'The Zombie' by Zekial Marko and David Chase

Mobster accountant Al Berg and several other hoods are attacked by a huge black man who is impervious to bullets; while ex-prize-fighter Pike holds their assailant off, the men are able to escape, but Pike is then found beaten to a pulp. The police dismiss the event as a typical gangland killing; Kolchak writes up a quick report, but his suspicions are aroused when Vincenzo praises his work, despite not even reading it. Sure enough, Vincenzo teams him up with Monique Marmelstein, the plump niece of New York Independent News Service executive Abe ‘the Smiling Cobra’ Marmelstein. The two of them are sent to cover a police raid on a syndicate farm used as a burial ground for mob victims, but arrive in the middle of a shoot out; for safety, Kolchak locks Monique in the trunk of his car, and then comes under verbal attack from Captain Winwood, who hates the reporter after a previous encounter, and refuses him permission to photograph the bodies of the dead mobsters. Kolchak visits the morgue and learns from Gordy ‘the Ghoul’ Spangler that one of the bodies dug up on the farm had been in the morgue two days earlier, the victim of six gunshot wounds. After visiting the city cemetery where the body is to be buried in a grave already used one week earlier, Kolchak is threatened by a suspiciously-acting Winwood. Believing the police captain to be involved, Kolchak learns from Gordy that the reburied black man is Francois Edmonds. Kolchak investigates, but is quickly warned off by Bernard ‘Sweetstick’ Weldon and two of his hoods. After Al Berg is killed by a resurrected Francois Edmonds, Kolchak learns from a meeting between Sweetstick and Berg’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Sposato, that a mob-war is imminent unless the murders stop. But then Kolchak is caught by Sposato’s men and made to tell them about Edmonds; the mobsters force the reporter to dig up the body, but instead find the grave empty. Kolchak soon discovers that Edmonds’ mother is a voodoo mamalois, and she is resurrecting her son as a zombie to take vengeance on those people responsible for his death. Kolchak soon finds himself added to the list of victims - and unless he can fill the zombie’s mouth with salt and then sew his lips together, his days as a reporter will be over…

Darren McGavin (Carl Kolchak), Simon Oakland (Tony Vincenzo), Jack Grinnage (Ron Updyke), Ruth Mc Devitt (Emily Cowles), Joseph Sirola (Benjamin Sposato), John Fiedler (‘Gordy the Ghoul’ Spangler), Earl Falson (Francois Edmonds), Charles Aidman (Captain Winwood), Antonio Fargas (Bernard ‘Sweetstick’ Weldon), Carol Ann Susi (Monique Marmelstein), Paulene Myers (Mamalois Edmonds), Val Bisoglio (Victor Friese), Scatman Crothers (Uncle Filemon), Ben Fommer (Monk), Roland Bob Harris (Poppy), Pat O’Malley (Caretaker)
Directed by Alexander Grasshoff

TX (US): 20th September, 1974

Notes:
*Featuring Carl Kolchak and Tony Vincenzo