The Night Stalker (telemovie)
Encyclopedia
The Night Stalker is a made for television movie which aired on ABC
on January 11, 1972. It is about an investigative reporter, played by Darren McGavin
, who comes to suspect that a serial killer in the Las Vegas area is in fact a vampire
.
. All of the victims had their blood drained, and Kolchak comes to suspect that the killer believes himself to be a vampire
, much to the chagrin of his cantankerous boss Anthony (aka Tony, Antonio) Vincenzo, portrayed by actor Simon Oakland
. Kolchak also has a girlfriend named Gail Foster (Carol Lynley
) who earns her living as a dancer. During the movie, Kolchak attempts to get her to give up her night job, though he does not offer her a proposal of marriage, or other commitment. At the urging of this girlfriend, Kolchak begins to look into vampire lore, but is skeptical.
Inexplicable events lead Kolchak to begin to believe that something supernatural
is occurring, and the evidence of his own eyes eventually persuades him that this is in fact a real vampire. Kolchak is able to convince the police that they are fighting a vampire, but it is he who ultimately takes the vampire down and unlike subsequent productions, he does so with the help of his friend in the FBI (a credible eyewitness).
In the end, Kolchak relates that his deal with the police for an exclusive was not honored. Kolchak finds himself out of a job once again, and blackmailed by the Las Vegas police never to return to Las Vegas. Kolchak is told that his girlfriend Gail has also been "asked to leave town" for engaging in unsavory activities. Carl exhausts his savings placing personal advertisements across the country in an attempt to find her but is unsuccessful.
newspaper
reporter Carl Kolchak comes across a serial killer
while working on the Las Vegas Strip
who is a modern day vampire
named Janos Skorzeny. Pocket Books finally published the book as a paperback original using the title The Night Stalker, with a photograph of McGavin wearing his trademark porkpie hat and seersucker suit.
and a planned 1974 movie entitled The Night Killers which instead evolved into the 1974-75 television series titled Kolchak: The Night Stalker
, with McGavin reprising his role in both. An episode of the series entitled "The Vampire" was an actual sequel to this movie, deriving its story from characters introduced in it.
Following the series cancellation, the franchise itself was still thought well enough of to prompt two more movies which were created by editing together material from 4 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, however.
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 movies, but not the Universal TV series, and were limited only to using characters that had appeared in those movies.
. His ubiquitous camera with flash attachment is also established but rather than the Pocket instamatic
he uses in the series, he employs a standard 35mm in the first movie. He also introduces the trademark straw pork-pie hat. However, unique to this movie alone, Kolchak actually wears more than one suit as well as in a variety of materials, not the same identifiable seersucker
suit seen in every production thereafter, à la Columbo. In the second movie, he permanently adopts the classic seersucker suit (though he alternates with one other in blue), but continues to wear different colored shirts and ties, the last production in which the character would do this. He wears white loafers in the movies, not adopting white leather tennis shoes permanently until the series. In contrast, Tony Vincenzo would only appear in the first movie without his identifiable 3-piece suits and instead sporting a substantially more casual look in open-collard short-sleeved shirts. Also, the first two movies found Kolchak driving an old rusted blue 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Rallye Sport Convertible
, rather than his usual 1965 pastel yellow Mustang convertible driven throughout the series. Perhaps most importantly, Kolchak has a girlfriend in the first movie, the only relationship he would have during Darren McGavin's portrayal of the character.
with The Night Strangler
by MGM Home Entertainment
in 2004. It is currently out of print
.
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
on January 11, 1972. It is about an investigative reporter, played by Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
, who comes to suspect that a serial killer in the Las Vegas area is in fact a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
.
Plot
In the opening of the film, Kolchak is sitting on the bed of a sleazy hotel room speaking into his trademark portable tape recorder about the story he has written and how it has been withheld by the authorities. He describes a series of murders that had plagued the world-famous Las Vegas StripLas Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
. All of the victims had their blood drained, and Kolchak comes to suspect that the killer believes himself to be a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
, much to the chagrin of his cantankerous boss Anthony (aka Tony, Antonio) Vincenzo, portrayed by actor Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...
