The Spanish Moss Murders
"Père Malfait gon' getcha!"

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When the French came to Louisiana in the 18th Century they learned the Native American legend of the 'Father of a Thousand Leaves", a name which translated to French as Le Père de Mille Feuilles. It was a tall creature of vengeance in the bayous, covered in moss, branches, and mud, able to disguise itself as a tree. The Father was a protector of the swamps - do malice there and you would be sure to have a horrible encounter with Le Père. As language does, the pronunciation and translation migrated: the legend grew among the settlers as Père Malfait: roughly, Father of Bad Doings.

"Père Malfait" has a dreamy ring to it, non? Smooth like melted butter, saucy like a Cajun patois. But you can just call him Bad Daddy. He was a legend to tell your kids to scare them into line. That's how Paul Langlois came to know him, a childhood fear that lives on in the darkest parts of Paul's psyche. These days Paul's been spending all his time there, inside his own head, being a volunteer in a sleep study experiment. He has been asleep for six weeks.

A psychology grad student is dead, victim of a hit&run according to the police. The chef of an expensive French restaurant has been murdered in his kitchen. A street musician has been killed in a basement where he liked to toke up. All disparate deaths but for a couple shared details: they all had their chests crushed by inhuman force, each of the bodies had been strewn with some green vegetable matter. As Kolchak investigates, he learns that they also all knew Paul Langlois. Langlois, a musician and resentful hothead from Louisiana. Langlois, who has a perfect alibi.

One of my favorite character actors, Severn Darden, plays Dr. Aaron Pollack who is conducting a sleep analysis on his volunteer subject, Langlois. The purpose of this pure research is to study the brain patterns when it is deprived of dream activity over an extended period. Every now and then the monitors go nuts - something is happening in that skull, but no one knows what. Pollack finds it fascinating, and it's the only thing he has any interest in or patience for. Darden has a knack for underplayed comic gold, here playing Pollack as a soft-spoken but disdainful sufferer of fools. His encounters with Kolchak are a little different from the usual exasperated authorities the reporter clashes with. For all his complaints, Pollack is a loquacious sort.

Pollack: "I try to be a nice guy."
Kolchak: "How's that working out?"
Pollack: "I don't know."

Not Captain Siska, though. 'Mad Dog' Siska is a congenitally angry man who may have met his match in Kolchak, who manages to undo weeks of anger management therapy in a few hours time. It was a nice change while it lasted, his "I'm okay..."(heavy sigh)" you're okay" resistance to Kolchak's persistence, but this is the great Keenan Wynn and we'd be cheated if we didn't see him lose it sooner or later. "To tell you the truth, you're not okay! The people in group therapy didn't tell me I was ever gonna meet anybody as un-okay as you are!"

Kolchak follows a chain of leads to the street scene where he encounters Langlois' associates. One of them, Morris Shapiro (playing to rubes as 'Pepe') tells him a little about the sleeper and lets us in on Père Malfait, a childhood legend Langlois shared with some of his fellow Louisianans. Père Malfait was a monster from the Bayou, covered in moss. We learn from a botanic garden that the vegetation left on the victims is Spanish Moss, and it only grows in Louisiana.

As Kolchak and Shapiro talk, walking along an alley at night, Morris suddenly vanishes in the middle of the conversation - there one moment, gone the next, silently snatched away without a trace. Of all the scares in Kolchak to have stayed with me, it's one of the more unnerving for it's sudden sharp turn: TNS tends to telegraph it's scares. This one catches us unaware. Kolchak remains on the scene, trying to find the missing 'Pepe' in the dark, unaware that the thing that took him shares the space with him. It's not the only creepy scene in the episode. Another is a nasty fright when Kolchak discovers that the monster is now looking for him and has come to his very desk at INS. Earlier attacks were preceded by half-glimpses of a creature in glass, translucent, not quite there. Director Gordon Hessler maintains Chicago as a world usually seen at night. The first shot is a close up of an abstract painting, and the final sequence takes place in the city's network of sewers, which could double as a metaphor for the murky waters of Paul Langlois' id.

TSSM is one case in which it may be helpful to see the unrestored version, as the costume worn by Richard Kiel leaves something to be desired. It's a guy wearing moss. They didn't even green up his hands. Still...don't those sewer scenes look great?

That feeling of a nighttime world and the presence of dread is well balanced with the episode's character-driven humor ala Darden and Wynn. This week a full twenty-seven minutes passes before we even see the INS staff, they're used sparingly but with precision. Updyke has two scenes, one of them nothing more than a telling look - his singular spoken line is perfectly Updykian.

