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Hey, folks, welcome to a
special crossover episode of The Projection Booth and

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the Cold Check Tapes. Yes,
adding one more log to the fire of

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Carl Colchack, we are talking about
cole Check. The Night Stalker, a

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brand new book by Professor Kendall R. Phillips. It is available now as

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part of Wayne State University's TV Milestone
series. Check out the series. They've

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been doing a lot of great work. I have to recommend a lot of

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the books that they've done, especially
the Twin Peaks one, But this book

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about Cole Check fantastic, as Professor
Phillips says, it's a really good start

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point for why people like Cole Chack. So, if you haven't experienced Colchack,

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if you're listening to the Coal Chack
Tapes, I know you have.

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If you're listening to The Projection Booth, maybe I haven't, but you know

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it was enough that Chris and I
put together a whole long series talking all

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about the nights Stalker. So enjoy
that, and enjoy this book, and

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enjoy this interview. Can you tell
me a little bit about you how you

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got into academia. I'm not even
sure I remember anymore. I've been a

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professor for an awful long time.
I am a professor of Communication and rhetorical

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Studies at Syracuse University. I've been
on the faculty here for twenty three years.

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Previously taught at the University of Central
Missouri for a few years, so

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it's it's been a little while.
I am first generation college so this is

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kind of a new thing for my
family. I grew up in Texas studying

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communication and culture, but just a
fascinating way of trying to understand how people

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sort of make sense of the world. And it's been an interesting ride.

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And somehow it took me down lots
of dark alleyways to meet lots of monsters.

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So well, yeah, I see
the picture of Frankenstein behind you,

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I mean, big monster guy.
It looks like yeah. So you know.

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I've been studying horror for probably all
those twenty three years and a bit

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more, mainly in horror films,
but increasingly, as with the Cold Check

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project, interested in horror narratives and
other media. So looking at television,

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actually currently looking at a project about
horror on the radio. So it is

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interesting to look at the pervasiveness of
these stories we tell to scare ourselves now

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was the Cold Check Book? Was
that your first published book? No,

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actually, it's it's my eleventh.
If I write a good one, I'll

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stop about five or six of those. I probably should know the number are

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related to horror. So a few
years back I wrote a book called Projected

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Fears, Horror, Films and American
Culture that looked at the broad history of

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horror from nineteen thirty one until at
the time the present, which was around

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two thousand. I've written a book
called A Place of Darkness that looks at

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a horror and very early cinema,
so eighteen ninety six to nineteen thirty one,

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so the kind of the front end
of that, And just recently had

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a book called A Cinema of Hopelessness
that looks at horror and other genres in

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the current era, sort of the
twenty first century, and asking why we're

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so angry and depressed? So do
you know why we're so angry and depressed?

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No, but I wrote a book
about it, So you know,

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I guess, I guess maybe there
was an answer in that. But yeah,

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I mean the nutshell of the book
is, you know that we are

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at a point in I think Western
culture, at least certainly American cold where

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there's a kind of fantasy that the
system is not working, you know,

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and that it has failed us.
And we've seen that in you know,

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on the right, we certainly saw
that with the January sixth riots and kind

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of insurrection the Tea Party. I
would say a lot of the Trump presidency

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was around you know, the system
doesn't work, it's a swamp. It

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has to be drained, it has
to be torn apart. But the same

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from the left right, you certainly
so Occupy Wall Street, and so there's

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this kind of circulation of narratives of
why can't we just burn the whole thing

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down, let's quit, right,
And so for me in horror Cabin in

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the Woods was a great example of
that. Who people have seen that film.

