The Final Episode

I'm ready, I'm recording. Let's do this the final episode of the cole Jack Saves. That was not the voice of Carl cole Chack, the reporter known as the Nightstalker, because there was no episode called the Eve of Terror, while there was, but it was a script and we're going to talk about that and a few other last things on the final episode here of the coal Chack Tapes. My name is Mike White. I am joined by Chris Stashu. As always, folks, I'm here for one last go round with

Cold Check. How so did we determine how long it's been since we started this podcast? I think we were saying three years. It's been a long journey, folks, And if you stuck with us this entire time, welcome. The end is here and we are also joined by our very special guests. The only guest who's ever been on more than two episodes of the podcast, I believe when once well we had Mark de Woodsiac on twice, I think, but he was a guest, he was a special guest. This

is a guest co host, and this is Richard Hadham. To think that I beat Mark de Widsiac at anything is amazing because He's our hero, so I'm just glad to be here. He is the font of Colchack knowledge and Colombo. His Lumbo book is back in print. I highly recommend it to folks. You know, Mike, if you've gotten in touch with me earlier, I could. I could have personally done some of the cool Shack voice and you know I'd happily do the voice over. Richard likes to dress up

as Klshak for Halloween. If you follow him on Twitter, Oh jesus, I know, man. I wasn't going to post those pictures. Then my wife did it. It was like revenge porn. It's a really good costume. You guys, you have to realize the stadness that is my life. I bought the sear Sucker suit. I tracked down that hat. It cost you know so much, I'm embarrassed to say. And then I went so far as to find out the exact kind of tape recorder and the exact camera

he had to make the model. I bought those. I've got the stand smith sneakers, I got the whole thing. The living wrong with it is it's super clean, it's not dirty. It doesn't look like guy. I just crawled through a sewer. Here here's the thing, Richard, I am the kind of person who appreciates attention to detail, and when I built my Ghostbusters costume, I did the exact same thing. So I one appreciate someone

who's like I gotta get everything down perfectly, screen accurate. So regardless of how much money you spent, that your cold Check costume is the best one that I've seen, because I've seen a lot on the internet, and a lot of them are just what's the term phoning it in? Well, Chris, next year, I think we need to go trigger treating together. Can I be the MATCHI manteau? Well, I was thinking you could wear your your Ghostbusters out there. I think, oh, you know, you know

that's true. Had there been a voiceover for this episode, it probably would have gone like this. Most people are familiar with that old Charles Dickens saying beauty's only skin deep. Yet how many know the rest of the quote, which continues but ugly ghost the bone. And then we would have had Carl's voiceover saying Myra Deckbar, a behavioral scientist experimenting in acoustical research, was about to find out the hard way. April fourteenth nine PM. Doctor Deckbar was

on the brink of an important discovery. Her technician was on the brink two of death Bump. This episode really speaks to something that we've been talking about about Cole Chack since pretty much day one, which is the sexism that is in coal Chack. It is amazing worst. Well, it's either the worst or the best. I'm really having a hard time figuring out if Stephen Lord was coming at this as a woke person in nineteen seventy five, or if

he just was making fun of feminism. I think you know the answer. You just don't want to admit it to yourself. I think you're right. Yeah, I think it's a little of bo in a weird way. There was a lot I was wincing at in this script, but I get the feeling that on some level they thought, hey, we're being super like edgy and political by taking on a women's movement by making the main character one of those lady crusader types. But she doesn't even seem like she is one of

those lady crusader types. And I like how they specify when she goes to a woman's group at one point in this that it is not filled with those typical women's livers, you know, the real man hating mannish ones. You know what I'm talking about, right, I mean nudge, Yeah, it's it's it's a unique group of attractive feminists, the rare bird. Indeed, it's strange to me this, Like I read April fourteenth, and I believe the last episode that we covered. I'm not talking about real dates, but

I'm talking about Colchak dates in his world. I believe the last one we talked about was in April twentieth and twenty first, so this would have been shortly before that. There would have been before the century happened. But um, this was supposed to be the episode after the century. If we're supposed to believe everything that we read. It's an interesting one because this is a monster that we haven't necessarily seen quite so much. It's kind of like a

werewolf. I would say, isn't it just a werewolf? But with less cotton balls on their face? Maybe triggered by sound, which I found triggered werewolves. Oh, triggered liberal werewolves. Oh my god, you is a woke triggered women liberal werewolf episode, folks. Colejack was ahead of its time. That's right, it's Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, isn't it Like that's that's They even like make reference to it at the end of the episode. They do, and they refer to it as her alter ego, like like,

I don't know if they were getting at underneath her professional demeanor. She has so much rage against the institutionalized sexism of the world that she works in that the only way she can access it is when her alter ego comes out. Because they do. They kind of like the victims that she attacks are like the stereotypes of sexism in one way or another. Right, Spare me the women's lib crap. Okay, the first one is her lab tech who

basically tells her to go get him some coffee. And then we've got the vivacious starlet who I'm I'm guessing that underneath the surface, she's shooting a porn film and I'm supposed to pick up on this, correct, she's a sex idol. So yes, well, but is it I mean, is it or is she more like Roquel Welch or you know, Lonnie Anderson, I thought you was a porn star. I was picturing Raquel Welch type. But I wasn't sure, just because this was seventy five and deep throwed to come

out. So I was like, is she supposed to be more of a Linda Lovelace. That's what I thought because of the time period. And then she kills the guy, Craig Temple, the producer, the playboy of Sexy Films. Yeah, he's the producer of sexy Films. And I was picturing when I was reading it. I was picturing Dick Gaudier playing the character he played in the Werewolf episode. That would have made sense. Yeah, I'm like, Oh, if he wasn't that guy, he should be this guy.

