A series of murders plague the Las Vegas Strip. All of the victims had their bodies drained of blood. Carl Kolchak, a veteran reporter who has been fired from newspapers across the country due to his tenacious and unprofessional approach, thinks the killer believes himself to be a vampire. His managing editor, Tony Vincenzo, refuses to run the story under the vampire angle without proof, arguing it could cause a panic and soil the paper's reputation.
When a man attempts to rob a hospital of its blood supply, the police are called in. The thief is shot multiple times without effect, and escapes, outrunning a police car and motorcycle. From eyewitness testimony, the police positively identify the thief as 70-year-old Janos Skorzeny, who is the prime suspect in multiple homicides extending back years, all involving massive loss of blood.
Kolchak's girlfriend, Gail Foster, a casino "change girl", urges him to explore vampire lore. The evidence persuades Kolchak that Skorzeny is a real vampire. Following another failed attempt to capture Skorzeny, the authorities strike a deal with Kolchak to eschew traditional investigative methods for his vampire-centric approach in exchange for giving him exclusive rights to the story. Acting on a tip, Kolchak locates Skorzeny's safe house and pursues the story on his own, wanting unhindered access to the evidence. He photographs stolen blood packets in the refrigerator, a coffin with native soil inside, a victim bound and gagged to a bed with an intravenous line drawing blood, and other incriminating evidence. Compromised when Skorzeny returns, Kolchak is wrestled to the floor. His friend, FBI Agent Bernie Jenks, arrives and joins the fight. Realizing that dawn has broken, Kolchak and Jenks pull back the shades and stake Skorzeny, just as authorities burst through the front door.
Kolchak writes the story for the newspaper and proposes to Gail, telling her that they will move to New York City. The authorities, however, unwilling to publicly admit that Skorzeny was a vampire, print a false version of the newspaper story with his byline and threaten to charge him with first-degree murder unless he quietly leaves Las Vegas. Gail has already been forced to leave the city for being "an undesirable element". Kolchak exhausts his savings placing personal advertisements across the country in a futile attempt to find her.
Kolchak, sitting in a hotel room, listens to a replay of his dictation of the Skorzeny case. He explains that if anyone tries to verify the events, they will find that all witnesses have either left town, are not talking, or are dead. Skorzeny and all his victims have been cremated, destroying any further ability to investigate the matter and eliminating the possibility that those killed by Skorzeny would rise as vampires.
The film was based on the then-unpublished novel by Jeff Rice titled The Kolchak Papers (a.k.a. The Kolchak Tapes).[3][4] Rice recounted, "I'd always wanted to write a vampire story, but more because I wanted to write something that involved Las Vegas."[citation needed]
Rice had difficulty finding a publisher willing to buy the manuscript until agent Rick Ray read it and realized the novel would make a good movie. The renamed novel The Night Stalker (1973) was not published until after the TV movie had aired, and was delayed according to Rice because the publisher wanted both Rice's original novel and the sequel The Night Strangler (1974), which was written by Rice but based on the screenplay by author Richard Matheson, so "they could be placed on the top of the publisher's list in the 1 and 2 positions for 1974".[5]
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey (a veteran of theatrical and television films), who shot the film over 12 days,[6] adapted by Richard Matheson, and produced by Dan Curtis (best known at the time for Dark Shadows), The Night Stalker became the highest-rated original television film on US television, earning a 33.2 rating and 48 share.[7] The television film did so well that it was released overseas as a theatrical film. It inspired a sequel television film titled The Night Strangler,[8] which aired on January 16, 1973, a single-season TV series of twenty episodes titled Kolchak: The Night Stalker that ran on ABC between September 1974 and May 1975, and a short lived 2005 TV series called Night Stalker.[citation needed]
Actor Darren McGavin recalled how his involvement began: "My representatives called to say that ABC had purchased the rights to a book called The Kolchak Papers. They were into a kind of first draft of a script by Richard Matheson, and they called the agency to ask them if I'd be interested in doing it. My representative read it and called me."[citation needed]
The popular television film, along with its sequel and the TV series, provided the inspiration for Chris Carter's The X-Files.[9] Carter featured actor Darren McGavin in the show[9] as a tribute to the actor and the project that inspired his popular series. Carter had originally wanted McGavin to play Kolchak, but the actor elected not to, so the role was rewritten, making McGavin's character "Arthur Dales", the "father of the X-files".[3]
Subsequent history
The Night Stalker garnered the highest ratings of any TV film at that time (33.2 rating - 48 share).[7][10] That resulted in a 1973 follow-up TV film called The Night Strangler and a planned 1974 film titled The Night Killers, which instead evolved into the 1974-1975 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, with McGavin reprising his role in both. An episode of the series titled "The Vampire" was an actual sequel to Stalker, deriving its story from characters introduced in the film. The "undesirable element" is a holdover from the original script where Gail was more clearly implied to be a Las Vegas prostitute with whom Kolchack was romantically involved. This was changed when standards and practices had her changed into a casino employee.[citation needed]
Following the series' cancellation, the franchise was still highly regarded enough to prompt two more TV films, which were created by editing together material from four previous episodes of the series, with some additional narration provided by McGavin as Kolchak to help connect the plot lines. No new footage was included.[citation needed]
Dan Curtis reused footage from The Night Stalker in his 1975 TV film Trilogy of Terror; the drive-in movie Julie and Chad watch, though described as a classic black-and-white film in French with English subtitles, is actually The Night Stalker with the color removed.
