The Spanish Moss Murders

At long last the wait is over
Before "The X-Files", Darren McGavin was reporter Carl Kolchak whose news stories would focus on the supernatural and science fiction aspects of a story. "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" only ran a short (it was only about 20 episodes)season on ABC. Although it lacked the creative fire power of the two TV movies (Producer/director Dan Curtis, director John Moxey and writer Richard Matheson were not involved with the series at all), the best episodes had a sharp sense of humor and a couple of young contributors that would make their mark elsewhere (the creative team behind "Back to the Future" and the writer-producer of "The Sopranos" were both contributors to the series). I realize that writer/creator Jeff Rice ended up suing Universal over the TV series but do wish that an interview with him or commentary tracks had been included.

Released to coincide with the new "The Night Stalker" TV series produced/written by Frank Spotnitz ("The X-Files", "The Lone Gunmen"), the series is...

To have and have not
Just for the record I want to make it clear that I am reviewing the DVD box set of the TV series 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker' unlike at least half of the other reviewers on these pages who have reviewed the original Telemovie.

As for my review, let me add my voice to the chorus in saying how wonderful it is to finally have all 20 episodes of the series on DVD. The show has been a favourite of mine since it's initial run in Australia, and has never lost its sparkle, largely due to excellent performances by the cast.

I'm not going to cover the actual content here, other reviews that were on the right subject have done that well enough.

I am VERY disappointed in the manner the series has been released. Universal needs to understand that double sided DVDs are a thing of the past. I hate them; they are difficult to look after, and due to the 4-pass process, more prone to failure.

Surely with the cost of media today, it would not have made a...

Another great example of how "not" to do a film to DVD transfer!
First let me say that I have worked in the video industry, Broadcast, VHS Duplication and now DVD authoring and replication business for 15 years. I understand video and quality.

Secondly let me say that I love the Night Stalker Series and was anxious as hell to see it released some day on DVD.

The day that this set came out I bought it and that night started watching it.

Now the bad part: The quality of the film to video transfers are some of the worst I have seen. The light levels of the projection device were so low that all night scenes are so dark that nothing, absolutely nothing can be seen in some parts. Other parts are so dark that only vague shadows can be seen. I took the discs to work and scoped them out. The white and black levels are in acceptable ranges of 100% white and 7.5% for black. This is not the problem. The film to video transfer had insuficiencent projection level to resolve the images.

Night Stalker looks like a bad...

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