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No, it's all about this evil
system, and in the end the

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people say, you know what,
screw it. If this is the way

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the world works, let it burn. Same with The Purge, which I

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think is a fascinating series of films
all about this kind of system that is

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so evil and we just want out
of it. We can't seem to get

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out. So that's my nutshell answer
to that question. So I'm already fascinated

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by the radio project that you're starting
to work out, because radio was such

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a great place for horror stories and
just I remember having the bit Jesus scared

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out of me listening to Horror Radio
one. I think it was AM five

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sixty when I was a kid,
and it's just like wow, having its

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roots there going into television, I
mean television. You point out a lot

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of great things in the Cold Check
book, the whole idea of Twilight Zone

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and Outer Limits and just taking horror
home and making it more of a domestic

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thing than an outer space thing.
Certainly about the radio side of it.

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What I'm really fascinated by right now, were you know, horror inters radio

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really through film, Like in around
nineteen thirty one, after the popularity of

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Draculin Frankenstein, you start getting the
advent of these anthology series The Witch,

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the Witches, Cauldron, you know
that blanking on other names because I was

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thinking about Cold Check today, but
you get a lot of these sort of

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anthology horror that are all like separate, little individual stories, a little like

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Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. In
fact, that that format would be the

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way that that horror would enter television
because several of those shows, there were

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very popular radio shows in the nineteen
thirties would reformat and become television like you

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know, the you know, the
General Motors theater sort of thing, right,

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So they would have these little um, you know, vignette again,

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like the twilight zone or outer limits. What I'm interested in radio is that

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in the late sort of mid thirties, around thirty six thirty seven, there's

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a kind of backlash against horror films. The Production Code was really trying to

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eliminate horror. They were telling all
the major studios like quit it, shift

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to science fiction, shift to something
else, get away from ghosts and demons

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and curses and things like that.
And the same was happening with the radio.

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So some of the very first really
serious efforts to censor radio in the

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mid thirties and actually set up the
FCC as a full on censorship board,

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not just a licensing board, were
driven by people who were worried about horror.

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There's a senator from IOWAA, Clyde
Harry, who was one of the

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champions of this, who wrote an
entire op ed about Boris Karloff reading an

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Edgar Allan Poe poem on a very
popular kind of variety radio show and saying

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that this was inappropriate. It was
terrifying children, it was bringing evil things

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into the homes, and of course
the same was true with television. You

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know, I know so much about
more of the comic book industry and how

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that was censored. I never thought
about the radio industry. Yeah, it's

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it's a fascinating moment. And actually, so this is completely off topic,

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but hey, we're chatting. One
of the interesting thing about the history of

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radio censorship was the big moment when
it probably would have happened if it was

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going to happen in terms of a
really full throated federal censorship system. The

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FCC does have regulations, but it's
not a full blown censorship structure. Was

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after War of the World. So, you know, as everybody knows Orson

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Wells produces the HG. Wells,
it's framed as here's Mercury theater players kind

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of giving you this thing. But
if you just tuned in late, which

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a lot of people did, it
sounds like a real radio program and they're

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giving you real news reports in between
a jazz show, and they're aliens and

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Hackensack or whoever. It was in
New Jersey. People freaked out, and

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there's a big kind of public moment, and so a lot of the folks

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who were worried about horror, and
they were also worried about sexuality in Maywest

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and humor, but they were worried
about horror. So here you have war

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the worlds is kind of like,
okay, that's the example. They wanted

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to use that to justify censorship,
but folks on the other side said,

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wait a minute. What War of
the World's proves is how powerful radio is,

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and that radio, in the wrong
hands, radio could be used to

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incite riots, or incite panic,
or get people to run for their homes

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and shoot at water towers, which
is exactly what it did. Oh again,

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we would see later in the thirties
Nazi Germany using radio for exactly the

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purposes. So a lot of people
said, that's exactly why the government should

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not have control of the airways,
because the government should not have control of

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this really powerful weapon. So it's
fascinating moment of this anxiety, idea and

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concern, and that would bleed out, you know, and you'd see the

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echo of that into the nineteen fifties, with the concern about young people and

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the broad Senate hearings about juvenile delinquency, which is where the comic book issue

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comes up. A psychiatrist named Frederick
Wortham starts testifying. He writes a book

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called The Seduction of Innocence where he
says, you know, comic books are