On September 29, 2005 ABC aired a remake of the 1974 series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, titled Night Stalker. ABC owned the rights to the original TV films, but not the Universal TV series, and were limited only to using characters that had appeared in the films.[citation needed]
The film was released in 2004 by MGM Home Entertainment as a double featureDVD with The Night Strangler. The DVD also has a 21-minute interview with producer and director Dan Curtis divided between each film: 14 minutes of him discussing Stalker, and on the flipside, seven minutes of him discussing Strangler. Both films, issued on October 2, 2018, were released separately on HD Blu-Ray and DVD, featuring new 4K transfers by Kino Lorber, Inc.[citation needed]
Richard Burton Matheson was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.
Daniel Mayer Cherkoss, known by his pen name Dan Curtis, was an American television and film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was best known as the creator of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966–71), and for directing the epic World War II miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988).
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. The series followed wire service reporter Carl Kolchak who investigates mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those involving the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures. The series was preceded by the two television movies, The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). Although the series lasted only a single season, it developed cult status in syndication.
Darren McGavin was an American actor.
Night Strangler may refer to:
Stuart Townsend is an Irish actor. He portrayed Lestat de Lioncourt in the film adaptation of Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned (2002), and Dorian Gray in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). In 2007, he directed the film Battle in Seattle.
Night Stalker(s) or Nightstalker(s) may refer to:
Jo Ann Pflug is a retired American film and television actress.
Henry Burk Jones was an American actor of stage, film, and television.
Night Stalker is a television series that ran for six weeks in 2005 on ABC in the United States. The series starred Stuart Townsend as Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter whose wife was murdered. Kolchak spends his time investigating other strange murders, believing they are linked in some way to his wife's murder. He is helped along the way by a fellow crime reporter Perri Reed, photographer Jain McManus and editor Anthony Vincenzo.
Occult detective fiction is a subgenre of detective fiction that combines the tropes of the main genre with those of supernatural, fantasy and/or horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective who investigates murder and other common crimes, the occult detective is employed in cases involving ghosts, demons, curses, magic, vampires, undead, monsters and other supernatural elements. Some occult detectives are portrayed as being psychic or in possession of other paranormal or magical powers.
Janos Skorzeny is the name of two unrelated fictional characters appearing in American horror television productions:
Robert Cobert was an American composer who worked in television and films. He is best known for his work with producer/director Dan Curtis, notably the scores for the 1966–71 ABC-TV gothic fiction soap opera Dark Shadows and the TV mini-series The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel War and Remembrance (1988), for which he received an Emmy Awards nomination. Together, the latter two scores constitute the longest film music ever written for a film.
Jan Murray was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and game-show host who originally made his name on the Borscht Belt and later was known for his frequent television appearances over several decades.
Crackle of Death is a 1974 film, the fourth produced in the Night Stalker film series.
Kathie Browne was an American stage, film and television actress.
The Night Strangler is an American made for television horror film which first aired on ABC on January 16, 1973, as a sequel to The Night Stalker. In the film, an investigative reporter assigned to series of killings comes to suspect the murderer is an immortal with superhuman strength.
Mark Dawidziak is an American author and critic.
Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is the first syndicated television series based on Spillane's hard-boiled private detective Mike Hammer, played by Darren McGavin. The series was produced from 1957 to 1959, and had a run of 76 episodes over two seasons. Episodes were filmed in black and white and filled a half-hour time slot. As a syndicated television series, original air dates and the order of episodes vary by geographic location – for example, in New York City. The series debuted January 28, 1958, on WCBS-TV, and the first episode aired was "Letter Edged in Blackmail".
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