Kudos to writers Alvin R. Friedman and David Chase. It's Friedman's story, so it must have been he who brought in Père Malfait. That's a areal legend and even more obscure than the Diableros of last week. It's not easy to present a legend without diminishing it's power as a legend, but TSMM manages to do this by keeping it just that, it also ushers us into the unexplored realms of dreams and the power of the subconscious. These were hot topics of the era, the stuff of "In Search Of..." with Leonard Nimoy and countless documentaries. It makes TSMM double creepy.

The Spanish Moss Murders scared the hell out of me as a kid, and I'm delighted to say that, seen as an adult, it holds up to my memories in all aspect a kid wouldn't notice: writing, performances, directing, editing, photography. It's always been one of my favorites. I give it a dinner order of Cajun blackened chicken, couscous, and a 10 foot tall seaweed salad.

Asides:
Langlois is played by Donald Mantooth, brother of Emergency! star Randolph Mantooth. He played a cop in The Ripper and has a role in an upcoming episode.

If you enjoyed TSMM, check out the excellent Australian horror movie Patrick (Richard Franklin, 1978) in which a man lying in a coma for years acts out his desires via mental telepathy.

With that I bid you goodnight. Sleep well, pleasant dreams, and remember...Père Malfait, he go' getchoo.

Jeff, ar e you sure you've watched the same episode as me? I found this ludicrous, a monster dreamt out of thin air, also "dreamy" moss magically turning up in Kolchak's desk and a pathetically bad costume. Brainless! 2 out of 10 for this. Noticed Vincenzo never gives credence to any of Kolchak's stories, always dismissing them out of hand. Maybe a bit of sensationalism would do his organization good. I wouldn't like to work for him he squeezes creativity out of his journalists.

The costume is terrible!!

Other than that I thought it was very well done. I've always been fascinated by dreams and the subconscious. TSSM also gets into ESP, astral projection of a sort, the persistence of essence or energy after physical death...add a dash of Cajun seasoning, set it all in a moonlit after-hours world: I likes.

Another efficiently done episode for the series. This was one of the more memorable ones from the show’s original run and it still holds up well, but with flaws.

For once, we get a glimpse of what causes the monster – something only really touched on in “They Have Been” and “The Devil’s Platform.” The rest of the time, we just acknowledge that the monster exists whether it be a werewolf, vampire, or Jack the Ripper. Here the monster is a creation from a subject’s subconscious - a monster he was taunted with and feared as a child. It comes complete with the sensibilities given to it as a boogeyman used to plant fear in a child’s head – slimy, hairy, immensely strong, covered in Spanish moss, and indestructible unless stabbed with a stake made from a Louisiana bayou gum tree. Worse, it only appears during certain times in the subject’s sleep cycle allowing it to vanish without a trace periodically.

The trail is pretty clear on this one. Kolchak finds the fancy chef at a ritzy restaurant with his middle crushed to death and knows the spindly man accused of doing it can’t be the killer. He lets the air out of the ME’s tires to lure him away and check his files which lead him to a similar murder of a woman, which leads him to the sleep study center. A couple other people fill in the blanks, with “Pepe” mentioning the Paramalfeit and someone else telling him how to kill it. No library research needed this week, just a couple of trips to the Botanical gardens – once for info, once for a weapon.

Good points – it’s fun to see Tony in a tux and having a good week. He’s invited to speak at a press banquet and does very well by keeping his speech short. He’s not even that upset that Carl doesn’t make it to see him. He also has the funniest lines as he tries to practice his speech and Kolchak keeps making noise. “Why don’t you rattle some pots and pans, or do a trombone solo?” Vincenzo complains.

There’s the usual good casting – Keenan Wynn is the cop of the week, patient at first then losing it completely later on due to Carl. He’s best when he tries to explain that he’s been going to group therapy and it’s obvious that he is just a hair’s width away from blowing his top with each line. I also liked Virginia Gregg as the botany lady. When they did the DRAGNET revival in the 70’s, she guest starred several times as a variety of different characters and was always good. Nothing much to this part, but she still plays it well. And Severn Darden is perfectly cast as the smug, superior doctor who doesn’t even really get fazed when he can’t wake up his own sleep patient.

Weak points – the scene where “Pepe” disappears is bizarre. He’s standing next to Kolchak talking one moment and then he’s gone in mid-sentence. How did that big lumbering, moss dropping creature manage to snatch him away without a sound like that? And how did it manage to figure out where Kolchak worked like he did later on?