. Kolchak also has a girlfriend named Gail Foster (Carol Lynley
Carol Lynley
Carol Lynley is an American actress and former child model.-Life and career:Lynley was born Carole Ann Jones in New York City, the daughter of Frances , a waitress, and Cyril Jones. Her father was Irish and her mother, a native of New England, was of English, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Native...
) who earns her living as a dancer. During the movie, Kolchak attempts to get her to give up her night job, though he does not offer her a proposal of marriage, or other commitment. At the urging of this girlfriend, Kolchak begins to look into vampire lore, but is skeptical.
Inexplicable events lead Kolchak to begin to believe that something supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
is occurring, and the evidence of his own eyes eventually persuades him that this is in fact a real vampire. Kolchak is able to convince the police that they are fighting a vampire, but it is he who ultimately takes the vampire down and unlike subsequent productions, he does so with the help of his friend in the FBI (a credible eyewitness).
In the end, Kolchak relates that his deal with the police for an exclusive was not honored. Kolchak finds himself out of a job once again, and blackmailed by the Las Vegas police never to return to Las Vegas. Kolchak is told that his girlfriend Gail has also been "asked to leave town" for engaging in unsavory activities. Carl exhausts his savings placing personal advertisements across the country in an attempt to find her but is unsuccessful.
Cast
- Darren McGavinDarren McGavinDarren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
as Carl Kolchak - Carol LynleyCarol LynleyCarol Lynley is an American actress and former child model.-Life and career:Lynley was born Carole Ann Jones in New York City, the daughter of Frances , a waitress, and Cyril Jones. Her father was Irish and her mother, a native of New England, was of English, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Native...
as Gail Foster - Simon OaklandSimon OaklandSimon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...
as Tony Vincenzo - Ralph MeekerRalph MeekerRalph Meeker was an American stage and film actor best-known for starring in the 1953 Broadway production of Picnic, and in the 1955 film noir cult classic Kiss Me Deadly.-Career:...
as Bernie Jenks - Claude AkinsClaude AkinsClaude Marion Akins was an American actor with a long career on stage, screen and television.Powerful in appearance and voice, Akins could be counted on to play the clever tough guy, on the side of good or bad, in movies and television. He is best remembered as Sheriff Lobo in the 1970s TV series...
as Sheriff Warren A. Butcher - Charles McGrawCharles McGrawCharles Butters , best known by his stage name Charles McGraw, was an American actor, who made his first film in 1942, albeit in a small, uncredited role. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa.-Career:...
as Police Chief Ed Masterson - Kent SmithKent SmithKent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...
as District Attorney Tom Paine - Elisha Cook Jr.Elisha Cook Jr.Elisha Vanslyck Cook, Jr. was an American character actor who made a career out of playing cowardly villains and weedy neurotics in dozens of films...
as Mickey Crawford - Stanley AdamsStanley Adams (actor)Stanley Adams was an American actor and screenwriter.-Career:Born in New York City, Adams had his first film role in 1952, when he played the bartender in the movie version of Death of a Salesman...
as Fred Hurley - Larry LinvilleLarry LinvilleLawrence Lavon "Larry" Linville was an American actor. He was known for his portrayal of obnoxious, pious, self-important and inept surgeon Major Frank Burns in the television series M*A*S*H.-M*A*S*H:...
as Dr. Robert Makurji - Jordan Rhodes as Dr. John O'Brien
- Barry AtwaterBarry AtwaterGarrett "Barry" Atwater was an American character actor who appeared frequently on TV from the 1950s into the 1970s...
as Janos Skorzeny
Production
The film is based on an original unpublished novel written by Jeff Rice. In the story, Las VegasLas Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
reporter Carl Kolchak comes across a serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
while working on the Las Vegas Strip
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
who is a modern day vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
named Janos Skorzeny. Pocket Books finally published the book as a paperback original using the title The Night Stalker, with a photograph of McGavin wearing his trademark porkpie hat and seersucker suit.