It's a really interesting coincidence. So Carl is on the case of this murder, the initial murder that happens at the scientific facility because Myra she gets trapped in a sound booth where they are subjecting these poor test animals to these

high frequency things in order to see if they can control their behavior. But for her, it turns her into this beast where they It's very funny how Stephen Lord, the writer describes the transformation, and he will give certain points in the script where he's like, Okay, this is stage one and she's got really thick, bushy eyebrows. And now this is stage two over here. So now we've seen stage one, so make it look like this plus stage two. And she gets all the way up to stage four before she

ends up being dispatched. Yeah, so she ends up being transformed in this state too. Yeah, as you said, very much a mister Hyde character or mis hide in this case. And she even says it. She even says miss high and then she dispatches of these people hang a lantern on it. You know, I wonder if, and maybe I'm giving more credit than his due, but I would if at this point in production there was an attempt on the page to sort of say, okay, now, now every

time there's an attack, don't don't freak out, studio. Don't think that we're we're going to need full makeup in six different scenes. This one is just stage one. It should be fairly easy, fairly cheap, and then we're going to build up to the full makeup that we will only highlight in

one scene. Because I mean, I've had to do things like that sometimes in scripts, where you really have to indicate Okay, I know you're picturing something super expensive, but this isn't right now, it's just this other thing. So maybe they were doing that. I know that all they ever talked about is how expensive this show was to make, and maybe that was them

trying to be responsible. I mean, it would make sense it being this late in the show, that that's what they're going for, and they've kind of done it in some of the other episodes where they've shown like into of it and then finally shown it at the end. I mean, that's kind of feels kind of stock and trade at this point for the show to be perfectly honest, Yeah, if they even show it at all, did you guys think that she was turning into a guinea pig monster? Like somehow there

was like a transfer of something. I think that would have been a lot more interesting than what we got, which was just a bushy monster in a pant suit, which I mean, I would have loved to have seen that just for the comical nature of it. The way that they describe it in the script, it's like it's a it's a bushy creature in a pant suit and high heels, Like, what the fuck is going on? Like Coleshack is just given up completely on trying to be serious apparently that gives that gives

Coleshack a lot of opportunities to go. I don't know. Maybe he's some weird cross dressing weirdough that's aged really well, hasn't it cross dressing weirdo? How many times they say that in the script is one time more than enough because they say it like four times. I'm glad that they have a character. And here that is a masher. I haven't heard that term in a long time. I was amazing. And of course he had to be punished because he's a masher, so he got his come uppance when the crazed female

monster killed him. I don't even know what a masher is. Basically, it's a perv, okay, it's just a guy who's like always on the hunt, really sleazy. So yeah, that did Gautier type character again from the Werewolf episode. I mean, that's kind of what I figured because it was more or less heavily implied. I kept thinking of her looking more like that little guy from Altered States that William Hurt turns into. I get it now. I want to go back and watch Altered States. Maybe I should

watch Altered States for the first time. It's a good one Chris, Oh dude, oh you should, Oh for sure you should do that one on your thing. Yeah, with that podcast thing, you do that podcast thing that I do. What is Tom hank movie else? I'll tell you what though, if we're talking about this at the script being in line with things we've already read and or watched, its very close. It doesn't break the

mold. It doesn't do anything remotely interesting or different. The only thing in my mind that it does kind of different is it actually gives col Chack like a love interest at the end. Well okay, but but but here's the thing. Would I would give anything if if that were like I would lean into that because what Gwynneth, the model who lives next door to Myra, she's just sort of like at the end, of course, I could literally

dragging her around because she's so terrified. I guess she can't control her motor functions or something. And then at the end she's kind of sitting there. But like, wouldn't have been cooler if like, somewhere two thirds of the way through they cross paths and started like team up and figuring things out, and she could have done a couple of cool things at the end and then when they walked off at the end, it wouldn't feel just sort of like

the when when Cole Sex says I know what rings my bell? It was just sort of like, oh boy, well that also again just really kind of for me rings tone death and like kind of not cringe worthy, but it has an age. Well it's like, I know what rings my bell? It's like, oh man, nothing happens down at my feet? Oh god, Oh yeah, that's oh Jesus, that's oh my god. That's right. There's that line too. No, don't forget that line. How could I oh wait, which what the nothing happens at my feet? The

porn starlet type lady. Yeah, yeah, I'll have been your feet. Yeah, nothing happens down there. Well, you know, in the first in the first Call Shag movie, where he actually has a girlfriend, it's heavily implied, or maybe it's even stated out right that she's a prostitute and you know, he's dating her, and it's not like they've got the most evolved relationship in the world, but it's clear they have a relationship. They

like each other, he confides in her, she helps him out. You know, there's they're on somewhat equal footing because she's kind of on the outside because she's prostitute and he's kind of, you know that down on his luck reporters, so they almost share the same like social strata. Like like, if they just could have gone a little more in that direction, this could

have been really fun. Well even had it been you know, I'm trying to remember the name of that character that was on quite a few episodes that ended up fitting murdered. I think it might have been on the Ripper episode where she had some agency and actually was going to be helping out Cole Chack and don't she gets murdered. I was like, oh, well, that would have been good had you actually had someone there to help you with this stuff, right, yeah, Jane Plump, Yeah, that one. Yeah.

They seem to really just kind of miss the mark a couple of times with these female characters. I mean, look, like we mentioned, it's nineteen seventy five. That's not surprising, but they're not availing themselves to even try. But it does make you wonder if they were, if they sort of would have naturally just found their way to Okay, we need to give him a character, a person who can talk to somebody that can sort of be on his side a little bit, you know, outside of the newsroom.

