This Friday on "Kolchak: TNS" ep 01 "The Ripper"

(Lorkris on Plumm)

She would have made a great recurring character.

I wanted to wait until Sunday so I could watch the METV showing of Kolchak and it didn't look much better than the Dailymotion version. Was it just that it was a single season show so the print kind of got lost and forgotten before they transferred it to DVD?? Overall the film transfer looks lousy. It's dark & blurry all over the place and I could barely make out what was going on in the story. I guess part of it was due to a lack of budget so they filmed a lot of it in the dark places to minimize scenic requirements.

On to the story.

Basically Kolchak is a mash up of 1930's/1940's pulp horror movie with a 1970's intrepid anti-hero reporter type story but the reporter is right out of something you'd see in a late 1940's movie. It's a pretty unique premise because it doesn't easily fit into any category or description.

Kolchak works for the INS (Independent New Service) under an editor named Tony Vincenzo played by Simon Oakland. Oakland was a long time character actor from the 1950's-70's usually specializing in tough guys or supervisors or commanding officers. Kolchak starts working a story about a string of death surrounding female strippers which end up being committed by a Jack The Ripper type character. He gets into some trouble as he attempts to follow the assailant with his 110 instamatic camera so Vincenzo takes him off the story. Vincenzo has him working on the "Dear Emily" letters. In his place Vincenzo put Updike on the story. Updike is kind of fastidious meek and somewhat mediocre reporter so Kolchak is naturally upset.

Kolchak doesn't care about his demotion in classic 70's rebel trope fashion and investigates the case anyway. He is helped along the way by the way of a female reporter named Jane Plum. Together they surmise that the murders bear a strange resemblance to the Jack the Ripper murders. Some more murders take place and Kolchak starts to believe that the perpetrator is actually Jack the Ripper. They believe that Ripper is some kind of supernatural creature that comes back to life every 20-30 years.

The finally has Kolchak investigate Ripper's house in Ripper's absence. As he's searching around the house Ripper comes home and a confrontation ensues and Kolchak runs away. He finds Ms. Plum's body which was a bit of surprise. Ripper almost catches him but falls into a small river where Kolchak has set up some kind of bizarre electrocution station. They never find a body and Kolchak is never held responsible for burning down this rather large house.

It ends with a bit of an epilogue and a cut to a new shoe found in the house that was actually 70 years old.

Random Thoughts:

*The print quality was pretty lousy on ME TV so I was wondering if the DVD's look any better?

*I was a bit shocked they killed off Ms. Plum, I thought they would have brought her back.

*It was odd that they kept referring to Jane Plum as "Fat". I mean by 2016 American standards she looked about average. I guess it's just that 2/3 of the American population is over weight.

*There doesn't seem to be any consequence for Kolchak's actions so in this regard it has a very comic book kind of feel to it.

*I forgot how cheesy 1970's t.v. special effects were.

Pretty good first episode but I could see this formula getting very repetitive and boring. I give it a 7/10.