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Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Genre Horror
Crime
Created by Jeff Rice
Starring Darren McGavin
Simon Oakland
Jack Grinnage
Ruth McDevitt
Theme music composer Gil Mellé
Composer(s) Robert Cobert
Gil Mellé
Jerry Fielding
Greg McRitchie
Luchi De Jesus
Country of origin United States
No. of episodes 20 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time 50–51 minutes
Production company(s) Francy Productions Inc.
Universal Television
Release
Original network ABC
Audio format Mono
Original release September 13, 1974 (1974-09-13) – March 28, 1975 (1975-03-28)

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter—Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin—who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures.

The series was preceded by two television movies, The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). Although the series only lasted a single season, it remains popular in syndication. It is often cited as the inspiration for the popular series The X-Files. Following the success of The X-Files, the franchise was resurrected in 2005 in a second television series with a new cast and characters, as well as subsequent novels and comic books.

The main character originated in an unpublished novel, The Kolchak Papers, written by Jeff Rice. In it, a Las Vegas newspaper reporter named Carl Kolchak tracks down and defeats a serial killer who turns out to be a vampire named Janos Skorzeny. Although the reporter uses the name "Carl", the novel reveals that his birth name is "Karel". After the success of the TV film and its sequel, the novel was published in 1973 by Pocket Books as a mass-market paperback original titled The Night Stalker, with a photo of Darren McGavin on the cover to tie it to the film.

The second television film, The Night Strangler, was also turned into a novel (written by Jeff Rice but based on a script by Richard Matheson), published in 1974 by Pocket Books.

Both novels were republished in 2007 by Moonstone in an omnibus edition called The Kolchak Papers. Moonstone Books continues to produce Kolchak comic books.


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