I wonder if they given a second season, would have just stumbled upon that and it would have happened, and there would have been a you know, a female co star under the age of eighty five, And I would like to believe that they kind of would have have to have. We should probably talk about the role that Vincenzo and Updike, and I don't think poor miss Emily even gets a mention in this one does show? Don't you mean uptight? Oh that joke, Scot Oh good lord, Cole Chack, your

one note joke, over and over an episode and over again. Well, Vincenzo does come in to tell Cole Shack to go cover Veronica Mason. Why does you go get interested in sex, Cole Shack? You know, I mean, didn't that pretty much his approach? Come on, call Shack even you could get aroused by this woman. You've sex lists. What if he implant you eunick? Yeah, and then yeah, like anyone who's been who's

over puberty or something, she gives hush slashes every male over puberty. And that's when Cole Shack says he skipped puberty, which I mean, you know, clearly Darren McGavin was born that way out of the womb. So so are you saying that Cole Chack was an end cell? I mean in another is it in this episode where he implies that he has bald women all over town who love him? Yeah, hey, man, I got chicks all over town pulling their hair out over me. But who cares about those ball

headed broads? Yikes, cold Jack, big yikes. Yeah, I think it back. Miss Emily is in this one when they're talking about the nineteen thirties and what a better time it was. I don't know exactly how they get into that whole thing, but yeah, it's definitely there. What was going to distinguish this episode that it had a political angle to it, but man, it's handled so clunkily. You don't really get the sense that anyone in the show like comes around on it, like Cole Shock doesn't go,

oh wait a second, I get it. The people who are getting killed are people who are assholes. Oh and they're assholes because of their attitudes towards sex roles. So maybe we need to start thinking about that. I mean, there's no there's nothing like that at all. Like in the Rock Shasa episode, at least he was sort of like, Hey, you know, this is really sad because there's a monster preying on old people, and old people are a problem that society has to deal with and no one cares about

them, and I'm the only one who cares that they're being killed. So it was like like one step closer to like integrating whatever the point of the episode was. Here he never quite gets there. I don't know this episode, it just kind of peters out as well. It goes exactly how we think that it would go, pretty much other than Myra actually getting a tape

recorder and recording herself and then that's kind of her confession. I don't think he necessarily would have put two and two together and figured everything out unless it had been for that confession. He goes in and he's like, Myra, there's a man snuck into your lab that night. It's like, no, no wrong answer, cole check, how are you so wrong? Do you know? What really confused me is that one of her bosses, who's a total dick to her, has a female name as a female last name.

And I was just like what is this. I'm so glad I wasn't the other one. I was the only one. I was like, what, kim Oh, it's a guy with the last name. I mean, just wait until the next episode when one of the characters has the name of People's. And if you put the character with the name of People's in your script, you deserve to be a fucking smacked up side then, because it is such a bizarre name choice, Like you had all these names and you went

with People's. Really, all it makes me think of is the Al Franken vote recount where they're talking about lizard People's and can lizard People's be called an actual person's name? And they go, well, people can have the last name of People's. Yeah, they sure can. There you go here, God, So I think we should talk about that episode, don't you. There would be narration, But it's actually I guess it's it's just in script form. It's missing pages. It looks like, but there is narration at

the beginning. And since you did this one, I'll do this one. That was the scene in Winship County, West Virginia labor trouble in the minds, wasn't breeding nobility on either side, tempers were worn to the breaking point. It was ugly, but what was moving into Winship County would make the strike seem like a wedding party. But wait, did you notice that Coleshack looks into the camera. Are they saying that he addresses the audience? Is

just another breaking the fourth wall moments kind of what it felt like? Yeah, well he did that at the end of which episode? Was it The Century? Yes? I think so, yeah, because that's the one or the Youth Killer. Well, it was whichever one where the script actually had him start off in a mental institution. Oh that was Nightly Murders. Nightly Murders, thank you. Yeah, that wasn't one that we watched. That

was one that we read. Oh that's right. They changed it for the for the thing because they didn't actually have him in the Looney Ben, right they Yeah, that wasn't the ending, which, again, bummer because Eve of Terror looks like, you know, Citizen Kane compared to this episode. This episode is atrocious. I don't know, I kind of enjoyed it. I liked it too, Chris, I actually like it better than Eive of Terror. Just don't tell me you liked it better. Than the Executioners,

because I like the Executioners a lot more than I like this one. It's colcheck on tour. He's down in West Virginia, and it is this whole story that's supposed to be about to strike, but then these strange people move into town, the bunch of Hillbillies pretty much, and then some murders start happening, and they think that it's all because of the strike. And I

kept being reminded of Home. I kept being reminded of that X Files episode, because there's this whole thing with the family and you don't know exactly what's going on, and one of the brothers is completely deformed. We never really get a good look at him. Then there's the mother character, who it feels like she's making him worse because she keeps doing the Lord's work. She'll pray and people will almost come back from the dead or they'll be calmed or

whatever. And when she does that, then the brother acts out wherever he's at and will break out of his cage or go on a rampage. So it feels like there's this weird connection between the two of them that the better she is, the worse he gets. It's almost got like a Twilight Zone feeling to it. It struck me as interesting that Cole Shack was sort of

involved in a supernatural story. Like it wasn't just oh, there's a monster, but there was, but there was another character who had a supernatural ability that he witnessed, which like doesn't happen in this show, Like he doesn't go to psychics. There is no greater supernatural sort of matrix on the night stock or other than whatever that particular monster is. So he's interacting with his family that's got this weird yin and yang that's always battling itself, you know,

