TV Horror: the very words can conjure up disappointment in the hearts of fans across the world. While Hollywood has no standards or ethics, it does at least have budgets, TV has nothing but underpaid scriptwriters, C-list actors and sets borrowed from soap operas. Despite this there have been a few winners, the first few series of the X-Files, the first few series of Buffy (notice a pattern) along with mini-series like Salem’s Lot and the TV movies in the recent Masters of Horror series. Relatively unknown is a TV movie that inspired most of the above a fair few more, 1972’s the Night Stalker.
Ok, so by today’s standards this snail-passed, goth melodrama isn’t exactly terrifying, but it laid the ground work a lot of what followed. Set in Las Vegas, it’s the story of down-and-out reporter Carl Kolchak. Relegated to a crappy local newspaper after some unknown scandal in New York, all Kolchak needs is one great story to get him back on top. This being television he gets more than he bargained for. The bodies of female night workers start turning up all over the place; ‘dog-like’ bite marks on their necks and the bodies completely drained of blood. A bit of Mulder and Skully (without Skully) style investigating follows and it isn’t too long before Kolchak realises he’s looking for a Vegas Vampire.
The film may be severely lacking in gore, but there is a fair amount of creepy early seventies atmosphere and some rather impressive action sequences during which the vampire (given the dubiously Russian sounding name of Janos Skorzeny) takes on a horde of police officers, throwing them around like a rabid fox in a nursery.
Despite a few clunky moments, the final sequences for example could have been better; the script is surprisingly fresh after thirty eight years. This probably has something to do with the fact it was adapted by Richard Matheson, the author of classic horror novella I Am Legend, and various other projects in film and TV. The dialogue is snappy and most of the humour hasn’t aged terribly since first broadcast.
Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of The X-Files, has said that if he hadn’t seen this TV Movie as a child, he would never have written the pilot for his own TV show, for this alone Night Stalker deserves a place in the horror history books.
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