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destroying morals and creating homosexuality and teaching
people to be criminals and all kinds of

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quote horrible things. And that's what
led to the Comics Code, the elimination

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of horror comics. You know,
huge, huge impact. But it happened

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even then. It happened at the
industrial level because it was the comic book

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creators agreeing to this kind of internal
fear. But all of that, as

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you go, as you say,
it goes back to this overarching concern of

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that kind of scary media, right, those feelings of fear and that kind

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of superstition or those dangerous things getting
into the home. Right. It was

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in the theater that was that was
a problem. But if it got into

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the home through ray, ideo,
through pulp novels, through comic books lated

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through television, now that was too
much. That's where people wanted to draw

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the line and say you can't send
that stuff into our homes because it can

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get to us, and more importantly, it can get to our children.

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So where were we in the early
nineteen seventies to allow something like The Nightstalker

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to happen. I think it's a
fascinating period, and it really is this

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ongoing it's a funny, the ongoing
kind of sibling tension between motion pictures and

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television. Right. So, you
know, when television first comes out,

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motion pictures are scared because people say, hey, wait a minute, I

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don't have to pay, you know, thirty five cents to go out.

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I can sit at home and watch
it for free. Why would it go

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out? So that starts to push
Hollywood to get rid of the production code

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and bring in a lot of technological
innovations like three D and surround sound and

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stereoscope and all that sort of technological
but really to start pushing the boundaries and

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say we can show you things that
the government's not gonna let put on television.

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The flip side by the time you
get to the seventies is a particularly

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in relation to horror. That period
from about nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty

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two is what some of us call
the second Golden Age of horror. For

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me, it really starts with George
Merrow's Night Living Dead as the kind of

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indie, ugly dirty film at the
exploitation cinema, and then Rosemary's Baby the

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respectable film. But both of those
were really pushing the boundaries of what people

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had thought of as horror, like
they were really kind of going beyond what

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expectations were. But you'd also had
the production code was gone by sixty eight,

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the rating system was a lot looser. And so you look at that

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period from sixty eight until you know, the mid late seventies, let's say

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nineteen eighty two, you get all
of your iconic films, right, not

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only the franchises like Halloween and The
Thirteenth but the kind of gritty like Last

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House on the Left and I Spit
on Your Grave and Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

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etc. Right, these films that
are really like pushing the edges of what

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you know can be considered acceptable in
society. So there you get Network television

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had been abbling in horror, right. You certainly had a lot of comedy

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horror, so like Bewitched and The
Munsters and the Adams Family, and he

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had little anthology, you know,
kind of morality tales from Rod Serling.

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A daytime television of course, had
Dark Shadows, which was a really progressive,

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innovative show. But none of those
were really like the horror films that

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in nineteen seventies. None of them
were like bringing the horror Home. The

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horror film I remember being. The
first thing that really hit me was Halloween.

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So I saw that in nineteen seventy
eight, and what terrified me was

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not just the maniac with the mask
and the knife. Okay, that was

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scary. What terrified me was it
was set in the suburbs, right.

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It was a neighborhood, not that
you know, my neighborhood was not that

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affluent, but you know, it's
still. When you know, Laurie is

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running from J Michael and she's banging
on the neighbor's doors and they look out

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and they closed the shutters and turn
off the lights, I thought, oh

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my god, that would be me. And that felt like the horror was

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here. It wasn't in Transylvania,
it wasn't outer space, it wasn't in

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the eighteenth century. It was in
the US suburb where I lived. It

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was following my school bus and that
was like, ah, right, So

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what I think cold Check did.
One of the reasons I think that that

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original nineteen seventy two television movie and
then the second movie in the series really

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cemented itself into pop culture was cold
Check was able and that was why Dan

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Curtis, who had done Dark Shadows, was able to take scary monsters that

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would have been in sort of black
and white B movies over there and bring

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them here. And that was terrifying. And again, as some folks probably

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know, many of your listeners will
know that first January nineteen seventy two screening