I thought was really interesting. This reminded me a lot of the Devil's Platform. They have touched on this satanic stuff once before. I don't think it worked very well now compared to the last one. But to be fair, the last one was hilarious because Tom Scarrett turned into a dog at the end. I still wonder who ended up with that dog roaming the universe as the Tom Scarrett dog. That, in and of itself, I would watch that show. But I'll tell you what again, this episode, like last

one pretty much and trade what we've been seeing with Colchack. It doesn't do anything particularly different. I mean, to your point, Richard, it maybe maybe kind of bends the formula a little bit, but it doesn't really change the formula. It looked like in this one, the police chief, the

sheriff of the town was actually like a reasonable person and human. Colchack seemed to sort of get along or at least have an understanding at the beginning, but then it devolved into the typical you know, get out of here, get away from me, you're crazy, which is really really exhausting. Yeah, at least this time he didn't have an ulcer that kept acting up every

single time Colchack was around. Hey, how weird was that in the last one that felt just like the Keenan Wind character the Joe mad Dog's system, almost identical to a point to a fault. It wasn't even original. They

were trying it was weird. They were trying to play it off as original and just like you do know you've done this before, right, I mean, if you're going to have this traveling cast of police captains that are always blowing their top, you're going to get some real similar characters pretty soon, I guess. But then they should just use the same character exactly. And they had mad Dog at least twice, so go ahead, give him a third one. Keena Winn could use the money. You can't just your voice

over him claimation Christmas right, he's not only the Winter Wizard. Nice, Oh, very good, very good. It could be wrong. It could be the Winter Warlock. I'm not sure, but he's not old Chris Kringle. He's not the King of jingle Linge. No, that's the next podcast, you guys. That's all the Rank and Bass shows and specials. I think I'm like the only person on the planet who doesn't like those, So do you and me? Richard our new show. Sorry Chris, Richard and

Mike taking on Ranking and Bass. We could get ourselves claimated. It would bet as ranking on this guy right here. Now, it's a thing. You have wield it into existence, and this is your fault. Now, So I don't think we necessarily get a good look at the creature in this

one. And I want to say that at one point they describe him as being non symmetrical, which I think is I was super terrifying if somebody isn't symmetrical, because there's a comic book adaptation of this, We're basically the character just looks like a hot werewolf, and I'm like, what are you doing?

Why is he a hot werewolf as opposed to this monstrous, shambling, crazy beasts that I kept picturing as being like the thing behind the door in the brain that wouldn't die or something, you know, something that can really terrify you, as opposed to like, I don't know, he looked like he had tried out for Scooby Doo, and they're like, no, no, we need something scarier. Are all werewolves not hot? Well, some of them are a little bit more hulking, but this guy just look like

a dashing werewolf. And again I kept thinking that he would maybe look worse or get worse, or be bigger or something being fed by when Mama goes out and does some good, then he ends up being worse. I just think of holking werewolves. They have more arms and strength to hold you with. That's what I think about. I'd bet you say that to all the

boys. I think the game we have to play is based on what we've seen of the creatures in the first twenty We have to assume that is the level of creature we're going to see in these, which means he won't even look as good as a hot werewolf. He's going to look like a guy with some He's probably going to look like the werewolf we saw in the Werewolf episode. He's he's gonna it's gonna be a dude running and looking like a hairy ape wolf or something. Is it not weird that they have too were

Wolf episodes back to back. You're considering Eve of Terror to be that? I mean Eve of Terror is a werewolf esque creature esque. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a big, bushy creature in a pant suit. I'm just focusing on the pants, a mint green pant suit too. I'm going to try to defend the difference of the monsters conceptually, but again I just said, we have to imagine it's going to be pretty much the kind of

thing we've seen. So I don't know how they would have differentiated these two creatures, but I have to imagine the end result would have been disappointing unfortunately. I mean, I think the real thing about this one is is this one isn't seen in daylight as much as the other one is, and so they would have kept this one off screen as much as possible and then shown

it to you right at the end. And that's the big difference between this episode and Eve of Terror is that in Eve of Terror, you see the monster a lot. In this you're seeing just glimpse is the monster in a bush or hiding outside of a door, or busting through a door, and then you see it right at the end, still probably obscured by darkness in the minds. If you had five million dollars to make this episode and five million dollars to make Eve of Terror, I think this episode would be much

much better. Like I think what I don't like about Eve of Terror is on the page, and no amount of money is going to make me like it any better. But but if you if you threw a ton of money and made and went out somewhere that didn't look like Los Angeles, which is where they filmed it, and you really made it look like some weird mining town, and you went in the mines and you really had a good monster, and you could actually put some production value into it, I think this

has more potential to be an interesting episode. I would agree. I want to talk about the title real quick, because we don't necessarily understand what the title means. Well, I still don't know what the title means. But we don't know who Belisle is until right at the end of this thing, when the mother says that it was Belile's way of tempting tempting me, and then Colchak has to say Belile the devil, and then she says, yes, Sonny was a beautiful child. Then the changes began. I was healing

the sick as my God commanded. And that's pretty much it. Like they talk a little bit more about Belisle, but I still don't necessarily get the get The definition forget is an offspring or the total of the offspring, especially of a male animal. So yeah, it's like a really I wouldn't say like obscure, but it is a very antiquated term that nobody uses anymore. Well, thank you for finding that. Yeah, I mean it's on dictionary

dot com. I mean it's that's the weird thing. Like I'd never heard it either, and I looked it up and I was like, I've never even heard anyone use that until today, all right, Like why thank you for going in the most obscure direction with the word possible that's the coolest conceptual part of the whole episode that this demon sort of went to this woman who already had this power that's associated with God and said, Okay, well, I'm going to fuck with your kid, and all you have to do is

stop serving God he he he, and you can educate back. And then she makes the decision where she says in that same little chunk of dialogue, I had to believe that God is more powerful, you know, than the devil. Basically, I had to believe that God was stronger than the devil. So she's like, I'm just going to keep on doing what I'm doing and trust that God will solve this problem with Balile. So get. By the way, get comes from be Get, So that's where that comes from.

