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'The Ripper' is a fine pilot episode for a loyally supported, well loved cult TV series in which Darren McGavin made the most out of a fun role, intrepid investigative reporter Carl Kolchak. Kolchak would often make a nuisance of himself as he stubbornly insisted on following the strange stories. He'd already been introduced in a pair of TV movies, 'The Night Stalker' and 'The Night Strangler', and while the series wouldn't last very long, fans still find his adventures quite endearing.

This episode shows how well the cast, writers, and directors could successfully put together true spookiness & suspense and genuinely funny comedy into the same stories without the balance ever tipping too far to either side.

The story here has a series of brutal murders plaguing Chicago, done Ripper style. Kolchak knows of similar Ripper style murders that have occurred throughout the decades, and comes to believe that the perpetrator may very well be THE Jack the Ripper.

Directed with efficiency by Allen Baron ("Blast of Silence"), 'The Ripper' features some solid action sequences and stunts (The Ripper is played for maximum menacing presence by stuntman Mickey Gilbert) and some undeniable tension as Kolchak checks out the house where The Ripper has been spotted. The hilarious bits often come from the confrontations between Kolchak and his long suffering editor Tony Vincenzo, wonderfully played by Simon Oakland, as well as between Kolchak and stuffy colleague Uptight - I mean Updyke (Jack Grinnage) - and weary police captain Warren (Ken Lynch). One can see how Kolchak would rub people the wrong way, but that's why we as fans love him. It's also hysterical seeing an agitated Kolchak trying to do what he would rather do when faced with the task of filling in for advice columnist Miss Emily.

Popping up in supporting parts are Beatrice Colen ('Wonder Woman', 'Happy Days') as upbeat reporter Jane Plumm, Ruth McDevitt, who would go on to play Miss Emily in subsequent episodes, as the elderly woman, Mews Small as a masseuse, and Roberta Collins as an undercover cop.

Good fun all around, and well establishes the formula for the series.

Eight out of 10.

When a rash of serial murders suddenly begins in the Chicago area, Kolchak (Darren McGavin) establishes a similarity between the new killings and the murders committed by Jack The Ripper.

How can you not love that Kolchak writes "Miss Emily" rather than works a crime beat, or is a detective? This is a great angle to approach the show from. Not only is it weird, unexplained supernatural events, but the protagonist is a little bit outside the usual.

Heck, we even get to see the gritty side of Chicago and Milwaukee. This makes the show a bit edgy, even showing a strip club in the opening scene and getting as close to nudity as possible without getting the show banned from the air. Well played.

Reporter Carl Kolchak discovers a killer who only kills woman in Chicago may be the original Jack the Ripper recreating his original murders.

Fast, funny and scary. The murders are tame--not shown and no blood or gore. Still the show does its job. Darren McGavin is great as Kolchak and Simon Oakland matches him as his long-suffering boss. I remember seeing this as a kid on TV when I was 12 and having the stuffing scared out of me. As an adult now it doesn't scare me that much but it still works.

This is the first episode of the short-lived series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", but it marks the third of Darren McGavin as the title character. This is because the show had previously been two made for TV movies--"The Night Stalker" and "The Night Strangler". The first film was set in Las Vegas, the second in Seattle and now the series is set in Chicago--all because Kolchak cannot hold down a job!

"The Ripper", not surprisingly is about Jack the Ripper. Murders similar to the old Jack the Ripper murders take place and they are so similar Kolchak wonders if perhaps this killer is somehow still alive--though it would make him well over a hundred years old. Additionally, this guy, whoever he is, has incredible strength and bullets don't seem to harm him. But, as always, Kolchak is in the doghouse with Vincenzo (Simon Oakland)--and he's been assigned to do the Miss Emily column--a Dear Abby type of personal advice column.

Structurally, this show is pretty much what all the Kolchak shows were like--Kolchak irritates his boss, Vincenzo as well as the local police. And, his evidence seems to vanish or is confiscated by the cops. And, in the end, Kolchak is able to defeat a seemingly unstoppable fiend. Not exactly new in that sense, but, as always, entertaining.

