kolchak: the night stalker - episode 9: the spanish moss murders

people always tell you to never judge a book by its cover. but since bookstores generally frown upon you standing there and reading the entire thing without actually buying it, how else am i gonna find a great book? that non-sequitur leads me to this week's look into the kooky life of carl kolchak.

the name of this week's episode is "the spanish moss murders". not going to lie but when i saw that this story revolved around swamp plants, i was less than excited to dig in. fortunately, i can say that among its flaws, perhaps this episode's greatest crime was being fairly poorly named.

on a hot night in early july, 25-year old michelle kelly was rushing from her job to catch a flight home to new jersey for the july 4th holiday. raise your hand if you think she's going to get on that airplane.

**waiting**

no one? okay.

welp. you're correct. i know you're shocked.

our gal michelle is walking down the streets of chicago which are just as dark as ever. to make matters worse, she ducks down an alley. i originally had questions about exactly how far she parked from her job. or whether there wasn't a more well-lit path to some sort of public transportation. (though this show's track record doesn't make me optimistic about the latter.) but walking into an alley pretty much sealed michelle's fate. if kolchak: the night stalker is to be believed, most women in big cities die in alleys. can we get jerry lewis to do a telethon about this?

michelle's death appears to be neither quick nor painless. a big, angry thing jumps out in front of her and does some aggressive hugging. when the cops arrive, they can only conclude that with her chest cavity crushed, she was the victim of an automobile hit-and-run. case closed?

well, actually, yeah ... for now.

here's where kolchak comes in. while on his way to a dentist appointment, he's detoured when reports of a murder come over his police scanner. the chef at a fancy french restaurant -- honore piaget -- was found face-down on the floor of the kitchen. the cops have a suspect in custody but captain joe "mad dog" siska isn't giving up the goods to kolchak just yet.

side plot! captain siska is trying to shed the "mad dog" label. health problems and fear of divorce have led him to group therapy, presumably for anger management. it's understandable since the captain (guest star keenan wynn!) had a bit of trouble with some pree-verts and a temperamental vending machine about 10 years back. nowadays, he's trying to be a kinder, gentler law enforcement official but he's barely holding it together. kolchak is not good for someone struggling with mental health issues.

there is some weirdness with this murder. because of course. in this case, the weirdness is some sort of green plant found near the body. cap'n siska tries to suggest it's salad. but salad usually doesn't get bagged, tagged and sent to the crime lab.

the man in custody is a pastry chef named ramon clemente. he and piaget weren't exactly bffs after clemente was fired. he attacked the head chef and threatened to kill him. kolchak's not buying that clemente is the killer. after all, he's built like your typical light-hitting middle infielder. not exactly the type who'd look like he could cave in another man's chest. the cops downplayed the injuries and suggeste there could be a weapon involved. spoiler alert: there's not a weapon involved.

kolchak does a little snooping and after tricking a file clerk to rush outside and check on his vandalized car, he finds some files. he learns that the medical examiner described piaget's injuries as gruesome. and the green stuff found next to his body isn't a garden salad. kolchak also finds a reference to another case where the victim had similar injuries. a hit-and-run involving one michelle kelly.

did i mention that there are more deaths. because there are more deaths.

bobby ray solange. just a guy trying to make a few bucks as a street musician. at the end of a long day of forcing his musical stylings upon the citizens of chicago, ol' b.r. solange decides to sneak into a basement and have a special smoke break. mere moments after lighting up the sticky icky, something bursts through the door and puts a punctuation mark on solange's day. and life. just like nancy reagan warned us would happen.

seeking answers, kolchak tracks down the deceased ms. kelly's place of employment. it's a science lab run by dr. aaron pollack, m.d. (major douchebag). dr. pollack is a wavy-mulleted, shaggy-goateed, overstuffed, self-important sack of pompously rancid mayonnaise. plus he's kind of a dick.

when asked about michelle, he barely remembers the poor girl then essentially tells kolchak that she would have been clumsy and stupid enough to get herself hit by a car. wow. okay. this dude is a perfect candidate to go on undercover boss. at least i'd assume so. i've never watched the show. i imagine it would be like the kylo ren episode but with less force choking.

from there, kolchak stops in at the botanical gardens to find out what kind of plant monsieur piaget was found dead next to. turns out, it's spanish moss. from louisiana bayou country. not found anywhere within 1,000 miles of chicago.

for the record: it's about 915 miles from chicago to baton rouge. so i'm giving the geography a thumbs-up here. this has been a #wellactually moment.

next stop is the hospital. one of the orderlies there tells a tale of a man found in a basement with his chest caved in. you and i know him as bobby ray solange. kolchak breaks into the offending basement to investigate when he's caught by the building superintendent. the super says the reason the basement was boarded up was because of kids necking, smoking cocaine and stabbing each other.

who doesn't remember their teenage years when you were making out with that special person only to end up in a drug-fueled murder spree?

also, it's boarded up because a guy got his chest caved in there the other day. the super thinks it was a gang that attacked the guy. then they dragged in some vegetables to leave around the body. (that feels like the ultimate humiliation. not only did you get stomped out, but your opponent garnished you afterward. that's a tough one to come back from.) other things found near the body -- a guitar case and some loose change. the super concludes that the deceased was a street musician.

