SOURCE: Kolchak: The Night Stalker  Season 1, Episode 5 (November 1, 1974)

PLOT: When Kolchak's boss, Tony Vincenzo can't go on a cruise, Carl takes the assignment. On the cruise is Bernhardt Stieglitz (Eric Braeden), a NATO officer who was bitten by a wolf in Greenland. Stieglitz goes on a rampage, attacking crew members and customers. Kolchak tries to worm the story out of the captain and crew but is thwarted. In the end Kolchak steals the captain's silver dress buttons from his drwss uniform to make bullets. In a final struggle with the werewolf, he shoots Stieglitz several times before he falls over board and is never seen again. The cruise line and the government cover the entire story up.

Artwork inspired the episode

WEREWOLF FACTS: The lycantrhopy is caused by a wolf attack in Greenland. Stieglitz goes to a VA hospital in Montana but ends up killing a family of four before fleeing onto the cruise. He tries to slow the effects of his curse with morphine and chains but snaps the restraints and continues to kill. In the end it is Kolchak's bullets, made from silver and blessed by a divinity student in Latin, that probably kills him. The moon has a direct effect on the transformation.

INTERESTING FACTS: Eric Braeden, who plays the werewolf, found fame earlier in rat patrol as Capt. Hauptman Hans Dietrich, Escape From The Planet of the Apes(1971) and later as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless. The werewolf make-up looks terrible in this episode, something like Chewbacca the Wookie.