MOSS APPEAL

RIP to the titanic Richard Kiel, passed on at 74. The 7-foot-plus fellow is of course best remembered as the indefatigable and curiously endearing “Jaws” in the Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, and as the title caveman in the 1962 laugh-riot Eegah, but he played innumerable other towering menaces, including…

Monster-of-the-Week: …Pere Malfait, the mossy giant of Cajun lore in “The Spanish Moss Murders,” a 1974 episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker…

This murky still does little justice to the creature’s creepiness in the show.

STALK CHARACTER

Having already played one of pop culture’s most famous vampires, Barnabas Collins…

…in Tim Burton’s upcoming movie of Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp is now reportedly set to play a famous vampire hunter, reporter Carl Kolchak, in a movie of the short-lived but fondly-remembered ‘70s-era spookshow The Night Stalker, to be directed by Sean of the Dead’s Edgar Wright.

So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …in acknowledgement of this worthy project let’s recognize the first quarry of the original Carl (the great Darren McGavin): Vampire Janos Skorzeny, the Las Vegas-based bloodsucker played by the ever-menacing Barry Atwater…

Skorzeny & Carl went fang-to-stake in the original 1972 TV movie. Wright & Depp will have their work cut out for them to top that pilot’s atmosphere…