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Kolchak: The Night Stalker started as a novel, The Kolchak Papers,, written by Jeffrey Grant Rice. In the novel a Las Vegas newspaper reporter, Carl Kolchak, tracks down and defeats a serial killer who is really a vampire named Janos Skorzeny. Rice was approached by ABC who optioned the property, which was then adapted by Richard Matheson into a TV movie produced by Dan Curtis and directed by John Llewellyn Moxey. Actor Darren McGavin played the role of Carl Kolchak. The Night Stalker aired on the ABC network on Juanary 11, 1972 and garnered the highest ratings of any TV movie at that time (33.2 rating - 54 share). Impressed by its success, ABC comissioned Richard Matheson to write a second movie, The Night Strangler (1973), that featured another serial killer in Seattle who strangled his victims and used their blood to keep himself alive for over a century through the use of alchemy. Dan Curtis both produced and directed the second movie, which also did well in the ratings.
ABC went ahead and commissioned a TV series but failed to acquire the permission of Jeff Rice and a lawsuit resulted - it was resolved shortly before the series aired in the Fall 1974 season and Rice received an on-screen credit as series creator. The series, now named Kolchak: The Night Stalker, was set in Chicago and featured Kolchak as a reporter for the Independent News Service. Each week he investigated murders involving supernatural and science fiction creatures. The series took a light-hearted tone using black comedy and placed Kolchak in an office setting with quirky coworkers. The series was cancelled after one year due to low ratings but was made into a comic book in 2003 by Moonstone Publishing.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker has been described as a predecessor of The X-Files, and X-Files creator Chris Carter has acknowedged that the show influenced him greatly in own work. One character on The X-Files was named Richard Matheson after author Richard Matheson because of his involvement in the TV movies, and Darren McGavin, although unwilling to reprise his Kolchak character, played an FBI agent who was decribed as the "father of the X-Files."
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