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See also Night Stalker (disambiguation) for a complete list of references to clarify differences between these closely named or closely related articles.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a live-action television series that aired on ABC from September, 1974 to March, 1975. Only twenty episodes of the series were produced, but the show gained cult status amongst horror and sci-fi fans and has grown in popularity over the years. The series starred Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter for the Independent News Service whose inquiries into bizarre crimes draws him into a world filled with vampires, demons, ghosts and werewolves. The concept of the show originated with the 1972 Jeff Rice short story collection The Kolchak Papers, which introduced Carl Kolchak and featured a serial killer named Janos Skorzeny. The character made his film debut in the 1972 television movie The Night Stalker, which was followed up in 1973 with the sequel The Night Strangler. In March of 2002, Moonstone Books licensed the rights to publish a series of Kolchak: The Night Stalker comic book mini-series and one-shots. The television series was remade in 2005 under the title The Night Stalker and featured Stuart Townsend in the role of Carl Kolchak. The series was considered a critical failure and only lasted eight episodes. All twenty episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker have been made available on DVD.
Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files and Millennium cited Kolchak: The Night Stalker as his inspiration behind creating The X-Files.
The name Janos Skorzeny, the antagonist featured in the novel The Kolchak Papers, was also used as the name of the werewolf antagonist featured in the first season of the short-lived Werewolf television series.
Paul Playdon was the producer on the first two episodes of the series when the show was titled simply The Night Stalker. After his departure, he was replaced by Cy Chermak, who produced the remaining eighteen episodes of the show.
