The Night Stalker (1972) on Netflix
NR19721h 14m
A string of Las Vegas murders leaves every victim drained of blood. Reporter Carl Kolchak suspects a vampire is at work, but his editor and the police will not listen.
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- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.4/108,681 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Carl Kolchak has lost jobs at newspapers around the country, and his methods are the reason. He now reports for the Daily News in Las Vegas, where a string of murders has left every victim drained of blood. The police treat his questions as a nuisance. Kolchak decides the killer believes he is a vampire, and he wants the paper to print that, but Tony Vincenzo, who runs the Daily News, will not publish anything about vampires without proof, arguing that panic and a damaged reputation would follow. Gail Foster, a change girl at a casino and Kolchak's girlfriend, pushes him to read up on vampire legend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Night Stalker (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Night Stalker became the highest-rated original television film on US television, drawing a 33.2 rating and a 48 share.
- The Night Stalker inspired Chris Carter's The X-Files; Carter cast Darren McGavin in the show as a tribute, and when McGavin declined to play Kolchak, the role was rewritten as Arthur Dales, the "father of the X-files".
- Darren McGavin devised Carl Kolchak's signature look, a seersucker suit, a battered straw hat and sneakers, imagining a New York newspaperman fired in the summer of 1962 who had not bought clothes since.
- Standards and Practices forced a script change: Gail Foster (Carol Lynley) was implied to be a Las Vegas prostitute in the original script, and was rewritten as a casino employee.
- Dan Curtis reused footage from The Night Stalker in his 1975 TV film Trilogy of Terror: the drive-in film watched by Julie Eldridge (Karen Black) and Chad Rogers (Robert Burton) is The Night Stalker with the color removed.
