'The Night Stalker' by Richard Matheson and Jeff Rice

After continually losing his job at most of the major newspapers in America, hard-headed journalist Carl Kolchak ends up in Las Vegas working for long-suffering editor Tony Vincenzo. Called back to work from his first holiday in years, Kolchak investigates the mysterious death of a young girl whose body has been drained of blood. Learning that a cocktail waitress has also been found dead, Kolchak visits the murder scene and finds that the exsanguinated girl’s neck has been bitten; however, when he then tries to print a report of a wildman on the loose Kolchak finds his story dropped by a sceptical Vincenzo. After a third such murder takes place mass panic breaks out, prompting the police to attempt to hush up the story, instructing Kolchak to keep quiet. When a hospital is broken into and a quantity of blood stolen, the hospital workers are able to give a description of the attacker; the police begin a search. A witness to the next murder gives a description of the attacker to both the police and Kolchak. Convinced that the killer is a nut who thinks he is a vampire, Kolchak tries once more to get his story printed, but is again stopped by Vincenzo; however, believing that the public must be warned he manages to get a drawing of the killer printed in a rival newspaper. After a blazing argument with Vincenzo, Kolchak decides to find the murderer himself, but when he follows up a lead he can only watch with amazement as the killer shrugs off a hail of police bullets and escapes. The police are now able to identify their assailant as Janos Skorzeny, an international fugitive who, despite now being seventy years old, has been responsible for murders from Europe to America dating back thirty years. Kolchak is now certain that the killer is a real vampire, but his warnings are ignored by the police and the authorities. A determined Kolchak decides to take matters into his own hands - he sets off in search of Skorzeny armed with a cross, a hammer and a wooden stake…

Darren McGavin (Carl Kolchak), Carol Lynley (Gail Foster), Simon Oakland (Tony Vincenzo), Ralph Meeker (Bernie Jenks), Claude Akins (Sheriff Warren Butcher), Kent Smith (District Attorney Tom Payne), Stanley Adams (Fred Hurley), Elisha Cook Jr. (Mickey Crawford), Larry Linville (Medical Examiner Robert Makurji), Jordan Rhodes (Doctor John O’Brian), Barry Atwater (Janos Skorzeny), Edward Faulkner (Las Vegas Policeman)*
*Uncredited
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey Produced by Dan Curtis

TX (US): 11th January, 1972

Running Time: 74 minutes

Notes:
*Featuring Carl Kolchak and Tony Vincenzo

*Working titles: ‘The Kolchak Tapes’, 'The Kolchak Papers'

*At the time of its original transmission, ‘The Night Stalker’ was the most highly-rated television movie ever, achieving a 33.2 rating and a 54% share of viewers