KOLCHAK PAPERS: Episode #9- The Spanish Moss Murders

Airdate: Dec 6, 1974

Directed by Gordon Hessler. Written by Alvin Friedman and David Chase

Guest Cast: Keenan Wynn, Severn Darden, Randy Boone, Johnny Silver, Ned Glass, Richard Kiel, Virginia Gregg, Brian Avery

The monster

From IMDB: A research experiment in dream deprivation produces a corporeal Cajun boogeyman covered in Spanish moss.

One of the best episodes in the series in no small part due to the writing of David Chase. This one has many of the things we’ve come to love about Kolchak with the added bonus of the first really scary monster in the series. Jack the Ripper was suitably eerie, the Lady Vampire was aggressively scary but she was lit way too brightly to give it the right atmosphere. With the Moss Man we have a monster we see only peripherally and then only in the dark which keeps him the stuff of bad dreams.

Sleep Research was another big trend in the 70s and institutes like the one depicted here often got mainstream news coverage with pseudo science theories as well as actual discovery of the process of REMS and sleep levels on the human brain.

HOW’S THE MONSTER: This might be the best “monster” makeup in the series. Richard Kiel who played the giant Native American ghost in the BAD MEDICINE is under the costume.

Captain Siska tries to convince Carl he’s OK.

WHO’S THE COP WHO HATE’S KOLCHAK? Keenan Wynn is Captain “Mad Dog” Siska who starts out trying to change his anger into an “Im OK you’re OK” group therapy type of response, but Carl is too much for him pretty quickly. He’s one of the best cop adversary’s in the show because of this depth. He’ll be back in a later episode.

WHO ARE THE ODDBALL SIDE CHARACTERS? Along with Wynn we’ve got Severn Darden as the doctor running the experiments— he plays the same creepy kind of doctor he played in two of the Planet of the Apes films, Ned Glass is great as the building super and Virginia Gregg was a regular on DRAGNET and she was the voice of the mother in PSYCHO and she’s welcome here playing a gardener at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.

Carl hunts a Moss Monster

KOLCHAK DIALOGUE:

Carl Kolchak: [voiceover] There's nothing under the sun that I fear as much as I fear dentist appointments. I was on my way to one, envisioning the agony to come, when the police radio delivered me from that cruel and inhuman fate.

KOLCHAK RATING: 5.0 - This one goes into the top five.

NEXT WEEK: We take a Holiday Break from reviews to watch the first Kolchak Movie! I don’t work from Dec 23- Jan 4th and neither should you!

In Two Weeks NEXT UP: THE ENERGY EATER - talk about keeping the monster hidden!