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or airing of the night Stalker movie
was the most watched television movie in history

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for many years, even after that
eventually got Eclipse, but it was a

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any event. People were calling people
and saying, oh my god, are

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you watching the show? It's so
And I think one of the things that

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really made it, back to your
point, was horror wasn't out there or

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over there or back then. Horror
was in an alleyway in Las Vegas with

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an autopsy with police, like in
the world we live in, and that

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that was quite terrified. I'm glad
too that you brought up the whole idea

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of the importance of the investigative reporter
as well, and especially in the early

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seventies. I'm trying to remember this
was before Nixon put in this right signation,

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but this has got to be right
around the time of Watergate. So

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having this hero reporter so timely.
Yeah, well, it's what's interesting is

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and I won't remember the exact timing, So forgive me for folks, who

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you know, when you write a
book, you write it, you finish

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it, you sent it off.
It goes into mysterious things and that eventually

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comes back, and sometimes my brain
loses some details. But one of the

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really iconic for me Cold Check the
series episodes is the Devil's Platform, which

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people might remember is the senatorial candidate
who's made a deal with the devil and

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turns into a dog. Somehow it
made sense, but anyway, trust me,

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folks, is what happens. That
came actually only a few weeks,

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maybe five or six weeks after the
Watergate resignation, so this was right there.

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But even the initial choice, and
I think you're exactly right the choice

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too. I think two really thing
innovative things about Cold Check the choice to

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make it about the monster hunter right
to focus on the investigator. So we're

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not following the monster as we did
comedically in Bowicht or the Monsters the Adams

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family. We're not following the victims. We're not located in a particular place

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like in Dark Shadows. We're following
this investigator. It's kind of and the

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great thing about it. The second
thing is what cold check in many ways

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is a police procedure. Right if
you just take out the reporter part,

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if he's not an ions and he's
not hunting for monsters. This is every

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you know Rockford, Mannex, Big
Millin and Wife, pick any of your

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nineteen seventies police proceduals. It's that
same sort of step by step procedural outline.

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But people should also remember that in
the early nineteen seventies, maybe a

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little bit like for some folks these
days, police was not an automatically good

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term. We had had the civil
rights demonstrations, the violence, particularly in

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the South, Bull Connor unleashing dogs
on peaceful protesters in Selma. We had

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had the police response, the very
violent Chicago police response to the Democratic National

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Convention protests in nineteen sixty eight.
So the uniform was not automatically, Oh,

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they're here to save us, right, there was something a little bit

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frightening. So Cold Check is like
a number of series in the nineteen seventies

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of sort of finding a different kind
of hero, and the journalist, as

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you rightly point out, was a
perfect example. We had not yet had

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Watergate by the time you get the
first Cold Check movie, but we had

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had the Pentagon Papers, and we
also had a long history of both in

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reality and in popular culture, of
groundbreaking investigative journalists. So the journalist is

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a kind of natural for stories in
either television or film. And so by

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take the traditional gothic monster, putting
it into the current age, focusing on

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an investigator and making him a reporter, it was just the perfect formula for

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that early nineteen seventies audience. Yeah, and that antagonism between he and the

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police always played such a great role
as well. Absolutely, and had to

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feel, you know, a getting
contemporary to people who were watching questionable practices

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by the police and then seeing that
kind of antagonism aimed at our hero Cold

243
00:17:29.880 --> 00:17:33.240
Check. So again, you know
that that early nineteen seventies anti establishment was

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you know, kind of part of
the zeitgeist, right, the hippie movement,

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the civil rights movement, the early
stages of the lgbt HU movement,

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but all pushing back. In all
of those movements, Women's liberation, etc.