Oh, very Deuteronomy esque, Thanks Colchack. It's fun and educational and knowing is half the battle. Plus they're in Appalachia, you know, it's they're in that area where you know, it's kind of Bible, and I guess in a strange way, the Lord does help out by sending Colchack in order to pretty much murder the kid. Accidentally, Colchack God's child murderer. I know he trips over colchack and fallows down a pit that's a mile long, just like the Eve of Terror. She falls off the building after he

throws the TV antenna that's like an octopus. Somehow, for some reason, somehow, what they call this parallel thinking, she ends up transforming back into who she was, and Sonny he ends up transforming back into hisself. And so, yeah, two weeks in a row, that would have been a little much. Should we assume that they were going to be aired back to back? I guess no, But the way that we're reading them, they are labeled twenty one and twenty two. So I am very acused because I

didn't see a date like how I was saying. The other one takes place April fourteenth. I don't remember there being a date in colchack Land for this one. Coleschack Land dates never make any sense. But on the script, yeah, Get of Bealile is January third, nineteen seventy five, and then Eve of Terror is dated March third, nineteen seventy five, So they were three months apart in terms of drafts, I guess. And then from what I understand, it sounds like the Executioners, which is the last coal Chack

script that was written but not produced. Sounds like that one. Seems like it was written a lot earlier than these two and it just kind of fell out of favor or something. What we have to go off is barely a script. It is like someone filling in the blanks of a script. It's half baked, kind of like kind of like Mike's dinner right now. Three quarters baked, folks, three quarters baked. So the intro to this episode would have been I'm still having nightmares even though I know it's over, Fani

kaput. Luckily, I managed to keep my head while all around me were losing theirs if you're pardon my little touch of the poetic, losing their heads or getting hung or poisoned, one of the three. If you were in Chicago this past August, there we go August, you know what I mean. So yeah, them placing this at August definitely places at much more in the first batch of shows than all the way here. At the end of it, and Colcheck is getting hung apparently they said it was long, and

it was right. Boy, what a weird choice of words. He's getting hung. Folks are gay. But I'll tell you what this cold check in this episode. He's very very very very very much closer to the cold check from the movies than the cold check of the TV show. I would tend to agree with you on that. Yeah, I mean he's drinking. He's I mean they mentioned in this kind of synopsis we're reading from this like defunked Geocity's website, that he's like drinking alcohol and he has sex with like a

student who's much younger than he is. So yeah, it's like I felt, it was very much shades of like coal check of old, which if you've been listening to us this entire time, you will know that I missed that cold check because the tone of the show, in my mind, always kind of let the character down, because he could have been so much more hard boiled than he ended up being. Yeah, and the character Beatrice that he hangs around with the art student, she's an actual character. She actually

portends in the story, she has a voice. They seem to like each other. It's actually a weirdly appealing relationship. Yeah. I was reminded a little bit of the reporter that he was kind of flirting with but also tormenting in Demon and Lace. Its almost say girl Monique Marvel Stained Dog One Love Monique marvels r P. Monique. God, she's the best character in the show. She was fantastic. I think it was Rosalind Winters might have been

her name. She worked as a reporter at the college where all those murders were taking place. Because this one is an art student who knows a lot of stuff about art. I am very impressed with her knowledge, especially when she starts talking about very obscure Dutch painters, right, and the theory of dynamic symmetry. And I like how she's like, that sounds good, right, put that in the story. I mean, I like a female character

that actually has him put back on Coljack. That's true. Yeah, any woman who can actually hold her own in a Colchack world, that's great. And we're not just talking Gabrielle Union holding her own, because that's like formulae holding her own. Like in this you genuinely can tell that the character of Beatrice is like actually holding her own against Coljack. That's like ratting out Jay

Leno for being an asshole holding her own. Shocking, shocking. Jay Leno makes off color jokes that are offensive in other news The sky is blue and water is wet. This one, it was interesting to read this right after having read Eve of Terror, because there's that same thing where Tony is immediately trying to get Karl off of the story, and rather than saying go cover this starlet who's coming to town, he gives him the choice of writing obits

art or about the ballet. And then, just like how Colcha kind of lucked into being at the right place at the right time when it came to Myrna being at the hotel where this starlett was, this is the same thing.

He ends up going to this art place and that's where the painting is, and that's where the whole crux of this episode is, which for people listening at home, there is a painting of these executioners, and they sounds like they keep coming out of the painting and hanging, poisoning or beheading people, and that always happens in threes, and then it sounds like this has been happening for a long time. It's kind of one of those Victor Toomb

type things where there's a pattern in history. Jeepers. Creepers asked every twenty three years, Boy, that's such a it's such an easy trope to go back to. But you know what, I'm not gonna lie to you, guys. I kind of like it, Like I kind of always give it a pass as long as it's mildly entertaining. Well, if there was just like slightly more of a reason, like like in this version of this draft that ad Middly I guess is not a final draft. It's happening for no

reason. I mean, you know, God forbid, I bring up the Nightly Murders. But at least the night was killing people who are trying to turn his museum into a discotheque. Now there's a solid motivation these guys. I don't know. It's interesting though, that you bring that up, because with this episode there's the red herring of the person who had gotten the painting, even though we find out later that it actually was like a distant relative

of infinite right. It's what he says, which is interesting because it was kind of like the character and the Nightly Murders, where we're like, oh, well, he probably summoned this creature or this night because he's so protective of his museum, whereas this one, it's like, Okay, why did you hang this painting what are you doing? But there is a connection between the two. But he ends up being murdered, so it's not like he had anything to do with it. He is Vego, That's what I'm not.

