel like the order in which these episodes were shot was drastically different from the order in which they aired. but since there was never a connecting through-line for the series, it didn't really matter when each one hit air. if they're not gonna care, i'm not gonna care. now i can cram that corner of my brain with more useful information -- like the names of mediocre 1980s baseball players. s'up, dickie thon.)
whatever the season, crime doesn't take a holiday in chicago. which prevents the show from just being kolchak terrorizing ron updyke and monique marmelstein. although that could be an interesting spin-off. but for today, we have actual crime afoot. a murder at rubino's arcade. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. although it got a little less scummy and villainous after two-bit (can gangsters ever be more than two-bit?) arsonist frankie markov was surprised with some lead in his back. he repaid the gift by dying.
one trope of ... well, everything, is that audiences prefer living protagonists to dead ones. in this case, the unfortunate living soul who will play counterpart to the unfortunate dead one is named ryder bond. his name suggests he's the weed-smoking, molly-popping, mountain dew-drinking extreme sports bro millennial son of 007. actually, he's a symphony conductor. which is kinda cool. i liked my version better, though.
ryder bond has problems. first he apparently has such a need to get places on time that he'll have his driver cut off a funeral procession to make an ill-advised right turn. but bond's bigger problem is that people close to him keep dying...
BY SPONTANEOUSLY BURSTING INTO FLAMES!!!
oh
my
GAWD!!!
i can not impress upon you how thunderstruck i was when i watched this episode. when george mason lays down for a peaceful late afternoon nap only to start popping and smoking like a container of jiffy pop cooked over the exhaust of a jet engine, it was the moment that kolchak went from campy spook reporter to cryptozoology documentarian.
Another prominent cryptozoology documentarian is guillermo del toro. pacific rim is a glimpse into our future. the kaiju are coming. we need to be prepared.
the effects budget for each episode of this show is probably equal to my monthly grocery bill, so human combustion didn't quite look the way i imagine it in my head. nonetheless, i was mesmerized.
so ... yeah. george mason. yeah, um ... he's dead. but there's a clue!
the neighborly mrs. sherman (and her spoiled doggo) happened to be walking down the hallway right about combustin' time and saw a man in front of george mason's door. being a self-proclaimed "symphony lover", why, there's no way she wouldn't have recognized the one and only mr. ryder bond.
one wrinkle, though. ryder bond was conducting a symphony that night which would make it hard for him to do any murdering. kolchak mostly confirmed as much when he talks his way into bond's dressing room to inform the music man that george mason was found a touch crisper than is recommended by doctors.
of course, bond is incredulous. mason was a friend and a trusted colleague. and mr. bond had spent his last couple of hours in the company of his french-speaking ingenue. except for that moment about 15 minutes ago when his assistant phillip handed him a message in front of the entire orchestra. except for bond says he wasn't there. except for phillip says he was.
if you haven't figured it out, ryder bond is going to spend a lot of time being seen in two places at once. the problem is that he keeps being spotted at crime scenes where victims have...
SPONTANEOUSLY BURST INTO FLAMES!!!
that's also what happened to felicia porter, who stepped out of a pool, laid on a lounge chair and flash fried. she was found shortly thereafter by a swingin' young couple looking to sunbathe. the couple that may or may not have seen a man like "a flash" who bore a resemblance to (wait for it) ... ryder bond!
the best theory the cops have is that the victim fell asleep in a drunken stupor, holding a cigarette and ignited herself. which is actually a real theory put forth to debunk s.h.c. (which makes me wonder how drunk you have to be to not jump up when you're on fire. check that. i don't wanna know.) kolchak debunks the cops by noticing that only the bodies were burned but none of the surrounding material.
despite having nothing more than two freak events with sketchy eyewitness reports as the thinnest form of corroboration, kolchak starts writing a story alleging ryder bond had something to do with these two mysterious deaths. which in certain social circles could be considered libel. especially when bond has a pretty solid alibi and zero motive.
btw, the past couple of weeks have softened my stance on the Tony Vincenzo Is Bad At His Job Theory. he's shown solid judgment in dealing with kolchak. this week, he was decisive and forceful when shutting down a story that could have torpedoed the struggling independent news service. i didn't care for ron's weaselly way of snitching. but i applaud tony. this is a pleasant development.
nevertheless, kolchak persisted. he visits angry science guy to find out if there might be a special substance that could burn a body in short order. angry science guy says there might be but it's nearly impossible to get and angry science guy would be very angry if someone had some special hot sauce that he didn't know about.
kolchak decides to confront bond which leads to kolchak's mustang following a car carrying bond and driven by phillip the assistant. the reporter gets stuck at a light as bond's car continues along. when kolchak finally catches up, the pollce are trying to extinguish a fire inside and remove the charred body.
wouldn't ya know it ... that body's ncrot ryder bond. even though kolchak clearly saw him get into the car. that sends our reporter over to the concert hall where, wouldn't ya know it again, ryder bond is leading a rehearsal.