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The police and the authorities were the
enemy, and so here he had

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Cold Check. Certainly not a hippie, right. No one looked at Colcheck

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and said peace out man. Right. He was clearly a very establishment figure,

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but he could connect with that younger
viewer in nineteen seventy because he was

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anti establishment. Colcheck was always rubbing
the police, the politicians, the wealthy,

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the business owners, anybody authority.
The minute Colchack to walk in,

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you can see their face drop because
no one wanted to see Carl walk into

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the diamondoction or the hotel administrator's office, or you know, any of those

255
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sort of places. Though, So, how did you come to write this

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book about Colcheck? Now? I
was not I'm not quite old enough to

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have watched the series when it first
came out. I was a little too

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young. I don't recall it,
but I did find it when I was

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about an eight or nine, which
I think a lot of folks found it

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on the CBS reruns. And I
think actually this was probably the thing,

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if there's anything that helped to imprint
Colcheck on not only the culture, but

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a whole generation of horror fans and
horror creators, people like Chris Carter and

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others who saw colcheck a real model
of telling horror stories. I think probably

264
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the pure happenstance moment was CBS purchasing
the rights to rerun the night Stalker TV

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series in seventy eight, seventy nine, eighty eighty one in their CBS late

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night programming and so that's where I
discovered it. And so it had always

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been in my head as an iconic
horror narrative, but I think for me,

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I had always kept it as like, well, that was television,

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and so I think for my own
kind of academic development, you know,

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spending most of my time looking in
the history of film, it took a

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moment. And part of it was
talking with folks at Wayne State who said,

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hey, what are you doing,
etc. Part of it, honestly

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was also COVID because a lot of
my work involves going to film archives and

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it's hard to go to an archive
when you can't get on a plane or

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leave your house. And so it
was kind of in that moment of saying,

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wait a minute, that series wasn't
just something I watched as a kid.

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It was a major moment in American
culture at exactly this moment, right

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exactly that time in the early nineteen
seventies when horror is exploding, and you

279
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know, it's certainly in the movies
you get massive success of like The Exorcist

280
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and Rosemary's Baby and Alien, but
just in culture generally, like people,

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it's all I was running across that. I think it's the year that The

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Night Stocker came out. Alice Cooper
had two hits to two albums in the

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kind of top forty, right.
I mean, so you had shock rock

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and horror rock and all this sort
of thing is happening, and incomes Cold

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Check, and I started saying,
how did that fit into that broader moment

286
00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:34.480
in culture? And so the book
kind of came from that. What were

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some of the challenges of writing this
other than COVID? COVID was a big

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challenge. I think the other big
challenge for me was figuring out kind of

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how to position myself. But I
do want to be very clear. Mark

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Dwidziak is both a the undisputed King
of knowledge of coal check and probably everything

291
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else about television. So I want
to be clear to anybody listening saying,

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are you trying to get in Mark
duds? No, No, Mark is

293
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the King. I bow to it. In fact, he was actually very

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gracious when I was working on this
book. I sent him some questions,

295
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really assault to the earth, most
absolutely lovely person. Even now as I'm

296
00:21:10.240 --> 00:21:12.519
promoting it, he's often the first
person to like things on social media or

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00:21:12.519 --> 00:21:18.000
say congratulations. So absolutely a prince. So I knew I couldn't do Marx

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book because a Mark had written it. It was definitive. He had done

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the interviews, he'd done the archive, he did all the stuff that I

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think I did not need to do. So for me, the question was

301
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what's my angle? And that was
where working with the folks at Wayne State

302
00:21:30.839 --> 00:21:34.559
was really a Wayne State University Press
who's the publisher, was very helpful.

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They had this series that people should
check out beyond just my book called TV

304
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:45.680
Milestones. They're very short and cheap. Yeah, we like cheap monographs about

305
00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:51.799
television show series that people are kind
of arguing what this matter? Like,

306
00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:53.559
this is a milestone, so you
know all your classics, like I Love

307
00:21:53.640 --> 00:21:59.680
Lucy, The Honeymooners, more contemporary
things like twin Peaks, The X Files,

308
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Twilight Zone, like all those kind
of films. You'd say, if

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you had the pantheon of iconic TV
series, these would be the series.