The creature itself is a little weak; the less seen the better. He’s scarier early on when only seen in glimpses. It’s more obvious in longer shots that he’s just wearing a suit and his hands are totally exposed regular hands weakening the illusion. At least he’s tall, with Richard Kiel playing the monster again. But, he’s buried in the end credits this time with his smaller part. The final confrontation in the sewer is still scary, with Carl losing his bag with the bayou gum spear in it but finding it in time. It’s a nicely claustrophobic little scene.

Over all, the good outweighs the bad and I’ll give it 8 jackknives used to whittle a stick of bayou gum tree into a monster-killing weapon.

Goof noted: When Carl is reading the brainwave patterns looking for spikes, the first date he mentions is in early June, when all the murders took place in July.

Oh, darn it! I had a great deal of my comment ready, when I clicked "quote" to add a quote and everything disappeared. Well, the second version won't be as polished.

Let me see. What had I said? OK, Kolchak keeps following its formula to the letter. On the other hand, the elements that are shoehorned into the rigid formula are creative and interesting, even though in this particular case, they don't make much sense together.

A proof that the formula is rigid is that they can get the same actor to play different monsters, because the monsters are often interchangeable in terms of behavior, only having different origins.

The elements were creative, but all over the place: a Cajun folk myth origin, a daring sleep deprivation study in a high-tech lad expanding the boundaries of science and conducted by a smug scientist, the whimsical tale of a man with anger management issues, an editor getting his place in the sun as far as professional recognition is concerned, a lugubrious chase in the ugly sewers of a big city.

Unfortunately nothing is properly developed; there are just too many directions for the story to take and in the end it barely touches any.

Kolchak once again makes unbelievable leaps of faith and logic to reach the most far-fetched conclusions. And, of course, he's always right. And, of course, he doesn't get hi story published.

Luckily, television doesn't broadcast smells, because this episode would've stunk. And good luck for Kolchak to try to wear that suit and hat again after that sewer beauty bath. And of course, TV can't show the real thing, because the real thing would've been much dirtier, with everything a sewer catacomb has the right to have, including number one and number two. Gross!

Politically incorrect 1970s moment: Pollack calls his assistant, "Oh, Natalie, my pet." I had to laugh at that.

As usual, you guys catch interesting details I miss.

@Simian Jack said:

The Spanish Moss Murders
"Père Malfait gon' getcha!"

The Father was a protector of the swamps - do malice there and you would be sure to have a horrible encounter with Le Père. As language does, the pronunciation and translation migrated: the legend grew among the settlers as Père Malfait: roughly, Father of Bad Doings.

Great background reference. I'm glad I was on the right track.

One of my favorite character actors, Severn Darden, plays Dr. Aaron Pollack who is conducting a sleep analysis on his volunteer subject

@brimfin said:

And Severn Darden is perfectly cast as the smug, superior doctor who doesn’t even really get fazed when he can’t wake up his own sleep patient.

I instantly recognized the actor.. from somewhere. It turns out he was the leader of the humans in a couple Planet of the Apes movies, and he was nasty, but in a good way. I know he's (was) a good actor who mostly played questionable smug characters.

Langlois is played by Donald Mantooth, brother of Emergency! star Randolph Mantooth.

When I saw the name "Mantooth" I thought it was the "Emergency" guy.

Director Gordon Hessler maintains Chicago as a world usually seen at night. The first shot is a close up of an abstract painting, and the final sequence takes place in the city's network of sewers, which could double as a metaphor for the murky waters of Paul Langlois' id.

Brilliant observation! Just for that the episode gets a point. I kept thinking if Chicago really has this alternate world of underground galleries like that. that makes me think the city where we live has a whole side we have no idea of, unless we work in the local Water or Sanitation Department.

@brimfin said:

There’s the usual good casting – Keenan Wynn is the cop of the week, patient at first then losing it completely later on due to Carl. He’s best when he tries to explain that he’s been going to group therapy and it’s obvious that he is just a hair’s width away from blowing his top with each line.

Keenan Wynn was hilarious in this role, though I think his reaction to Kolchak was exaggerated, so it looked like Captain Siska was mainly looking for an excuse to be his colorful self. I remember Keenan Wynn as a much older guy, and he usually didn't have all that energy in his characters.

I think the episode could've explored the science aspect much better, but, on the other hand, I really liked the whole "sewer as Langlois's id" angle. On the whole, a disjointed story like a man made of mossy stuff you put together when you go spend your sleepless night in the swamp... The episode gets 7 years of good group therapy down the drain.

We are back in the dark for this one. It's been quite a few episodes since I've had to squint at the screen to see what is going on.

