Seattle, 1973. A series of bizarre murders terrorizes the city. One reporter, new to town, has seen it all before — or at least something very much like it.
Carl Kolchak must battle a long-suffering editor, a disbelieving publisher and Seattle’s finest as he tries to prove an inhuman killer is on the loose.
Simon and review the sequel to the Night Stalker – the 1973 TV movie, the Night Strangler.
Seattle, 1973, and a string of bizarre murders kicks off. Tony Vincenzo, now managing editor of the Daily Chronicle encounters his old colleague, Carl Kolchack, now down on his luck. Vincenzo gives him a job and assigns him to the first murder.
As the murders begin pile up, Kolchack begins to notice some grisly similarities between the murders. It appears that all the victims were killed by an incredibly strong man who crushed their necks and then extracted a small amount of blood using a syringe from the base of the skull. Traces of rotting flesh found on the victims throats and an eyewitness describing the killer as a rotting corpse clue Kolchack into something supernatural. Could it be happening to him again?
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A researcher at the Chronicle discovers a nearly identical series of murders 21 years earlier and, once on the story, further research reveals more murders every 21 years back to 1889. With the sketch artists impression of the eyewitness description and the research at hand, Vincenzo prints the story, which lands everyone, especially Kolchack in hot water.
Kolchack suspects that the killer is tied to the Seattle underground city, but cannot find anything. As Kolchack fights Vincenzo, the owner of the paper and the police to get his story, the murders continue.
Kolchack spots the uncanny resemblance between Dr. Richard Malcolm, a civil war doctor who, according to Mark Twain, expounded upon the possibility of the alchemist’s dream of the Elixir or Life and Doctor Malcolm Richards, the founder of a clinic standing upon the ruins of the hospital Dr. Richard Malcolm was on staff at. Could Malcolm have discovered the Elixir of Life and still be alive and killing today?
Following Malcolm’s history back, he came from New York where, 21 years prior to the earliest the Seattle murders, another identical series of murders occurred.
The police fail to prevent the sixth and final killing, the event that will mark Malcolm disappearing for another 21 years, so Kolchack, desperate to get the story, explores a previously unknown part of the underground city underneath the clinic.
Here his finds Malcolm, both quite chatty about his accomplishments and quite, quite insane. He tells Kolchack how his elixir only lasts 21 years and new batches require six does which contain, amongst other things, a small amount of blood drawn within 7 seconds of death from the brains of women.
Malcolm prepares to take the sixth and final dose before killing Kolchack, which was a bad move. Kolchack destroys the formula and as Malcolm tries to kill Kolchack, he begins to age. The police arrive and Malcolm kills himself. With all Kolchack’s research confirmed, the killer found and the police as witnesses, Kolchack can have his story printed.
Except he’s fired and run out of town, along with Vincenzo. Together, they head for New York.[/expand]
