A good friend of mine, Nick (Myers N San Diego) has been posting work in progress pics of his new “Nightstalker” Myers mask that Chris is working on for him. At this stage it’s still bald, and seeing it jogged my memory of a 1974 episode of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER titled Mr. R.I.N.G., because there is a striking similarity of the bald Myers mask and the mask of the masked killer in that episode.
The villain stalking the night in Mr. R.I.N.G first steals himself a Halloween mask to use as a face (later, he makes himself a face by stealing morticians wax from a morgue), and he appropriated his clothing from some unfortunate Postal Carrier.
Ring any bells? Michael Myers–an escaped mental patient, broke into a hardware store and stole his mask, and killed for his mechanics coveralls. Hmmm.
In Mr. RING, the killer turns out to be an escaped robot (Ala Replicants in BLADE RUNNER), and the interesting thing about it is that Carpenter has said that his characterization of The Shape was influenced by the unstoppable Yul Brenner robot in WESTWORLD, which predates this KOLCHAK episode. If you haven’t seen the Mr. R.I.N.G. episode, it is scary, and creepy as hell the way the killer is depicted stalking in the night, totally unlike the tone of Westworld and very similar in tone to H1.
The Mr. R.I.N.G. episode of The Night Stalker predates production of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN by four years.
Could Carpenter have seen it and been unconsiously (or intentionally) influenced by it as well?
(Mr. R.I.N.G. with damaged mortician’s wax face mask)
R.I.P. Darren McGavin, the irreplacable Night Stalker. You are missed.
…on a side note. I LOVED Kolchak!!..probably my ALL time FAVORITE show! I used to love staying up late and watching it on CBS and getting scared…Moving on, last year I had the pleasure of meeting Antonio Fargas…aka Huggy Bear from “Starsky & Hutch”…He was on one Kolchak episode " The Zombie"…he played Sweetstick Weldon…and we got to talking…as he was signing autographs during a visit to our baseball stadium…and I asked a/b The Night Stalker and Darren McGavin…he was a person I always envied and admired…Antonio, said he was a VERY professional and fun to work with…and doing The Kolchak show was one he enjoyed doing. If you ever get the chance to meet " Huggy"don’t pass it up…he is a GREAT person and willing to share his experiences…RIP Kolchak, there will never be another!!!
I agree cool thread. The Nightstalker was a favourite of mine when I was a kid, can’t recall the episode though. Maybe carpenter did derive influence from the episode in question I guess someone will have to ask him when they meet him.
Yes, very interesting and you could possibly have something here. As you stated, one of the main influences was the robot from WestWorld. I don’t recall ever reading anything about JC mentioning that Nightstalker episode, but who knows? To me even as a kid when I first saw Halloween I always recall watching the closet scene and the way he rose up and turned his head in a mechanical fashion. Since I was intrigued by robots and cyborgs even at that young age (six million dollar man) it always struck me as MM being a robot and almost unstoppable.
Now I’m going to have to find that Nightstalker episode, thanks for the post
Same here. The Night Stalker scared the hell out of me as a kid.
If someone asked John about it this many years later, who knows if he would remember. I find that a lot of people I mention Kolchak to don’t remember it now.
WESTWORLD came out in 1973, and the Kolchak: The Night Stalker weekly series Mr. R.I.N.G. episode obviously was jumping on the Westworld theme when it aired in 1974.
When Carpenter has said he was influenced by the unstoppable robot in Westworld, he might have lumped the Kolchak episode in with it in his mind. You have to realize that the Mr. Ring episode probably only aired on TV once before the show was canceled in 1975.
My theory is that Carpenter may have watched the Mr. R.I.N.G. episode, and got his first impression in his mind of what would four years later be the look of the masked killer, The Shape. The expressionless face masks and the stolen work uniforms seem an unlikely coincedence. I haven’t seen this episode in a couple of years, so I’m going on my memory, but I’m pretty sure there are a few stylistic moments in Mr. R.I.N.G. that scream H1.
In H1, I like to think that Laurie killed Michael in the closet sequence, and when he sits up behind her like a robot, it’s the evil spirits of SAMHAIM which are now fully controling his body to finish out his desire to kill her. That is where the unstoppable robot influence is shown in Michael’s machine like movements as he comes up behind Laurie in the hallway for the last time. That’s why the Shape could get up and disappear after being shot 6 times and the fall, because he was already dead by that point, and now acting like a robot, controlled by SAMHAIN’s evil spirits.
That’s true, he did. Add that influence into the Michael Myers melting pot.
Let’s face it, John and Debra drew inspiritation and borrowed heavlily from a large variety of sources when they wrote Halloween together.
Thanks for the pic.
I’ll try to get some more pics of Mr. R.I.N.G. too. If anyone here has Kolchak: The Night Stalker THE COMPLETE SERIES on DVD, and can get us some screen caps on the subject, that would be great!
You can watch the Mr. R.I.N.G. episode off Netflix streaming now. I just got done watching it. He does has a very Halloween-ish/Myers feel to himself. He doesn’t move like Michael but he does rob a store for a blue faceless Halloween mask with stars under it’s eyes. He molds his face out of Mortician’s’ clay/putty to make his own face on top of the mask he stole. Also I couldn’t help noticing that the Tyrell company is the name of the place that made Mr. Ring is made at. If you have ever seen the 1982 movie Blade Runner you’ll remember that the Tyrell company also made “Replicants” which are nothing more than robot people who eventually create feelings on their own, rebel against their maker, and don’t want to die, just like Mr. Ring. Very interesting stuff and I do love watching Kolchak bumble around in his investations on this show. Good old school entertainment.
No doubt he had several influences. One would be Giallo films. Dario Argento films. Anyone can see that in the filming of Halloween. The shady, shadowy, ghostly type of filming. You can also hear that in the Halloween soundtrack. It’s straight up Giallo. Something like Goblin, Stelvio Cipriani, and Ennio Morricone would do. Anyone familiar with Giallo films knows the music plays a huge role in those movies. Same as it did with Halloween.
Black Christmas and Dead of Night both by Bob Clark are a lot like Halloween’s style of filming too. I just find it funny how you can take a variety of things to create something is so good and different that people wouldn’t know it was influenced by other things. People use that term “original” so much. Recently I discovered that that first Batman comic book story and characters was derived from a variety of things. Even the Joker is taken from a movie called The Man Who Laughs. Oh by Crimson Ghost check out the latest issue of Horror Hound magazine, they have a whole write up on The Misfits and The Crimson Ghost serial.