maybe for the first time ever, our old boy carl is humbled. he goes to bond's place to apologize for being an overzealous kook and have a sit down chat with the man. but after inviting kolchak in and offering him a seat on the couch, the eerily quite bond disappears. literally. kolchak gets up to find his host and wanders into a room where the door slams shut and the walls suddenly catch fire. i think we can all agree that that's not something rooms normally do.
by now, kolchak's moving on to a new theory. he consults with men of science (not to be confused with angry science guy) who lead him to the belief that it could be a doppelganger. which led him to consult a gypsy.
turns out that a doppelganger is a jealous spirit. in the parlance of our times, we call that a hater. this form of hateration only impacts people when they sleep (was freddy krueger a doppelganger?), explaining why mason and porter caught flames as they caught z's. though it makes you wonder about phil. he would have had to fall asleep behind the wheel. maybe he just died in a car crash.
nowadays, you deal with haters by blocking them on twitter. in 1974, the process was a little more involved. it included taking the original body to the place where it was killed. nbd.
in the meantime, kolchak finally gets face to face with bond to tell him what he's found. most times if someone hits you with a theory about being tailed by an evil spirit, you try to politely excuse yourself from the conversation. but when you've been seeing a mute, shimmering mirror image, you'd pretty much believe anything. welcome to ryder bond's world.
this episode has my two favorite scenes from this show so far. first ... SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION!!! second ... kolchak mentions benicia, california which happens to be the adjacent city to my hometown. i haven't been this giddy since the first time i saw vallejo show up in the onion.
bond and kolchak hole up in a local church where evil spirits can't go in and after some figuring, bond pinpoints when the doppelganger latched on. remember ryder bond's first problem?
first he apparently has such a need to get places on time that he'll have his driver cut off a funeral procession to make an ill-advised right turn.
right. that. bond cut off the funeral procession of the then-recently deceased frankie markov, whose spirit took a big gulp of haterade and started following bond around. kolchak then decides to visit dear widow markov. mrs. markov is a blissfully ignorant woman, hopped up on any number of Mother's Little Helpers doing her best to keep her firebug kid (the fiery apple didn't fall far from the arsonist tree) from burning the place down. what she did know about her late husband was that he was a music lover and she occasionally saw him pretending to conduct a band.
now we're on to something. music lover markov's hatin'-ass spirit latched onto ryder bond and will kill everyone close to bond until the music man can go to sleep and the doppelganger can take over his body. but as long as bond is hanging out in the church, things will stay status quo.
kolchak's trying to fix all of that. he's sleepless. he's delirious. but he's found out exactly where markov died -- thanks to an arcade owner who seemed a little too eager to spill the details of a murder in his establishment for a mere $5. the next step is to dig up the corpse and take it back to the arcade.
this is the sixth episode of kolchak: the night stalker and it's already the second time the title character has dug up a grave. that doesn't seem like a good ratio.
anyway, kolchak drags markov's body back to the arcade when the doppelganger shows up. in case you're ever faced with dispatching a doppleganger, apparently you just treat it like a bad dog. seriously. all kolchak did was point and talk sternly to it. the ghost huffed and puffed and set some things on fire but otherwise went without a fight. no magic words needed or nothing.
with body and soul reunited in death, kolchak attempts to flee the fiery scene only to run into the arms of an officer arriving on the scene. he's arrested and makes a wisecrack in the back of the cruiser before nodding of the sleep and putting the episode to bed. sleep well, dear carl. those arson charges will be but a dream come next week.
reporter's notebook
monique's back! this week she was working on building a crossword puzzle for the paper. i've enjoyed watching people in this fictional newsroom do a little bit of everything to make the operation work. it's a nice little touch of realism in the midst of the surreal. by now, monique's nasal whine is almost endearing because she's so sincere.
more tony vincenzo being good at his job -- he gives kolchak hell for perpetrating a fraud and a swindle for not actually working on the stories he's assigned yet still being able to draw a paycheck. which, come to think of it, doesn't speak all that well for tony's managerial skills. after all, he's kolchak's boss. okay, scratch all that.
there's a dewey decimal system reference. i have no other commentary. it just tickled me.ton
tony scolds kolchak for not putting on fresh clothes. i assume it was in reference to kolchak looking extra-rumpled. i'd prefer to think it was a wink and a nod to kolchak wearing the same thing every week.
the owner of the arcade refers to frankie markov as "the jim thorpe of pinball". i don't really know what that means. if this show was a couple of years later, would he have been "the bruce jenner of pinball"?
quote of the week
"it's just terrible to be broke and superstitious at the same time." - maria
if i had a nickel for every time i heard that, i'd be a pretty lucky guy.
next week on kolchak: the night stalker: kolchak believes that a senatorial candidate has sold his soul to the devil when his challengers begin dying mysteriously.