The Norliss Tapes (1973)

Writer David Norliss (Roy Thinnes), tasked with writing a book debunking the supernatural, ceases all contact with his publisher. He seems to spend his time lounging around sweating, not buttoning his shirt a lot. When the publisher finally makes contact with Norliss, the writer rambles something about being in too deep and having dictated his book onto tape. It will explain everything, apparently. He’s certainly not going to do that himself, for he doesn’t appear to a meeting with said publisher and seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth now.

His publisher does find the titular tapes, though. What is on the first of them makes up most of the film. Ellen Cort (Angie Dickinson), the widow of apparently somewhat famous sculptor James Raymond Cort (Nick Dimitri) calls Norliss in for help in a rather mysterious case. Despite being quite dead, a blue-faced version of Cort with pretty frightening eyes leaves his sarcophagus in the family crypt to murder dogs – later people – and work on a final sculpture. Ellen thinks it has something to do with the occult circles her husband started moving in when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Ellen particularly suspects the sinister Madame Jeckiel (Vonetta McGee) and a ring she gave James to have something to do with her husband’s very eventful version of the afterlife.

Norliss isn’t the most sceptical of sceptics, so he’s soon the one trying to convince your typical incompetent local Sheriff (as is usually the case played by Claude Akins) of the truth of a blue zombie dude walking around, murdering people, and sculpting a pretty creepy looking demon sculpture.

Dan Curtis’s – this time around not only producing but also directing – NBC TV movie The Norliss Tapes was supposed to be the pilot for a series of Norliss adventures, but the network never did pick the series up in the end. Therefor, we never will learn why Norliss disappeared, but since this was made in the age of done-in-one TV stories, his disappearance is really more an atmospheric set-up for the film’s actual plot.

I have to admit I’m not terribly surprised by the series not having been picked up. In an age where pretty much only soap operas had continuing storylines as we understand them today, much of the rest of the TV show world really had to sell themselves on the pull of their central characters, and I don’t see Norliss making much of a mark in many viewers’ minds. While it is nice to have a main character who isn’t a walking, talking gimmick, Norliss seems rather lacking in personality of any kind. He’s somewhat cool and aloof, but not in a terribly interesting way, he dresses to suggest he’s a pretty successful writer – and that’s it. Which I don’t think is enough to carry a show.

Of course, having said that, Norliss’s only actual adventure is at least an entertaining bit of TV horror throughout, starting off as a well-constructed series of investigative interviews and becoming a bit more gruesome and horror movie-like as things continue. Curtis, while for my tastes not quite as good a director as the best examples of the trade he worked with, does manage some fine scenes, always trying for the more atmospheric shot in a medium easily falling into the blandly generic for budget and cost reason and often making excellent use of rain, darkness and shadow to create a mood of classicist creeps. There are some fine sets and locations too – I’m particularly partial to the tunnels under the crypt – as well as a good cast doing the expected good work. Though I would have wished the film had made better use of Dickinson, who nonetheless turns out to be a rather adept screamer.

The monster design is simple yet on the effective side. The blue skin is in practice much more convincing than it sounds on paper, and our undead’s eyes are indeed pleasantly creepy (and Curtis clearly knows this). Dimitri’s fine, increasingly less human snarling isn’t too bad, either.


I also appreciate that Curtis doesn’t just use an early 70s undead but throws in a whole bunch of occult stuff that escalates to a bonus monster and provides the whole affair with a pleasant pulpy flavour. So, while I never really warmed to Norliss as a character or an occult detective, the film he’s in is a fine use of 70 minutes of anyone’s time, I believe.

Accidental TV Movie Week: The Night Stalker (1972)

aka Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Accidental TV Movie Week is what happens when I read the excellent “Are You in the House Alone?” edited by blogger and podcaster Amanda Reyes and spend a week only watching the sort of US TV movie treated in the book. Don’t be afraid.

Let’s start this thing off with a classic, one of the handful of US TV movies known and loved even by those horror fans who have little interest in or knowledge of this specific side of the genre. As is often the case, find myself in between, by the way, a dabbler but neither completely clueless about nor a full-blooded fan of the classic US TV movie.

The Night Stalker’s plot is simple and to the point: dedicated reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) has been exiled to Las Vegas for his unwillingness to play politics as much as for his love for purposefully pissing off any authority figure he might encounter. Investigating a series of murders of young women that leave the victims without blood, many curious facts begin to add up to a crazy conviction – the killer is an actual vampire. The fact that the police will only ever half believe what is going on even once they have repeatedly encountered an inhumanly strong man impervious to bullets, and even if they do, won’t let any of this get in front of the eyes of the public (vampires are apparently bad for business), just might turn Kolchak into an improbable vampire hunter.

Apart from being straightforward (which doesn’t mean stupid, mind you), The Night Stalker’s plot has the distinction of being point-perfectly executed. Scripted by the great Richard Matheson (and produced by Dan Curtis, the patron saint of US TV horror of the 70s), the film is as tightly written as possible, exclusively consisting of scenes that move forward the plot and reveal character and explore the film’s themes, with no filler whatsoever. The dialogue, while always absolutely of its time, is always sharp, often funny, and provides information and flavour at the same time. Because this is Matheson at his very best, at least every second scene features an absolutely brilliant idea, just as brilliantly executed. If that sounds as if I’m laying it on a bit thick here, I’m not – this is as flawless a script as a viewer can ever hope to encounter, the sort of thing you’d wish any prospective writer of genre films would study closely.

Even better, the TV gods put the script in the hands of one of the most talented TV directors (whom I have once or twist in the past inexcusably belittled as merely dependable, but who was actually as brilliant a stylist as the rules of TV and TV production of the 70s allowed), John Llewellyn Moxey, a man who apparently recognized gold when he found it and treated it appropriately. So Matheson’s brilliance is treated with all the respect it deserves here, with Moxey delivering a series of very effective horror set pieces (the climax in the vampire’s genuinely creepy house with one particularly creepy detail being a particular favourite of mine), sharply shot dialogue scenes, and buckets of drive and atmosphere. The vampire (Barry Atwater) is genuinely wonderful too, with effective corpse-like make-up and even presenting a high degree of physical menace when he isn’t out-running cars or eating bullets.

The acting – featuring mainstays like Carol Lynley (as Kolchak’s girlfriend Gail, who has the distinction of having a brain as well as of not being threatened by the vampire in the end), Simon Oakland, Ralph Meeker, Elisha Cook Jr and Claude Akins – is absolutely on the level of the script too. McGavin’s portrayal of Kolchak is fantastic, managing to keep the guy likeable while also being honest about how much of a pain in the butt he must be for everyone around him. Usually, a character who is right about everything and very loud about it should be perfectly insufferable, speaking truth to power or not, but Kolchak even at his smuggest also has a difficult to define quality of vulnerability under all of his swagger, created by McGavin and Matheson in concert.


So obviously, I think The Night Stalker is the masterpiece everyone says it is. Much of the rest of films I’ll talk about during this week (and the overflow of TV movies you can expect coming up during the next half year or so) of TV movies won’t be able to hold up to these standards to various degrees, but that’s nothing for anyone to be ashamed or disappointed about, for when it comes to intelligent yet pulpy 70s horror, this is one of the touchstones.