Kolchak: The Night Stalker/Bad Medicine

Bad Medicine
Season 1, Episode 8
Airdate	November 29, 1974
Written by	L. Ford Neale, John Huff
Directed by	Alexander Grasshoff
Stream
← 1x07 The Devil's Platform	1x09 → The Spanish Moss Murders
Kolchak: The Night Stalker — Season One

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Bad Medicine is the eighth episode of the first season of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Starring:

Guest Starring: Jack Grinnage (Ron Updyke), Ruth McDevitt (Emily Cowles), David Lewis (Auctioneer (Belloy)), Richard Kiel (The Diablero), Alice Ghostley (Dr. Agnes Temple), Victor Jory (Charles Rolling Thunder), Ramon Bieri (Captain Joe Baker), Marvin Kaplan (Albert Delgado), James Griffith (George M. Schwartz), Dennis McCarthy (Ballistics Man), Morris Buchanan (Guard (Night Watchman)), Madilyn Clark (Hostess), Keith Walker (First Reporter), Bill Deiz (Second Reporter), Alex Sharp (First Policeman (Mason)), Lois January (Mrs. Rhonda June Marsky (Adele Saperstein)), Barbara Morrison (Mrs. Luci Lapont Addison), Riza Royce (Mrs. Charlotte Elaine Van Piet), Troy Melton (Desk Officer), Walt Davis (Second Policeman (Crawley)), Arthur Wong (Oriental Man), Richard Geary (Auction Guard), Bob Golden (Police Detective)

Co-Starring:

Plot Overview

In the course of as many days, two of the city's most wealthy woman have been killed and robbed for their gems. In the case of Mrs. Sanderstein, the first victim, a crow broke through her window. She stood transfixed as the crow turned into a man wearing a Native-American outfit of some sort. He took her diamond and killed her. The second victim, Lucy LaFont, was confronted with a wolf. She too stood spellbound as the wolf became a man which then took her diamond and killed her.

With this in mind Kolchak responds to a 211 at the city's most prestigious gem exchange. There are two dead guards, and the safe has been broken into. Diamonds are spilled everywhere on the floor. The police follow a strange dog upstairs, but not before telling Kolchak to leave the building.

While folowing the man, Kolchak (no, he didn't leave) takes a picture of a dead dog with some kind of bloody animal tracks around it. In the stairwell the police confront the man in the Native American outfit. Kolchak gets a picture. After the man struggles with two officers, throwing them down the stairs, the others open fire. Many, many shots are fired, but they seem to have no effect. They chase the man onto the roof, where he leaps off the building and disappears.

Kolchak wants to know more about the gem exchange robbery, so he visits the police squad room and impersonates a police seargant in order to gain access to the ballistics report. The guards were each killed with their own guns.

Later Kolchak learns from a kennel caretaker that the tracks around the dead dog at the gem exchange were those of a coyote, not a dog.

At the American Indian Museum the curator, Agnes Delgado, listens to Kolchak's description of the man. She believes he is describing a diablero, a sorcerer from Native American folklore able to place his victims into a trance, turn into animals, step into other dimensions, and alter reality at will.

Knowing that Ron would never tell him directly, Kolchak gets Miss Emily to help him find the location of a gem auction from Ron. Kolchak then tries to bluff his way into the auction, but with his less-than-sophisticated manner, dress, and uncorroborated story he fails. They ask him to leave, but he hides behind a drapery instead, waiting until everyone moves into the viewing room.

A bird breaks into the viewing room, takes the gems, and kills everyone. Kolchak gets a picture of the bird (a crow) before it gets away. Kolchak is arrested at the scene, questioned, and later released.

Agnes, the woman from the museum, contacts Kolchak and arranges a meeting with Charles Rolling Thunder, a Native American, who is troubled by Kolchak's descriptions of the diablero. The diablero is cursed, driven to gather a treasure. The only suggestion Charles has for killing a diablero is that it cannot stand its own gaze.

Back at the office, Kolchak rifles through Ron's papers looking for a story Ron had mentioned earlier about a high rise with only enough tennants for the first five floors of a 40 storey building. Kolchak reasons that the cliff-dwelling diablero would live in just such a building. Finally he finds it: Champion Towers!

At Champion Towers he bluffs his way past the guard with a made-up story about being a neon sign salesman who needs access to the roof to make an estimate. Since the elevators can only go to the fifth floor, he has to climb the rest of the way to the 39th floor using the stairs. There he finds the diablero beside a small fire, chanting and offering his stolen treasures to spirits unseen.

When he accidentally drops the mirror he had brought, the diablero hears him. Kolchak is cornered, but at the last possible moment, he finds a mirror among the unused construction materials. He breaks the mirror into an easily wielded shard and holds it up, exposing the diablero to his own gaze. The diablero smolders, turns to ash, and ultimately, nothing is left at all, not even ashes.

Trivia

The Show

• The events portrayed in this episode begin on November 12.

Allusions and References

• Kolchak quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald saying, "The rich are different than you or me," and paraphrases Hemmingway's reply, "Yes, they have more money."