Subsequent history
The Night Stalker garnered the highest ratings of any TV movie at that time (33.2 rating - 54 share). It did well enough that it resulted in a 1973 follow-up movie called The Night StranglerThe Night Strangler (film)
The Night Strangler is a made for television movie which first aired on ABC on January 16, 1973 as a sequel to The Night Stalker.-Plot:...
and a planned 1974 movie entitled The Night Killers which instead evolved into the 1974-75 television series titled Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
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 investigates mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly ones law...
, with McGavin reprising his role in both. An episode of the series entitled "The Vampire" was an actual sequel to this movie, deriving its story from characters introduced in it.
Following the series cancellation, the franchise itself was still thought well enough of to prompt two more movies which were created by editing together material from 4 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, however.
On September 29, 2005 ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
aired a remake of the 1974 series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, titled Night Stalker
Night Stalker (TV series)
Night Stalker is a television series that ran for six weeks in the Fall of 2005 on ABC. 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...
. ABC owned the rights to the original TV movies, but not the Universal TV series, and were limited only to using characters that had appeared in those movies.
Differences from subsequent productions
While Carl Kolchak and Tony Vincenzo both appear, no other characters from the movies appear in later productions. In this film and the next, Kolchak establishes the use of both a portable tape recorder which is considerably larger than that used in the series and clearly labeled SonySony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
. His ubiquitous camera with flash attachment is also established but rather than the Pocket instamatic
Instamatic
The Instamatic was a series of inexpensive, easy-to-load 126 and 110 cameras made by Kodak beginning in 1963. The Instamatic was immensely successful, introducing a generation to low-cost photography and spawning numerous imitators....
he uses in the series, he employs a standard 35mm in the first movie. He also introduces the trademark straw pork-pie hat. However, unique to this movie alone, Kolchak actually wears more than one suit as well as in a variety of materials, not the same identifiable seersucker
Seersucker
Seersucker is a thin, puckered, all-cotton fabric, commonly striped or checkered, used to make clothing for spring and summer wear. The word came into English from Hindustani , which originates from the Persian words "shir o shekar", meaning "milk and sugar", probably from the resemblance of its...
suit seen in every production thereafter, à la Columbo. In the second movie, he permanently adopts the classic seersucker suit (though he alternates with one other in blue), but continues to wear different colored shirts and ties, the last production in which the character would do this. He wears white loafers in the movies, not adopting white leather tennis shoes permanently until the series. In contrast, Tony Vincenzo would only appear in the first movie without his identifiable 3-piece suits and instead sporting a substantially more casual look in open-collard short-sleeved shirts. Also, the first two movies found Kolchak driving an old rusted blue 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Rallye Sport Convertible
First-generation Chevrolet Camaro
The first-generation Chevrolet Camaro appeared on September 26, 1966, for the 1967 model year on an all brand new rear-wheel drive GM F-body platform and would be available as a 2-door, 2+2 seat, coupe or convertible with a choice of six-cylinder and V8 powerplants...
, rather than his usual 1965 pastel yellow Mustang convertible driven throughout the series. Perhaps most importantly, Kolchak has a girlfriend in the first movie, the only relationship he would have during Darren McGavin's portrayal of the character.
Release
The film was released on a double feature DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
with The Night Strangler
The Night Strangler (film)
The Night Strangler is a made for television movie which first aired on ABC on January 16, 1973 as a sequel to The Night Stalker.-Plot:...
by MGM Home Entertainment
MGM Home Entertainment
MGM Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-History:The home video division of MGM started in 1979 as MGM Home Video, releasing all the movies and TV shows by MGM. In 1980, MGM joined forces with CBS Video Enterprises, the home video division of the CBS television...
in 2004. It is currently out of print
Out of print
Out of print refers to an item, typically a book , but can include any print or visual media or sound recording, that is in the state of no longer being published....
.
See also
- List of Kolchak: The Night Stalker Episodes
- Crackle of DeathCrackle of DeathCrackle of Death is a 1976 film, the third produced in the Night Stalker film series. It combined the Kolchak: The Night Stalker episodes "Firefall" and "The Energy Eater" with additional narration by Darren McGavin as Kolchak....
(3rd produced movie)