The Red Circle

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

By Ryan Brlecic

The story of Carl Kolchak was never to see the light of day. Jeff Rice, who wrote the original novel that debuted Carl (or Karel in the novel) as a roguish reporter who took on the quest to find The Night Stalker, would eventually get the better of him. Rice would never find a publisher to see the book to print. The story, however, was as stubborn as the character Kolchak and failed to fall into obscurity; finding it’s way to the desks of Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson. The latter of the two wrote a teleplay based on the unpublished novel while the former produced the two-hour made for TV movie. The success in ratings led to the novel finally seeing print and consequently a second direct to TV movie The Night Strangler ( to which Rice wrote a tie-in novelization). A third TV Movie, called The Night Killers was in the works, but the positive demand at the time led to ABC/Universal decision to green light a TV series instead.

Illustration by Ryan Brlecic

Darren McGavin would return to head up the series after and was given an executive producer credit on the show. McGavin not only worked hard to give Kolchak depth, but also created many of the characters that populated the Independent News Service (INS) where he worked. Simon Oakland returned from the television movies as well, playing his editor and only fan Tony Vincenzo.

The series started out strong with a take on Jack the Ripper mythology. As the season would continue the series managed to hit on all major myths and monsters. It became a literal who’s who of Hollywood actors at the time in guest or supporting roles. The show also became a proving ground for talent like David Chase (The Sopranos) and Bob Gale (Back to the Future).

Coming from two highly successful TV films, the series seemed a sure hit. But the show faced unfortunately dismal ratings. The impact the show made despite its brief airtime is most assuredly attributed to the limitless charm and reality McGavin brought to the character of Carl Kolchak. He was our in, he was us and he questioned the things that on any other day we would count mundane or coincidental. More often than not this got him knee deep in a Chicago sewer, swamp root firmly in hand, attempting to fight off a bog monster.  He put it all on the line for the people that would never find out the truth, and would never even give him a simple “thank you” for saving their lives. Never without his recorder, camera, straw hat, rumpled suit, and an elaborate excuse to be somewhere he was not supposed to be Carl was fearless in pursuit of truths that would never see print.

Long before he joined a small pantheon of amazing on-screen fathers with his turn in A Christmas Story, it was McGavin’s voice that led you through the stories each week. It was his disjointed cool that effortlessly navigated the ever revolving police chief foils. McGavin’s Carl Kolchak was the guy who sat next to Steve McQueen’s Cooler King (The Great Escape) in school and dated his ex-girlfriends. No matter how ridiculous the solution, Kolchak could match it. He could find a silver bullet on cruise ship, locate a special swamp root at 2 AM, or beat the devil at politics. His skill was as unmatched as his foolish bravado.

This show and McGavin in particular would serve to inspire numerous influential projects in their own right. A series of Comics from Moonstone, The Dresden Files, Fringe, and Supernatural are some examples. Most notably, the series gained an acknowledgement by Chris Carter that Carl Kolchak was the sole inspiration for his show The X-Files. McGavin would get the honors of making this official with his portrayal of Agent Arthur Dales, the originator of the FBI’s so-called X-Files. He would play father to Millennium’s Frank Black, Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison and even Murphy Brown. He remained woefully underrated throughout his career as an actor who never failed to bring something you immediately familiarized with and yet still always found interesting and new. McGavin would ask to leave the series with two episodes to film, citing that he had grown weary of the monster-a-week pace the show had fallen into. The network obliged his request.

In 20 episodes (all of which you can access via Netflix), Carl Kolchak strives to find the truth behind events. The kind of facts that you need to read between the lines to discover. A thankless task of being burdened by the things that the oblivious public would just walk past while we wallow in our ignorance (willingly or not). Misunderstood and often misrepresented, Kolchak’s only friend was the truth and it was ours to discover with him weekly in 1974. But for Carl Kolchak, more often then not his stories never saw the light of day.

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