And I'm not a Ghostbusters too. It's like and then the ink blob was falling off of the thing. It's like, oh my god, this is Ghostbusters two, twenty year fifteen, sixteen years before the movie even came out. Oh Lord, didn't seem like like in the Night We Murders, hand Conried was upset at all those people too, So there seemed to be an emotional like there's no it's not like the enemies of the museum curator are the ones being killed. It's just it appears to be, at least in

this draft, for random people. And by the way, a lot of random people. I mean it's like this is the third or fourth triple murder this week. That's like a dozen people, and that's a lot of dead bodies in a week. And the cops are like, oh, these aren't connected at all. They all just happen to die the same way. Like, my god, the cops, the cops in Colchak Universe in this episode are the most inept that we've seen. The courageous police officers of Chicago,

and I know some of them, and they're the most incredible people. He could solve this problem quickly. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison. It's true. There's a war on our streets and there's three painting globs that are starting at all. It's pretty it's pretty whack, let's put it that way. In the middle of the episode, there's this really weird thing I can't figure out about some old gangster, an Italian guy who has any gun. What the hell was that? Yes, no fucking clue, what the hell

it was about? Either that I literally figure it out, like it wasn't that. Oh, I get it, but I don't like it. I literally I read it four times and I'm like, I don't understand the words that are coming out of his mouth. What is that? And in this little synopsis that we have here, they just like gloss over it, They're like, oh, no, whatever, Like, good job if you're the ones relaying this information to us, because maybe you have more of this on

hand than we do. Could you fucking explain this? Because this is completely bizarre. It's a guy with a Tommy guns just shooting at cold check, like like literally out of nowhere, shooting at cold check. Oh, don't forget one of my favorite things that the script has too, which is just you know, some homophobia just thrown in there for good measure. Oh, the swissy window dresser. I imagine he would have been played to the hilt up Tike would look like Burt Reynolds. I mean, as much as I

like this, this is a working draft. This is not a final screenplay. This is I mean, Richard, you're a screenwriter, so you know, I mean, like this is pretty far from something that anyone would be like, yeah, let's shoot this like this needs this seeds a couple more takeovers with the fucking comb Like you got to colmb this down a lot, like a lot, a lot, you know. I sort of I fell down a rabbit hole and I was reading this and clicked on a few things

and came up with a tape to interview with David Chase. Have you guys seen that one where he actually talks a little bit about working on The Night Stalker very brief. Yeah, it's like just a real brief time, right,

Yeah, he doesn't go into a ton of detail. I mean, I know would have wanted, you know, ten hours, but but he does sort of say, you know, they don't all unlike the way TV shows are written now for the most part, where everyone is in a room, everyone is collaborating, everyone knows what's going on with everybody else's script.

It sounds like it was it was David Chase working with Michael Kosl a lot, just sort of the two of them writing stuff, and then other people sort of on their own doing their own thing, and then more and more of the scripts would get handed over to David Chase to sort of like, Okay, here this one is is fifty percent of the way there, get it right, shooting it next, and so then he would do he would

do the next path. So I don't know if that's maybe that is what would have been the process with this had had gone forward, probably would have been the same thing with Get a Balisle and Eve of Terror. It probably would have gotten to David Chase, go through and to make it whatever it

was finally going to be. I find it interesting that Max Hodge allegedly worked on the night Stalker movie, at least according to the Font of All Knowledge, which is the IMDb, which has to be believed because it IMDb. You are all knowing praise me, do IMDb? It is the mother Father bought. Yes, it would kind of make sense, especially if this was

more in line with that earlier Cole Check. I wouldn't be surprised if they said, hey, bring this guy back and have him write an episode out I mean the Tones track, I mean original Night Stalker does have Colchack straight up murdering a dude, which is still my favorite thing. And by the way, in in that parody comic, they go after that bit, which I was so thankful for. They go after that bit of Colchack just murdering a guy in broad daylight because Marvel, Yes, that Marvel parodied col Chack

folks so well. Not only did they parody Colchack like outright as what was his name, Cole Stack, Cole Shaft, Cole Shaft, thank you, but he also showed up in an episode of Tomb of Dracula, but not as Colchack. He was another dude who looked exactly like Colchack, and I was like, what are you doing? So that was good that they brought him into to Medracula. So that he could hunt down Dracula in that So are we being led to believe that the biggest revelation of the Colchack Tapes podcast

is that Colchack is part of the MCU. Oh wow? Am I wrong to say that he could be out there? Kevin Figy call Us. I always find it interesting how the comics would try to I mean, I know that EC and Mad. You know that they eventually the EC turns into DC. But it was always strange to me that Marvel was always trying to eat their lunch a little bit, and they would have things like this OG comic

or Crazy Magazine where they were again trying to do the mad stuff. And that's where, if memory serves, I can't remember exactly the story, but I remember reading Crazy and they're always being a Howard the Duck story in there, and I never understood, like, is this supposed to be funny or is this serious? I never could put my finger on what Howard the Duck was until the movie came out, which just solved everything for me and gave

me the full origin story. Thank goodness for that. Oh my god, Howard the Duck is one thing, and one thing only duck erotica, inter species erotica, my man duck titties, and Leiah Thompson wanting to have sex with a duck. But I don't know if that's not what you're into, I don't want to be a friend. And all seriousness, back to what you're saying about Marvel, it is weird that they're like, really just being kind of aggressively parody concerned, right, because DC doesn't do that. When

did all that? When was the Marvel stuff? When when did back stuff happen? Well, the Tomb of Dracula one was nineteen seventy six, and I can't remember when the Argue comic was you have that one up in front of you, Chris, July fourth, seventy five. That was gonna be

my guess. So yeah, it was at seventy five. So it's the year that Colcheck is off the air, right right, Yeah, So it would have just been right after they went off the air, because that would have been what March twenty second, I think might have been the last episode. Yeah, So there you go. I mean, you've got a cold Check comic parroting it, and it's like, oh boy, you're parenting a show that's been canceled. Maybe they were acknowledging that the character, like it

was sort of a tribute to that character. Clearly, even at that stage, they were like, this is a character that if we parody it, people will know what we're doing. And oh, I mean we appreciate it.