kolchak hits the streets and thought he'd hit a jackpot with a street fiddler in need of 10 bucks. (we've yet to discuss kolchak continually paying for stories each and every week. but ... that.) turns out the guy was just a hustlin' musician telling kolchak whatever he wanted to hear -- imagine that! -- while running off to book some studio time. however, mr. fiddler's assistant, pepe seems to know a little more if kolchak was still offering.

oh and pepe? not pepe. morris shapiro. moved to chicago to get into organized crime. failed. didn't meet the height requirement. i feel like the writers meant for it to be a joke there that's working on a level that my 2017 cultural mind doesn't get. or maybe they really were just calling him short. whatever. 

morrie thinks solange was killed by his buddy paul langois, another fiddler, who by morrie's telling was pure awful. langois disappeared a while back but he and solange had had a falling out. in morris' estimation it was all part of the intrigue of the southerners that come north to chicago seeking musical fame and fortune. these crazy country boys with their bayous and their gumbo and their peremalfait.

their what now?

peremalfait (pronounced pair-mall-fay but y'know, with a french accent) -- noun. thing that the cajun boys used to tease each other about.

morris would have explained more, but he mysteriously vanished when kolchak wasn't looking. 

by now, kolchak is fully engaged. even more so when the police quietly release ramon clemente for the suspected murder of honore piaget for no evidence of cook-on-cook violence. the reporter's heightened level of interest is starting to wear on cap'n siska, who's losing all of the things he learned in group therapy. kolchak can do that to a man.

the reporter suggests the langois angle to the cop. the cop is a couple of steps ahead. they looked into langois kid. he's been in a sleep study for the past 6 weeks and they can't wake him up. 

this brings us back to our least favorite sciencey gasbag. he's had langois in his lab for the past 6 weeks, keeping him under but not allowing him to dream. i imagine that would do bad things to a man's brain. langois' brain would agree. while kolchak was checking out the lab, a bunch of bells and alarms start ringing with the doctor and his assistant scrambling to figure out what's going on. 

meanwhile, in another part of chicago...

officer warren lunt saw something suspicious and went to investigate. officer warren lunt, welcome to SqueezedToDeathTown, population ... you!

remember the hustlin' fiddler guy who took kolchak for 10 bucks? kolchak tracks him down at a recording studio to harass him about peremalfait. let that be a lesson never to shortchange carl kolchak. peremalfait is basically the bayou boogeyman. spiritual swamp thing. creature from the cajun lagoon. parents would use him as a warning to make their kids be good otherwise peremalfait would squeeze the life out of you.

but there is a way to get rid of p-fait. you just gotta stab him with a stick from a tree in bayou gum. at least that's what i think he said. that's what i'm going with.

this sends us back to dr. pollack. yippee! now that a cop is dead, cap'n siska is on the warpath. he wants langois to be woken up. kolchak explains that he was there when langois had a brain freakout which coincided with officer lunt's time of death. in fact, langois had several freakouts which all coincided with times of the various deaths. if the wild-eyed theory of an idiosyncratic crime reporter cum ghost hunter is to be believed, paul langois has dreamed peremalfait into reality.

just the mention of peremalfait's name sends the lab's machinery into a frenzy as langois' vital signs go haywire. they went haywire until they stopped. fare thee well, paul langois. when you see morris shapiro, just know that he talked trash about your fiddle playing skills.

the death of paul langois means the death of peremalfait, right? wrong. kolchak goes back to his desk to write the story, but his desk is soaked and (surprise!) there's moss in his desk drawer. guess that "leak in the roof" is really a "peremalfait" staking out your workspace. gotta hate when that happens.

it's now time for kolchak to take matters into his own hands. i mean, more than he already has. except, where would one find a cajun swamp monster in chicago? first things first, it's to break into the botanical gardens to forge the mighty tree spear of destiny to vanquish the beast. then ... to the sewers!

kolchak, rumpled blue suit, tape recorder and all climbs into the poop water. it doesn't take long until the beastie shows himself. to this point, we've seen just brief glimpses and shadows and extreme closeups of eyeballs. now that we get the full view, he looks like a wookiee that's been caught in a monsoon. but with human hands.

after a splashy, clumsy chase (there's always a clumsy chase) kolchak ambushes ol' p-fait and pokes him with the stick. i say poke because stab would be far too generous of a description. peremalfait moans, groans and sinks back into water never to be seen again.

kolchak chalks it up to an extreme case of mind creating matter. but i'm wondering what he's going to wear for the next couple of days as he gets his soggy, poopy suit cleaned. that's an episode i'd be curious to watch.

reporter's notebook

after playing the diablero in last week's episode, richard kiel is back as peremalfait this week. it makes me wonder how many other tall monsters they'll have on this show. glad to see mr. kiel was getting consistent work in the '70s.

apart from the comedic spectacle of watching keenan wynn continually pull himself back from the brink of a meltdown, i'm scratching my head why we had to do the whole group therapy side plot dance.

of equal waste was the bit about tony vincenzo speaking in front of the press club. maybe it was a plot device to take a backhanded shot at kolchak's reporting methods. doesn't explain the follow-up celebratory party after the speech.

ron updyke appears in just two scenes and barely says anything. it was the most enjoyable he's been in any episode.

this week's spelling word: s-c-h-l-u-b (or is it s-h-l-u-b?)

quote of the week

"what is it? salvador dali's bar mitzvah picture?" - tony vincenzo

i don't even know what that means.

next week on kolchak: the night stalker: kolchak investigates when a series of deaths occurs at a new hospital built on the site of an indian god's former home.