Kolchak is on his way to the dentist when he hears something interesting on his emergency scanner and his story begins. Kolchak is very easily distracted from other activities, he misses big games, going to buy new suits and now dental care all because of his curiousity.
We get very early on an interesting change to the Kolchak/Police dynamic, a senior officer who is accommodating and allows Kolchak to do his job as long as they can do theirs.
Siska is a great character, you can hear the repressed rage behind the initially serene behaviour and it continues to bubble until so annoyed with Kolchak he explodes.

There is some really nice continuity through this story which I really appreciated.
When we see the first victim she bumps some equipment and fails to hang her lab coat. The first turns out to be important but the second is just a nice small action reinforcing the fact we learn later that she is a bit clumsy.

The second victim is not just a vagrant he is a budding artist.
This leads Kolchak to his fellow street performers including Pepe who gives him more information. Also during this scene we hear Gene the Fiddler say he has enough money for some studio time.
This could be throw away but later we return to him in the studio and he gives Kolchak more information on the Père Malfait or Rougarou.

Jeff Larsen -
When the French came to Louisiana in the 18th Century they learned the Native American legend of the 'Father of a Thousand Leaves", a name which translated to French as Le Père de Mille Feuilles. It was a tall creature of vengeance in the bayous, covered in moss, branches, and mud, able to disguise itself as a tree. The Father was a protector of the swamps - do malice there and you would be sure to have a horrible encounter with Le Père. As language does, the pronunciation and translation migrated: the legend grew among the settlers as Père Malfait: roughly, Father of Bad Doings.

Thanks for the link Jeff.
I must admit I don't have that much knowledge of Cajun mythology. This is one of the things I am enjoying most about Kolchak, in amongst the Vampires and Werewolves we are getting some less well known myths like the Daiblero and the Doppleganger. The creature spends most of the episode off screen which is to its benefit. Having said that when it rises from the sewer water it is terrifying and the tense scenes of Kolchak hiding under water make for a great final sequence.
The fact that it is conjured from Langloist's mind is another interesting twist. It needs to keep him asleep so it kills off those who might wake him.

Brimfin -
And Severn Darden is perfectly cast as the smug, superior doctor who doesn’t even really get fazed when he can’t wake up his own sleep patient.

mad-pac -
I instantly recognized the actor.. from somewhere. It turns out he was the leader of the humans in a couple Planet of the Apes movies, and he was nasty, but in a good way. I know he's (was) a good actor who mostly played questionable smug characters.

Dr Pollack is another good character. The aloof, confident researcher, oh and yes he is smug. He does easily see through Kolchak's motives at his second visit showing he is no fool. There is a terrible moment when he announces that his patient is not responding how he should and he cannot wake him up.
On a technical issue, in the scene where Langloist dies there is a lot of shots on the equipment screen. I think they used an electrocardiograph (ECG, monitors the heart) as from the electroencephalographs (EEGs, monitors the brain) I've seen the electrical activity is not as regular as is shown. If this is so then Langloist is in trouble as he is first in Ventricular Tachycardia and then Fibrillation and he needs immediate treatment.
I did find it amusing that Dr Pollack dismissed him dying as premature, seconds before he dies.

There wasn't a lot of office banter this week but there was one line that did stand out.

Brimfin -
“Why don’t you rattle some pots and pans, or do a trombone solo?”

Nailed it

I must admit I had to watch this one twice. First time it didn't grab me and I was wandering off, being easy distracted with other things. I decided to give it a proper shake and I'm glad I did.
7 concerns raised about Dr Pollacks care of his patients out of 10

@mad-pac said:

The elements were creative, (...) Unfortunately nothing is properly developed; there are just too many directions for the story to take and in the end it barely touches any.

Could be. There's something there, not enough to make a case for, but I like it...Kolchak is after a story and gets it. Tony wants the respect and accolades of his peers and gets it. Dr. Pollack yearns for a breakthrough, a discovery to pin his name on - he gets it in such a big way it scares him out of science altogether. The street musicians all want a break. One gets studio time that might be his big break, and one has to pretend to be a stereotype to get by. The botanist presumably has her dream job, but has to raise her own veggies because it doesn't pay enough. There's a grad student, looking forward to her brilliant future.

None of this goes anywhere, but it adds to the yearnful texture. After all, another word for dream is 'ambition'.

@cloister56 said:

I must admit I don't have that much knowledge of Cajun mythology.

Up until a few weeks ago, I thought the legend was totally made up. It must be a pretty rare one! Now I know it's an actual legend, I like this episode even more.