I guess they have Vincenzo in there and everything, and Vincenzo is his character's name is Vinagretto, right, pretty great, And then it turns out at the end of Vincenzo is a monster the whole time, which, honestly, if you think about it, and the fact that colcheck stuff never gets printed and sometimes he has proof, that's kind of the only explanation that makes

sense. I'm so surprised that they didn't get well, I guess it's under parody law because they drew Darren McGavin to look really like Darren mcgavan there, Oh, yes, no fooling that. The first time we see a close up of him, he looks exactly like him as the night Gawker. All the things that we read for this episode. That was my favorite because it was poking fun at it, but also like very much doing deep cut stuff from the show. It's not just like, oh, let's make fun of

Batman. You know, everybody knows Batman's parents died, so that's an easy thing to make fun of. It's like, no, but did you know X Y Z other things about Batman that are like deep cut information to parody, fitting in with our entire discussion this evening. You know, he goes out and he's defeating or unmasking all of these different creatures, and he even shoots a werewolf and then there's the human body on the ground and people are

like, hey, the night Gawker killed this guy. It's like straight to the point, right, It's completely understands. It unders stands the premise of the show to a t. And I loved it. I that was great. I mean, it's like eleven pages on a PDF. It's funny. You should if you can find it, search it out. It's worth your five minutes if you're a fan of the show, and if you've never seen

it, it's actually really funny. I mean, you know, I know that there's a lot of comics out now that from these indie publishers that are like actual coal chack stories, but this is a cold check story that it's fun and it honestly still kind of feels like a Colchack story, like a best like the greatest hits the Colchack. Yeah, did you get a chance to read any of those books? I didn't because I just didn't get a

chance to. That's fine, things happen, life gets away. I listened to one and a half so far, and the one that I listened to fully I enjoyed, though it felt like it ended before it really began. It was this whole thing of there these seventy two guys who watch over this cave and they are constantly chanting, and there's like a bunch of people on the side, so like if one passes out, then he can be replaced and they have to just keep chanting all the time. And so okay,

it's the whole thing, is what's in the cave. And then eventually coal check. It's kind of swindled by these people in La his fellow reporters, who they pat him on the back because he managed to accidentally, basically accidentally

unmask a serial killer. So they're like, hey, you know, come on with us, and then he finds out that basically they need him as a cover story because it's this really crazy thing that they're about to do, which is to go through the jungles of Peru and try to find this guy, try to find these guys. He's seventy two guys, and there's a drug lord who happens upon them and take some prisoner basically and take and marches

them through the jungle. I kept thinking of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, especially when all these ants show up, but they're just there to show Cole Chack the way to the cave. They get to the cave, some bad things happened that we don't see, and Colchacks he's almost again like Indiana Jones. He doesn't open his eyes, he's not privy to

whatever they're seeing. And then all of the people that he was with, all of the drug lord's people there just happens to be seventy two of them. After they mastercred the original seventy two and they all sit down and they start chanting. It's just like, okay. So the end, it was a really quick read or a really quick listen. It was like three hours long. It was okay, but it really kind of felt like maybe we

should have seen what was in the cave. It sounds like this is what happens when you're not tied to a budget right in the le right, Oh, Like, do you know what made Cole Chack good? Because colcheck going to the fucking jungle is something I ever even wanted. Well, that's where all of these ancillary things seemed to be. Are individuals kind of going, well, you know, here's what would have happened or should have happened. And I guess they're leaning toward whatever it is they like, if they like

Indiana Jones, maybe they feel like Koleshack is like that. But but every time I think about the show, and when I first saw it when I was eight years old, the thing that really blew me away that I couldn't get over was the fact that all this stuff was happening in a big city, and somehow that was everything for me. It was just it looks like a typical cop show, except it's acknowledging that there's monsters and ghosts and supernatural

stuff. And I lived in Los Angeles, so when I was driving around, you know, my parents were driving the car and I was looking at big buildings, I was like, Oh, I wonder what I wonder if there's a monster out there, you know. It brought all that supernatural stuff, you know, wait home and in a way that felt like the freshest, most avant garde thing that could possibly be done with a ghost story.

And that's what appealed to me. So if you know, God forbid anyone ever would gone to my head and I had to write another call shack story. That is the first thing it would involve. It would be in a city and it would be what is happening just out of sight, just you know, underneath the buildings, just in the shadows, the alleys, what's happening that you're not seeing. I will give the reboot of the show credit for sticking to that formula, and I agree with you one, Richard.

And I don't know for you, Mike, what drew you to Coal Check, because initially the entire onus of this podcast was you asking for a co host and me going I watched a show since my dad bought it for me on DVD when I was like fourteen, and that's what drew him to it when he was about your age, Richard, because my dad is probably close to your age as well, and that was what drew him to it, and that's what drew me to it as a fan of The X Files.