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And it occurred to me that was
so I felt like my job was to

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go in and say, hey,
television world, television fan world, even

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if you might not have heard of
this series, because again it doesn't have

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quite the immediate name recognition as say
I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners or Mashed.

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I'd say, even if you haven't
heard of this series, it changed

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the course of television history. And
that was so I felt my job.

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So I guess part of the challenge
was finding out what I'm trying to do.

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But once that made sense that I
could take what Mark had done and

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a lot of other great scholars and
historians in sort of getting the history of

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cold Check. I could borrow from
them, citing them, of course,

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00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:52.839
you know, a barrow from them. I could climb up on their shoulders

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and have a little megaphone to say, hey, people, if you haven't

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heard of cold Check, let me
tell you why he met. It's such

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00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:03.880
a strange show, this whole idea
of the two TV movies. And then

324
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the show comes out and the show
doesn't succeed. It doesn't run the full

325
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twenty two episodes. It gets canceled
after what twenty or nineteen, I can't

326
00:23:11.079 --> 00:23:15.799
remember. It makes twenty and then
there are a couple in the scripts that

327
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never get made. And it was
a race the other party is and I

328
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:22.720
see a lot of discussion on you
know, the various Cold Check social media

329
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groups, and there are a lot
of reasons it got pulled. Darren McGavin

330
00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:29.640
was very unhappy. There were production
problems, it had gone through some producers.

331
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There were changes at ABC, big
big changes at the top, so

332
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clearly things were up, you know. And also ABC was running deeply third

333
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getting killed by NBC and CBS.
But it's also worth remembering Cold Check.

334
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The series never had good ratings never. In fact, I think it tied

335
00:23:47.720 --> 00:23:52.599
for sixty fifth for its season with
The Sunny Bono Show. And this was

336
00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:56.839
not Sonny and Share. This is
post divorced Sonny by himself show which did

337
00:23:56.839 --> 00:24:00.880
not last very long, so it
did not attract an audience. And I

338
00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:03.400
think there are you know, I
think there are some good reasons it didn't

339
00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:07.440
attract an audience. And indeed,
one of the things I try to argue

340
00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:11.039
for or kind of make the point
of in the book. I think what

341
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:15.240
cold Check did right influenced TV history, But I think also what Cold Check

342
00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:21.640
the series did wrong really influenced the
history, so that people like Chris Carter,

343
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who really did use the X Files
to say or used Colcheck to launch

344
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the X Files twin peaks, was
the cold Check was used to say,

345
00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:32.160
Oh, this is like cold Check. Certainly, Eric Kripkey Supernatural. Kripkey

346
00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:36.480
basically admits I wanted to do Cold
Check, and when I realized the idea

347
00:24:36.519 --> 00:24:38.119
I had was so close to cold
Check that it would give me in trouble,

348
00:24:38.319 --> 00:24:42.720
I changed them from being you know, reporters to brothers, and thus

349
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launched one of the longest running,
you know, horror television shows in history.

350
00:24:47.119 --> 00:24:49.200
So I think learning. I think
a lot of those creators saw in

351
00:24:49.319 --> 00:24:53.119
Cold Check what worked, but also
learned from its mistakes. Yeah, there's

352
00:24:53.160 --> 00:24:59.359
no miss Emily character on Supernatural,
No no, But what Supernatural gets right?

353
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And I think, you know,
to me, the biggest failing of

354
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the show. And again I say
this lightly as as a fan. This

355
00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:10.599
time, I can honestly say I'm
genuinely Sometimes I write about films I'm not

356
00:25:10.599 --> 00:25:14.799
a big fan of just because they're
interesting. But Cold Check is. I

357
00:25:14.799 --> 00:25:18.279
would break curfew when I was nine
and sneak to the living room and put

358
00:25:18.279 --> 00:25:21.519
the TV on really low and lay
in my little sleeping bag right by the

359
00:25:21.799 --> 00:25:22.759
you know, back of the days
when you didn't have you know, all

360
00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:26.200
the stuff we have now, and
turn the channel really quietly so no one

