The Night Stalker (1973) by Jeff Rice

My father, God rest his soul, had a long and storied history of allowing me to watch age-inappropriate movies, and I loved him for it. Such was the case when in January of 1972, Dad excitedly told me we were going to watch a TV movie about a vampire. That movie was The Night Stalker and I was 6 months shy of my 10th birthday. Just a few months later he took me to see The Godfather and the next year, Enter the Dragon and The Exorcist. Dad was cool like that.

I vividly remember the movie, which was a smash hit, garnering the highest ratings of any TV movie at the time. It starred the charismatic Darren McGavin as investigative newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak and was produced by veteran TV producer Dan Curtis, best known for being the driving creative force behind the hit horror soap opera, Dark Shadows. Its teleplay was written by none other than veteran Twilight Zone writer and renowned author, Richard Matheson, whose work was based on an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, entitled The Kolchak Papers (a.k.a. The Kolchak Tapes). The movie’s popularity was so great that a sequel, The Night Strangler, was produced, followed by a short-lived single season of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a monster of the week-style TV series also starring Darren McGavin. Chris Carter has said in interviews that the TV show was his primary inspiration for the wildly popular X-Files TV series decades later.

With its name changed to The Night Stalker to reflect the smash TV movie, Rice’s original book was published in paperback in 1973 and I bought it off the supermarket rack immediately on sight, devouring it in a couple of days. So, it was with a small bit of trepidation that I dusted off that weathered paperback after almost 50 years and gave this one a re-read through a far more critical lens for this review.

The book is primarily (but not exclusively) written in first-person narrative by intrepid newspaperman, Karl Kolchak, a 48-year old veteran Las Vegas reporter who never got the big breaking story he feels could have made his career. He’s a bit of a loser in most areas of life, hanging out with low-life types and drinking too much. Unlike Matheson’s TV variant, Kolchak has no hot live-in girlfriend. In fact, the closest he comes to female companionship is a prostitute who shows him some sympathy over an occasional shared meal with fringe benefits.

It is impossible to divorce the movie and TV series from one’s mind when reading the book—McGavin’s voice is the voice I heard for Kolchak for its entirety, and that’s okay. He’s a perfect fit for the crusty, weary reporter who finally has the story of a lifetime land in his lap in the form of what at first appears to be a serial killer attacking showgirls on the sunset strip in the wee morning hours of April in 1970. Over the course of a few weeks, bodies begin to turn up that have been drained of blood, two small puncture marks on the throat with what analysis shows to be traces of human saliva at the entry wounds. Additionally, local blood banks are being robbed in brazen fashion and a composite description of a dark-haired tall thin man with chronically bad breath begins to coalesce. 

Much of what follows have become tropes of genre literature and films—no one believes Kolchak who begins to piece together that at the very least, the murderer appears to be someone who believes he’s a vampire, if not the real thing. He meets resistance and outright derision from the police and local politicians who are much more concerned with how the public might react to this story and more importantly, tourists. In this regard it’s the same basic set-up as the novel and the movie, JAWS—a predatory beast is on the loose which threatens everyone, yet no one wants to believe the lone man who has figured out the nature and reality of the threat for fear of impacting tourism.

That all changes one night when the police corner and give chase to the fugitive, whom we learn is known as Janos Skorzeny, a 70-year old European immigrant with an aristocratic background. This is a genuinely exciting and action-filled stretch where Jeff Rice’s firsthand knowledge of Las Vegas adds great geographical detail as the chase is described moving from street to street and viewed overhead by a helicopter in pursuit. Eventually Skorzeny escapes, but by this point Kolchak has essentially become embedded in the police. During this sequence, Skorzeny is shot multiple times to no effect and kills an officer. The police are finally willing to listen to what Kolchak has to say and take seriously the methods he describes to combat their foe.

As I mentioned earlier, the book is primarily written in first-person, supposedly as compiled by author Rice from Kolchak’s notes and tape recordings. There are footnotes from Rice sprinkled throughout and a couple of entire chapters where Rice dumps some rather clunky exposition into the narrative to explain things. And then there’s the fact that Kolchak is honestly not a very effective investigator. Almost all of the main breaks in the case aren’t a result of detective work, but instead are due to people coming forward to the police out of the blue with critical information, such as Skorzeny’s identity, the type and model of car he’s driving, and where he is living. This just comes across as sloppy. There are also long stretches where we are given ongoing details about people, places, and histories that add nothing to the overall forward momentum of the plot; it's just padding.

That said, I am glad to have revisited The Night Stalker. Matheson really did an excellent job of streamlining Rice’s novel and punching up the action beats for television. However, Rice’s prose style is smooth and the foundation for the cynical, wise-cracking character we know from both TV movies and the following series is there from the beginning. Recommended to fans of those movies and the TV show or to vampire fiction completists.

Some will probably be interested in my review of Leslie H. Whitten's Progeny of the Adder after reading this review.

Review by Steve Carroll