Why Didn't Skornzey's Body Disintigrate?

Yes, I agree that authors of stories like these are free to pick or leave whatever they want from known vampire lore. For example, it's a good thing they didn't have Skorzeny doing something really literal like turning into a bat. Otherwise this movie would not have felt (for a vampire tale anyways) as surprisingly realistic as it does.

[deleted]

I'd say this being a tv movie they didn't really have good special fx resources. As for this being a REAL vampire and opposed to vampires of legend, if his only vices were drinking blood then I would agree. But he cowered from the cross and sunlight: two of the biggest myths of vampire legend. Even if he had deluded himself into thinking these things could hurt him, a vampire whose lived as long as he had wouldn't have allowed himself to be overpowered and destroyed by a religious talisman and natural daylight. He would have just torn past Carl and Bernie and found another place to hide, eluding capture.

I almost think it would have been better if Kolchak and Bernie would have just pulled Skorzny's Body into the front yard , I mean after all he was getting weak when the sunlight hit him . So Kolchak actually did take it upon himself to stake Skorzny when he should have just saw that the vampire was about to burn up and leave nature take its course .

Lucky, I had to wait a whole (very long) year...

Disintegration usually only happens with sunlight. As somebody mentioned in "House Of Frankenstein" John Carradine's Dracula did return to full physical form after the stake was removed, but went back to skeleton form upon it being put back in. That really wasn't disintegration because the bones were still there, it was more like the stake was preventing Dracula from regeneration on a magical level rather than what was later accomplished.

In the Hammer films no matter how you destroyed Dracula he always turned to dust, including his bones, and Christopher Lee's disintigration was just as fun as his returning reintigrations! "Blacula" had a great disintigration though with the added affect of bugs crawling out of the skull! Top notch stuff!

If you watch the TV series sequel to this film, the episode called "The Vampire", you get what happens when authorities do admit the truth. Why is that episode a direct sequel you ask? The lady vampire went missing 3 years before the episode in Las Vegas. The show is set in 1975 (as said in one of the episodes I just recently watched on DVD) and the first film was 1972 and Janos Skorzeny was the vampire terrorizing Las Vegas. Sure, you could argue there was a different Vegas vampire, but it all fits easier with the premise that it's a direct follow up to "The Night Stalker", a victim that was never found originally during Skorzeny's reign of terror.

Sincerely,
Exchronos

Dan Curtis' vampires never tended to disintegrate when staked or exposed to the sunlight.

Skorzeny's death scene was more or less a run-up for Dracula's death in Curtis' Dracula TV-movie.

In Stephen King's Salem's Lot, I to got the idea that when staked, a vampire's body simply reverts to its true age. (The deleted scenes in the anniversary edition confirm this.) Hence, those who have just been turned within a few days have an accelerated decomposition (body sags, gasses are released, etc.) while Barlow, the master vampire, who's something like two thousand years old, devolves into dust when staked.