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Darren McGavin; Jo Ann Pflug; Simon Oakland; Richard Anderson
A noble and noteworthy successor to The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler takes our beloved Kolchak to jolly ole Seattle, where a brute is strangling women and apparently sticking them with some kind of needle. Which is odd, because most of the people I know in Seattle are sticking themselves with some kind of needle. But I digress...

I simply adored The Night Stalker, and here McGavin and Oakland are back at it again as the irascible cad Carl Kolchak and his beleaguered boss Tony Vincenzo, whose passive-aggressive-codependent relationship makes Archie and Edith Bunker look like Ozzie and Harriet by comparison. Kolchak is up to his old tricks again, namely pissing off the local authorities and wooing women who work in "questionable careers" (in the first film it was a hooker, here it's an exotic dancer -- all the better to put you in danger with, my dear!). As Carl uncovers clues that point to the perpetrator being -- well, a corpse -- he manages to run into Margaret Hamilton (yes, the Margaret Hamilton) and Al Lewis (yes, the Al Lewis) along the way. Filled with creepy street scenes, clever plot twists, a genuinely geeky assistant (who must have been the inspiration for the Lone Gunmen from the X-Files), and some stunning images of the "underground city beneath Seattle" (I've seen the tours but have never taken one, being too busy... uh, well... just being too busy), this is fun, sharp, and scary stuff the likes of which few MOTWs can hope to beat.

Backed by a killer script by Richard Matheson (Duel, Prey) and crisp direction from Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows, Trilogy of Terror, Burnt Offerings), The Night Strangler is simply a must-see. Extra fag points for featuring an amusing and yet somehow touching lesbian relationship, which Kolchak doesn't quite understand but is happy to leave be -- sure, it's played for laughts, but it's still pretty daring stuff for 1973.