"The Ripper" seems like the perfect opener for viewers familiar with both preceding feature films, but there's a definite sense of deja vu as Darren McGavin's Carl Kolchak again faces a dangerous foe bridging the centuries, not a vampire or 144 year old alchemist but none other than London's Jack the Ripper. Our hero continues his adventures at the Chicago office of the Independent News Service, once more under the auspices of news editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland), introducing a new character, Jack Grinnage as Ron Updyke, so squeamish on the job that he is labeled 'Uptight' by the more confident Kolchak (Ron gets the plum assignment of covering the Ripper killings, while his rival spends the week covering for the vacationing 'Dear Emily'). Robert Bloch's popular 1943 short story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" was the likely inspiration, adapted in 1961 by Boris Karloff's THRILLER, then turned on its head by Bloch himself in a futuristic setting on a far distant planet for the memorable STAR TREK episode "Wolf in the Fold." This Ripper (Mickey Gilbert) shares many of the same traits as original Night Stalker Janos Skorzeny in that he only prowls after dark, cannot be stopped by gunfire or police manpower, and also lives in a dilapidated old house where he is eventually tracked down (one new bit finds an exasperated motorist claiming to have hit the Ripper at 30 miles per hour, only to see the 'victim' casually walk away after damaging his car). What one misses in the condensed hour long format is how Carl obtains all his information on Rippers caught all across the globe since 1887, a botched hanging in Germany, another surviving a crack firing squad. The dancers and massage workers are certainly an eye opener for 70s television (cult siren Roberta Collins a mischievous policewoman in disguise), but our first police captain (Ken Lynch) creates a low bar for the mostly annoying ones that followed. Making her series debut is Ruth McDevitt, not as regular columnist and newsroom confidante 'Miss Emily' Cowles, but note keeping Miss Egenwiler, referring to the killer and his nightly comings and goings as 'Old X-Ray Eyes.' The warm relationship between Carl and fellow reporter Jane Plumm (Beatrice Colen) could have provided the basis for a more prolonged series, had not her proclivity for interviewing potential Rippers put her in harm's way.

The opening credits to "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" begin with Gil Melle's bright, cheerful melody as whistling crime reporter Carl Kolchak enters an empty newsroom; then, while he is writing up his story, the music shifts abruptly to a dark, ominous tone as the words "victim" and "monster" appear on his typed copy, encapsulating perfectly this mid-1970s thriller television series: beneath our benign natural world lurk malevolent, supernatural forces.

In the premiere episode "The Ripper," that malevolent, supernatural force is none other than Jack the Ripper, Victorian London's legendary serial killer who preyed upon prostitutes in the fall of 1888 and was never caught. But is the spate of murders targeting sex workers in Milwaukee and Chicago, where Kolchak works for the Independent News Service, yet another copycat killer decades after the original--or could it really be the original Jack?

Series creator Jeff Rice wrote the initially unpublished novel that spawned two highly successful television movies, 1972's "The Night Stalker" and 1973's "The Night Strangler," both starring Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland as Kolchak's perpetually exasperated editor Tony Vincenzo, each of whom migrated to the series that featured a "monster of the week" that Kolchak inevitably stumbled upon but was unable to convince anyone, particularly Vincenzo, about what he had discovered.

With its modest budget and the special effects of its time, "The Night Stalker," much like Britain's "Doctor Who," also suffered from wobbly-walls-and-men-in-rubber-suits syndrome. In "The Ripper," even with a presumptive human as the monster, so much of the action is shot at nighttime locations or in dark interiors that you can't see what is happening.

Thus, like "Doctor Who," the series had to rely on snappy scripts, droll humor, and the raffish charm of its leading man, unkempt but distinctive, unconventional but intrepid, dogged but fallible as Kolchak couldn't resist delving into the world of malevolent, supernatural forces even when, as punishment for antagonizing Chicago's Finest, particularly police Captain Warren (Ken Lynch), Vincenzo tasks him with addressing the correspondence piling up for vacationing advice columnist Miss Emily.

That leaves Vincenzo's other reporter, dapper, priggish business writer Ron Updyke, to investigate the killing of a local masseuse--and, boy, is "Uptight" (as Carl dubs him) out of his league, particularly as how Kolchak has already seen the presumed killer, impervious to bullets, leap from a four-story building, throw police officers around like they were rag dolls, and even walk away unscathed after being hit by a car.

Rudolph Borchert's gritty script, taking in strip clubs and massage parlors alongside sojourns in the decidedly-shoestring INS newsroom, also weaves in comic relief in the form of gluttonous tabloid reporter Jane Plumm (Beatrice Colen), certain that she's sniffed out the killer, and, in a brilliant, hilarious moment, Kolchak's own feet of clay as he (nearly) comes face to face with the Ripper, an all-too-human hero whose every sly, shrewd, shabby move is worth watching.