361
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will wake up and watch Cold Check
and be terrified. So I love this

362
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series, but the biggest failing is
that it never became a proper series in

363
00:25:37.079 --> 00:25:41.799
the sense that there's no memory,
right, there's no continuity. Karl keeps

364
00:25:41.799 --> 00:25:45.599
fighting monsters, he gets, he
handles them, and then you know,

365
00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:49.680
at the end of every episode the
photos were blurry, or the camera was

366
00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:53.160
confiscated, or all the evidence disappeared, or it was always suppressed, but

367
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there was never the build up.
So you know, you look at the

368
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X Files, which is kind of
the next generation of Check. They learned

369
00:26:00.599 --> 00:26:03.720
from that mistake. They did have
one off episodes, but they had a

370
00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:10.440
bigger narrative. There were consequences to
actions. We did have this broader conspiracy

371
00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:12.480
of why things keep getting suppressed,
but that became part of the story.

372
00:26:12.680 --> 00:26:17.079
And so you could go and watch
a single X Files episode, but you

373
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:19.039
would also see something that would make
you want to come back the next week

374
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and the next week. And Cold
Check just never developed that never developed that

375
00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:29.160
through line of oh my goodness,
what's going to happen next? Which is

376
00:26:29.160 --> 00:26:33.559
ironic because the reboot of Cold Check
trying to do that a little but just

377
00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:38.640
didn't do it maybe enough. There
was that whole the mark and this and

378
00:26:38.680 --> 00:26:44.279
then the other. And I remember
right towards the end because again another canceled

379
00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:48.839
series, but right towards the end
there were I think two episodes that started

380
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:52.400
to play into the mythology and they
it just went away just could I mean,

381
00:26:52.440 --> 00:26:55.799
the reboot is interesting. I think
you're right. The reboot said,

382
00:26:55.839 --> 00:26:59.359
ah, we can fix the seriality, will make this all about this,

383
00:26:59.599 --> 00:27:02.799
you know a little bit of borrowing
from the fugitive. His wife has been

384
00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:06.279
murdered and he's the suspect and he's
going to find out and has something to

385
00:27:06.279 --> 00:27:10.640
do with some supernatural conspiracy. But
you know, the flip side was they

386
00:27:10.680 --> 00:27:14.759
didn't learn from what Kolchak did well, which was the charm of Darren McGavin.

387
00:27:14.920 --> 00:27:18.519
I mean, he's just as irascible
and grumpy old guy, but you

388
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:21.359
just want to hear the next wise
crack that's going to come out of his

389
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:23.920
mouth. And the reboot was charmless, let's just say it that way.

390
00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:26.599
And they also lost the humor.
And I think one of the things that

391
00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:30.480
made the TV movies work so well, and you know, when the series

392
00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:36.839
worked, it was that balance between
scary stuff. And there's some genuinely scary

393
00:27:36.839 --> 00:27:41.559
moments in the series and certainly in
the TV movies, with that humor,

394
00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:45.640
you know, it's it's making fun
of Updike, or it's Miss Emily talking

395
00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:48.160
about her sex life, or it's
you know, Tony and Carl having these

396
00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:55.720
big blowouts. That ability to balance
scary and funny. I mean, that's

397
00:27:55.759 --> 00:27:59.480
really the history of a lot of
horror and certainly you know, I just

398
00:27:59.480 --> 00:28:02.839
just watch Nope, the new Jordan
Peel film, and I think that's one

399
00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:06.240
of the great things that Jordan Peel
is really expert as a filmmaker, is

400
00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:10.480
balancing Okay, this is scary and
a little political and a little unsettling,

401
00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:12.720
but here's some funny bits to kind
of kind of make that mix work.

