When it comes to the horror or supernatural genre, there are few names as popular as Stephen King. The “King of Horror” has long worn that crown, having penned iconic horror tales like Salem’s Lot, Carrie, It, and The Shining, but that doesn’t mean that he enjoys every journey into the unknown himself. In fact, although he’s often shared his love for certain horror shows on television, the one that helped launch the modern paranormal procedural, Kolchak: The Night-Stalker, is a series he offers little love for. For many, this will come as a surprise, but King has his reasons.
Stephen King Enjoyed ‘The Night Stalker’ Movie, but Absolutely Hated the TV Show
According to Far Out Magazine, King expressed his distaste for Kolchak, a short-lived ABC series that ran for only 20 episodes between 1974 and 1975. Despite the similarities between Darren McGavin‘s Carl Kolchak and the character of Richard Dees in King’s short story “The Night Flier,” the horror scribe reportedly couldn’t stand either the television series or the original novel on which it was based. King called Jeff Rice‘s The Night Stalker novel “abysmal” and echoed the same sentiments for the McGavin-led television program. “The series limped through one season, and it was an abysmal flop,” he added, eventually deeming it “atrocious.” For King, Kolchak: The Night-Stalker was nothing more than a schlocky, campy, and all-around uninteresting take on the pulp horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres that did little of interest.
Despite his clear reservations about the weekly adventures of the paranormal reporter, King did enjoy the first made-for-TV movie that sparked the incredibly brief Kolchak craze. In 1972, ABC had produced The Night Stalker, a TV adaptation of Rice’s novel of the same name that first introduced McGavin as the unlikely hero. Interestingly, King called the production “one of the best movies ever made for TV,” praising the film’s clever take on Las Vegas-based vampires. Of course, The Night Stalker eventually spawned a sequel, The Night Strangler, before eventually producing the short-lived television series. But by then, King was turned off from the character and his adventures entirely.
In contrast, King has actively expressed his love for other television horror shows. King famously wrote one of the most controversial episodes of The X-Files, and even aimed to pen another before those plans fell through. In more recent years, King has praised the CBS-turned-Paramount+ series Evil for its unique take on the genre, going so far as to assert that the series ought to be renewed even after its cancellation. So, it’s not for lack of a love for the genre or even the medium of television that King criticized Kolchak: The Night Stalker so distinctly. Rather, he just didn’t think the show was terribly well-made or impressive. It’s a shame he didn’t see its clear potential, though, because while King wasn’t impressed by Kolchak, there were others who used the series as the initial building blocks for shows that would come to define the genre.
‘Kolchak: The Night-Stalker’ Remains Influential to This Day
For filmmakers like Chris Carter and Eric Kripke, Kolchak: The Night-Stalker was the initial inspiration for shows like The X-Files and even Supernatural. The latter famously wanted Sam and Dean Winchester (played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) to be reporters, investigating supernatural claims across modern day America, while Carter hoped to see Darren McGavin reprise his role as Carl Kolchak to work alongside Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, respectively). Though McGavin left Kolchak behind after the show was axed by ABC in ’75, the actor ended up guest-starring as a former X-Files investigator, and even appeared on Carter’s other series Millennium in a role that doubled as a nod to his work on A Christmas Story. Later seasons would continue to reference The Night-Stalker program, perhaps most notably “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster.”
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Although Stephen King is an important figure in the world of paranormal adventures and iconic horror stories, we’re grateful that his opinion wasn’t shared by all. Without Kolchak: The Night-Stalker, who is to say what would have become of genre television? It’s arguably due to Kochak‘s brief-but-effective witness that many saw the potential in wild, wacky, and outlandish tales like these. What other show could jump from vampires and robots to demons, mummies, and lizard monsters in the span of only 20 episodes? What King called “atrocious,” others deemed inspiration and foundational to their view of what television could be, no longer limited strictly to Westerns, sitcoms, cop dramas, or family-friendly comedies. With Kolchak, anything was possible, and we have the show (at least in part), to thank for the outside-of-the-box thinking required for genre television.
