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 – March 28, 1975 |
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The main character originated in an unpublished novel, The Kolchak Papers, written by Jeff Rice.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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