I didn't even know the connection until after I watched the show. It is that out of the corner of your eye in a city, because I grew up in Dallas, it's the same thing. It's like, you know that God knows what's going on underneath, but the veneer on top is you know,

a normal city. And like that's what drew me to Colcheck. And that's why I'm saying, like the whole thing about I don't need to see cold Check in the fucking jungle and any many more than I need to see Colcheck in space, like fu fuck off, Like I don't need to see it. Like that's putting the character so far in one direction that it almost

loses any of the charm of what made the show so great. And that's why I will still contend the show should have been set in Vegas the entire time, because Vegas was the perfect setting for coal Check because of the twenty four hour nature of this city exactly, and that whole sin city and just people looking the other way. I mean, yeah here, Yeah, we've got monsters in Chicago, but we've got a mob presence in Las Vegas just

as much, if not more so. That would have been great. There could have been stories with the underground, you know, just yeah, there could have been so many things. And then you can easily move him to La story, a desert story, just so many different places he could have gone had he needed to go there. Yeah. My biggest issue with the show was moving into Chicago, because Chicago, as interesting of a setting as

it is, it's not unique. And I think what Barney is Barney Miller said in Chicago is it's in New York, New York, Okay, so you know it's gonna it's There's no monsters in Barney Miller, but there is a Vogoda, so you know. And you will definitely see what New York of the nineteen seventies was like, as represented through humor in this one.

And I will tell you one other thing about Cole Check, because if I had my way, if someone put a gun to my head, Richard, my Colcheck story would be It's kind of already got written in the X Files, where you had an older Coalchack running into Molder and Scully. That would have been my story I wrote because being able to have those characters play off of each other would have been amazing, and it feels like that felt like a natural thing. And obviously Chris Carter and them did that in X File,

so you kind of get it a little bit. I mean, Aguamala is a really bad episode unfortunately, but for me, that would have been my story to tell with Cold Check because it's blending the things that I love that brought me to Colcheck. What about you, Mike, what would your Colchack story be? Colchack fights monsters the end, likes a purist because some really good monsters. Yeah, invisible monsters. Yeah, no, invisible monsters,

thank you very much. The Mark of Kine. I mean, there have been so many things that we've talked about that are like coal Check. I don't know if anything really measures up to it. But again, going back to your earlier point, it's the coal Check of those first two movies that I really like the most because he seems desperate. He seems like he's

a man living on the edges much more luck Yeah. I mean, he's a hard drinker, it seems like he's a womanizer, and he seems so tame on the TV show YEP, I agree and that the TV show's tone was always The issue that I've had is that it was too jokey. It wasn't serious, and how can it be when he's fighting an invisible monster. And at first I thought that that came from the relationship that he had with

the other people in the newsroom. But the more that we've talked over this whole series of podcasts, the more I've fallen in love with Updike and Miss Emily and of course Vincenzo, and the more I actually wanted them to be on adventures with Carl, at least a little bit more presence than what he ended up having with them. And I don't know how much this played into

the development of the stories. But the show was on at eight o'clock and I was eight years old when I was watching it, and I was watching it with my brother and my cousins, and they were all, you know, none of them were more than twelve. And now that I'm an adult, people my age discovered the show at that age, I think they became aware that kids were watching the show and kids were really into it, and I think maybe that sort of fed into all right, maybe let's not have

him drinking in bars and sleeping with hookers. Let's have him be you know, let's have it be a family. You know, he doesn't get along with his brother, you know, Rod Updike. Dad Vincenzo is always yelling at those two, and Grandma Emily is you know, hanging around, and it just it became much more kind of family friendly, tgif friendly, so that you know, the people who are wanting it could keep watching it. It's like one of my favorite movies, Fletch, which if you've read the

books by Jeffrey McDonald, they are like Jeffrey Rice's Cold Check. I mean, he is a maturer character, and in the movie he's not a maturer character. I mean, he's still smart alecky, but it's more comedic for no one's a teenagers but kind of. And it's that same thing I mean in the in the initial Fletch book, he fucks up like a teenager and like sheet eyes, and that's you're never going to put that in the movie

because they want him to be a sympathetic character. But my point being is, like you said, with Cold Check, at least we got to see in one version of Cold Check in the medium of film or TV. At least we got to see that version of cold Check that's closer to what Jeffrey Rice intended, because that's always has been for me. The biggest disappointment with my other favorite investigative journalist, Fletch is that you never see that in his

version. It's always kind of the jokey guy, which it works. But cold Check I do like that we do get to see even just that little two episode you know movies feature linked movies of him. But again, yeah, like reading that executioner script really made me yearn for more of that, which again the show just didn't provide. Well, it's been a lot of fun talking about Cold Check for the last three years, even talking about three years next month. Yeah, even talking about the reboot was kind of fun.

There were some good times. We did a justice. I want to thank John Walker for doing our theme music. Always appreciated. I'm hoping that I can maybe talk to John into scoring our next podcast if we do that, or maybe the ranking on Bass podcast. Wow, this shit's gonna happen? Are we just gonna? I think we should add just the three of us yet another podcast to the ever growing stable of podcasts. Well, I'm not doing this dreams for sale thing anymore, so might as well. Wow,

boy, that's just dissolved real quick, happening anymore. Thank you so much, guys for being a part of this, and thank you Richard for actually listening to us and wanting to come on board and be our co host on many of these episodes. You guys, it was the greatest discovery. And I'm so glad I've found you. I realized now I found you about a year and a half into your journey, but I'm glad I could help

drag you a class the finish line. And here's the thing, folks, do not hesitate to reach out to your favorite podcasters, because look what happens. Look what happens. It's a success story. In reality people really win. Make friends. You make friends, and you get to be on podcasts and talk about some stuff. We've got to get to work on ranking on bass. And I want to thank you so much Chris for coming on this, ja for being brave enough to volunteer to be part of this. Again.

I've said this before and I'll say this again, and I am a emotional guy at my core. Whether or not Richard believes me, this is the first podcast I have ever done that has wrapped. This is it. This is the final episode of this show. I mean we're going on and doing Barney Miller, but the Coal Chack Tapes, for all intents and purposes, is done here. And so I'm so thankful Mike that you, you know, you said yes to me being your co host. I am thankful

for the opportunity and it has been a lot of fun. And if you haven't liked my opinion, that's okay because it's just my opinion, it's not yours. That's perfect way to Joppa the car. H m hm