There were many lighthearted and simply ridiculous elements in this episode and they, unexpectedly, worked together very well.
The episode starts with some stock footage of Chicago in snowy winter, then a scene probably shot in the show's Hollywood studio with the members of the INS news team celebrating Christmas. Well, this time they had a good excuse for there not to be many people present: a flu was supposed to have put most of the staff in bed shivering from the disease. As a consequence, we only see Vicenzo, Kolchak, Updike and a lady I almost completely forgot about.
Vicenzo is anxiously waiting for his vacation on a cruise, all paid by the New York office, but the he has to deal with some accountants coming from there and has to unwuillingly forfeit his travel ticket. Vicenzo asks the person on the phone to help him pretend he's sick, so he doesn't have to work and can travel, but there's no convincing the other fellow. Vicenzo He tries to give his ticket to Updike, but he is really feeling sick (well, he didn't seem sick, and seemed more like a hypochondriac than a liar), so he has to give the ticket to Kolchak. Ironically, later we learn that Vicenzo eventually does catch the flu but still has to go to work because there's nobody else in the office.
It's interesting that Vicenzo couldn't simply give the ticket to Kolchak and say, well, pal, enjoy yourself since I can't. Have your vacation now, and come back with more energy to work. No, Vicenzo only gives Kolchak the cruise ticket (and expense money, I think) provided that Kolchak wrote a story about it. And, of course, any experienced reporter can tell you that a singles' cruise is a really fertile ground for an exciting news coverage or a deep story of significant human interest... Well, well, whatever. AS it usually happens with INS, it's a slow news week.
After a while we meet Kolchak's cabin roommate, a real single, a party guy. And I thought the fact they were roommates would have any meaning and they'd have trouble sharing the cabin, but no, that element was simply ignored after that.
The roommate and his lady friend introduce Carl to Paula, a good-looking mature lady who talks too much and is crazy about movies. Little did he know that her movie knowledge would save the day as she would work as a kind of Lady Google providing Carl with trivia about werewolves in replacement to the books Kolchak usually consults.
You know, for the Carl Kolchak we all love, a woman can only be two things: a nuisance or a tool. (But a woman does make a good sidekick and comic relief.) Well, in the beginning, it seems Paula is going to be the inconvenience Carl will try to dodge the entire episode, but then he finds some use for her, getting her to distract a crew member while Kolchak searched a room he wasn't allowed into. Hey, lady, picking up a contact lens from the floor and putting it right in your eye is totally unsanitary! Later, anyway, she becomes a faithful sidekick. She's even the first to suggest the villain is a werewolf, even if she didn't believe it herself.
Enter the werewolf. I thought Eric Braeden had a strong on-screen presence, even if he didn't have many lines as a rational being. I remember him from the movie Colossus, and other productions from the 1970s. I was amazed, however, by the intricate makeup werewolf work and special effects of when the man transformed into the beast... No, not really. No transformation effects there, and the werewolf look was just a furry face. And that's the problem with showing werewolves in movies and on TV: this monster requires a convincing appearance, unlike a vampire, which can look just like a regular human.
I give my compliments to the stuntman who played the werewolf, because he did a lot of acrobatics, with lots of jumping, running and pushing. Especially pushing. Normally werewolves in movies bite and scratch people tearing their flesh apart, but this werewolf in particular was a great pusher and spent the episode pushing people to the floor. That's how he rolled.
There was another storyline involving the elderly captain and, of course, love boat captain, police captain, it makes no difference: they never believe Kolchak and always try to pretend nothing extraordinary is happening, of course. I liked the part in which the captain quotes maritime law, so Kolchak could get to be in hot water, since legally the captain could have the prerogative to detain him even without evidence, being even more of a problem than the police. But this story didn't go very far either. At least the captain served a purpose in the story and the scene in which he realizes all the buttons of his uniform were gone was hilarious.
However, what really made me laugh hard was the absurdity of the incongruent scene with Kolchak holding a blow torch, an iron pan and making silver bullets in a boat cabin! And cooling them in a juice glass... Next time I'm on a cruise and have nothing to do I'll try and make silver bullets. That seems like a fun pastime and a totally viable thing to do there.
So we finally have the typical episode-end Kolchak/monster confrontation in which the reporter kills the monster, the monster's body is lost (this time in the sea), he suddenly loses all evidence he had, the ship is scrapped, the other victims of the werewolf are sent to to Switzerland for treatment of a rare blood disease, and even the word "werewolf" is erased from all dictionaries. It's all a big conspiracy! And we never hear of Paula again.
The end.
"The Werewolf" was quite entertaining for its absolute absurdity and oddity. It gets 8 prayers to the dead spoken in Latin by a priest.
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