So, too, is "The Ripper" worth watching despite its flaws, because McGavin is fully invested in the eerie, offbeat, supernatural malevolence that lurks beneath our benign natural world. You should be too.

Kolchak is totally new to me, l never saw it, but this famous series just came out in Brazil officially the first season box-set with the classic dubbed version and yesterday l watched the first episode where Carl Kolchak a true amusing reporter played fantastically by Darren McGavin, he investigate a serial killer in Chicago area who actually has supernatural powers and Kolchak studying the matter over the old books about this kind of killer, he suspicious that may be something like Jack the Ripper, l'was thrilled for such good experience, the episode has all elements to support the series as black humor, suspense and take to us all scary stories from the unknown and darkness!!!

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First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25

PLOT: Kolchak observes a link between an outbreak of murders in Chicago to the slayings of Jack The Ripper 85 years earlier in London. Curiously, the killer (Mickey Gilbert) appears to have superhuman qualities.

COMMENTARY: This was the 1974 debut episode of the series, which ran for one season (20 episodes) after two successful TV movies: "The Night Stalker" (1972) and "The Night Strangler" (1973). The problem with "The Ripper" is that it borrows too heavily from those movies, especially the first one, not to mention the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold' seven years earlier; it therefore seems unoriginal. It's basically a streamlined version of the superior first film with not enough variation. The creators obviously did this to establish the series, so I guess it can be excused to a degree.

In any case, there are several good-looking women in the periphery, like a curvy brunette in the prologue and Roberta Collins as an undercover cop.

Darren McGavin returns as intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, now in Chicago working for INS with his old boss Vincenzo(Simon Oakland), and still involved in supernatural cases. This first episode deals with a brutal rash of murders which have all the trademarks of thought-dead London murderer Jack the Ripper, who is alive and well, and now has superhuman strength(manhandling the police force) and difficult to kill - though Carl will find a way to deal with him in electrifying fashion, though still no proof. Action-filled series debut has all the usual elements in place, though suffers a bit by the vague, undefined nature of the Ripper himself.

It's genuinely scary at times, particularly the conclusion. It's also a bit more explicitly gruesome than most of the series episodes. The story is a rehash of the myth that Jack The Ripper is an eternal, but, it has enough pop that it still works.

The back and forth with Updyke takes up a bit more time than necessary, but, I did like the character of the rival reporter, Jane Plumm (Beatrice Colen) - the "fat" one (when Ruth McDevitt as the old woman repeats that description, I burst out laughing - great timing by the veteran actress).

Even though this is episode one, it is, of course, not a true pilot as there had been two TV movies prior. Still, it was the initial foray into paring it down to a one hour standalone episode format and it does it pretty well.

The TV series debut of Kolchak: The Night Stalker has Darren McGavin being demoted to the lonely hearts column by Simon Oakland as the woman who writes it is on vacation. A little zinger from Oakland who is tired of the way that McGavin irritates him and flouts his authority.

There's a series of murders of women, brutal slashings in the style of Jack The Ripper that Oakland does give to Jack Grinnage who is McGavin's ivy league rival on the post. Still Kolchak gets a letter in his temporary capacity of INS's Dear Abby that gives him a clue.

The Chicago police know they are dealing with something supernatural when they corner the guy dressed in English attire of the 1880s who is impervious to bullets and can jump from heights like a cat or Superman. They also don't want the news out either.

Of course in the end he defeats the new Jack The Ripper, but McGavin doesn't write the story. Sets a pattern for several of the episodes.

Forgive me for the stupid title of my review, but I try to be clever sometimes. The was the official start of this short, but great series, and it definitely started with a bang, as the infamous Jack the Ripper visits the Windy City. The quick camera cuts/edits are on full display here, and it's done rather well, even though Jack was a tad more superhuman than I expected, and that was a bit of a negative to this reviewer. Look for some familiar faces in a "fat" Beatrice Colen, and Ken Lynch; regarding Colen, she's described as "fat" a few times in this episode, but by today's standards, she's just about average, but I digress. I won't spoil what happens to her character, but let's just say that it was unexpected, and that's a good thing! I forgot to mention above that Ruth McDevitt is another familiar face, but this time she plays an old geezer who thinks she saw the killer; later in the series, she would become a co-worker at INS, but as a different character. Let me add that while I liked the ending, it seemed a bit over-the-top and too easy for Kolchak to figure out. The portrayal of the Ripper himself could've had a little more pizazz to him, but all in all, this is a solid intro for what would become a fantastic and influential series.