The Night Stalker was a made for television movie which aired on ABC in 1972 about an investigative reporter, played by Darren McGavin, who has a penchant for dealing with the bizarre, supernatural, U.F.O.'s, and the paranormal. The film was based on an original unpublished short story titled The Kolchak Papers, written by Jeffery Grant Rice. In the story, Las Vegas newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak comes across a serial killer working on The Las Vegas Strip who is a modern day Count Dracula named Janos Skorzeny.

Pocket Books finally published the book as a paperback original using the title The Night Stalker, with a photograph of McGavin wearing his trademark porkpie hat and seersucker suit.

The film did well enough that it resulted in a 1973 sequel called The Night Strangler and a 1974 television series titled Kolchak: The Night Stalker, with McGavin reprising his role in both.

Carl Kolchak is a newspaper reporter with an abrasive personality that has gotten him fired ten times from various big-city papers. Now he's reduced to reporting for a relatively small-time paper in Las Vegas. It's here he gets the story of his life. But will the local sheriff, or the D.A., or even his own boss, let him print it? He has an ally in the FBI agent brought in to investigate this strange case. It seems someone is biting the necks of young girls and draining their blood. Can this killer with supernormal powers really be a 70-year-old Rumanian millionaire? Can he really be a vampire? And can an aging reporter do anything to stop him? Written by J. Spurlin

Wisecracking reporter Carl Kolchak, investigating a string of gruesome murders in Las Vegas in which the victims are drained of blood, concludes that a vampire is on the loose. Since the mayor, the police chief and his own editor think he's off his rocker, it's up to Kolchak to stop the bloodsucker himself. Written by Marty McKee

Dogged reporter Carl Kolchak sets in on the scent of a series of strange murders in Las Vegas. It seems that each victim has been bitten in the neck and drained of all their blood, and Kolchak is sure that it is a vampire. He is hard pressed, however, to convince the Las Vegas police and soon realizes that he must stop the killer himself. Written by SindyMac

A vampire is loose in Las Vegas, stalking unsuspecting victims. Reporter Carl Kolchak (Darrin McGavin) is hot on his trail, but nobody believes him. His editor thinks he's nuts, the police think he's a hinderence in the investagation, so Kolchak takes matters into his own hands to rid Vegas of the blood sucking menace. Written by Humberto Amador