402
00:28:12.759 --> 00:28:18.720
And when cold check worked well,
it got that balance. When it didn't

403
00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:22.880
work well, then maybe it didn't
any I do appreciate that the book is

404
00:28:22.920 --> 00:28:25.200
short, but I think it's a
little too short. I wish that it

405
00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:29.160
went on for more because I enjoyed
it so much. Thank you. Unfortunately,

406
00:28:29.240 --> 00:28:33.079
Wayne State has a really strict word
limit, So yeah, I felt

407
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:34.279
the same way I said, I
feel like I I you know, I

408
00:28:34.279 --> 00:28:37.960
would have loved I do think,
you know, for people that love the

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00:28:37.480 --> 00:28:41.559
series, you know, I hope
people will consider looking at my book.

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00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:48.279
But I definitely think this book,
in combination with Mark's book, The Nice

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00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:52.359
Talker Companion, which is I understand
it from from Mark, is coming back.

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It's out of print right now,
but they are coming back with an

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00:28:56.279 --> 00:29:00.160
updated edition. It's going to have
a whole lot of additional information. So

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00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:03.279
I definitely would say, if you
want more, Mark is the more guy.

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00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:07.200
I think mine is the short book. When you're a friend of here

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00:29:07.319 --> 00:29:11.359
says why do you like the stupid
series? You hand in my book.

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00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:14.960
If they buy my argument, then
they go read Mark's book and they get

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00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:18.000
this really rich, full beautiful history. I'm so glad to hear that Mark's

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00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:22.839
book is being reissued. It took
so long to find that original col check

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00:29:22.920 --> 00:29:25.400
companion. Yeah, I don't want
to I don't even want to remember how

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00:29:25.480 --> 00:29:30.839
much I paid some back alleyway or
something, but it was invaluable and it's

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00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:34.599
wonderful. And Mark is an amazing
reporter and TV historian and again just an

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00:29:34.599 --> 00:29:38.480
absolutely lovely individual, gracious and kind. Some people, you know, when

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00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:41.599
they've written about something, they then
want to lay a fence around it and

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00:29:41.640 --> 00:29:45.680
say mine, nobody can come near
it. Mark is the exact opposite,

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00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:49.000
just a scholar and a gentleman in
every good sense of that word. And

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00:29:49.039 --> 00:29:52.559
so yes, I think I'm not
sure exactly can Mark can come on and

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00:29:52.599 --> 00:29:56.319
tell you exactly when the book is
coming out, But I've heard him say

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00:29:56.359 --> 00:30:00.759
that now, so I believe that's
happening. And again, I think that

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00:30:00.920 --> 00:30:04.599
is really the definitive look at me
selling Marx book I've got. But if

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00:30:04.599 --> 00:30:07.440
you have a few pennies left over, you know, pick up my little

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00:30:07.720 --> 00:30:11.920
missive on the Nightstalker and maybe together
they're they're the perfect gift. I think

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00:30:11.960 --> 00:30:15.960
where's the best place for people to
keep up with you in all your projects.

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00:30:15.359 --> 00:30:18.039
I would definitely encourage people to follow
me on Twitter. That's where I

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00:30:18.039 --> 00:30:22.920
put out most stuff I am.
My Twitter handle is at Dark Projections,

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00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:26.480
a combination of a book I wrote
called Dark Directions and a book I wrote

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00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:30.400
called Projected Fear So Dark Projections.
I would also say, if people are

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00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:33.640
interested in hearing my melodious voice,
I can't imagine why you would be.

439
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:40.519
But I also host a podcast produced
here in Syracuse at WAAR and going out

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00:30:40.519 --> 00:30:45.039
through National Public Radio. The podcast
is called pop Life, and we occasionally

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00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:48.839
do horror episodes, but we do
a lot of general pop culture things.

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00:30:48.839 --> 00:30:52.480
So please feel free and look up
pop Life at WAR and tune in and

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00:30:52.480 --> 00:30:56.319
give us a listen. Professor Phillips, thank you so much for your time.

444
00:30:56.359 --> 00:30:59.319
This is great, really an honor
to be here. I love I

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00:30:59.400 --> 00:32:22.000
love the Podcas Gust really great talk
to you. Thank you. M h m hm