The Kolchak Papers!

A few years ago I was able to at least do something I've itched to do for decades -- read the original Jeff Rice novel The Kolchak Papers better known as the The Night Stalker.

Like droves of other folks, I'm a fan of the original TV movie starring Daren McGavin, based on Rice's book, with a Richard Matheson script, and which gave me shudders for many a moon after. It's possibly the creepiest movie ever made for TV, with a wildly successful noir tone blended with an easy comedic charm that makes the whole far greater than the sum of the parts.

Well the novel version of the story which was published only after the success of the movie, has been notoriously hard to get until recently Moonstone, the company which has taken charge of the much negelected and abused Kolchak property, released both the original novel and its sequel which became The Night Strangler.

The TV-movie follows the novel very closely for the first third then veers off a bit and the ending is essentially the same but altered in some very interesting ways from the original. That's why I much prefer reading books which have inspired films rather than film novelizations, because the differences are very interesting and can be very revealing about the story's real value.

I also scouted up Moonstone's first trade reprint of their original adaptation of the "movie". The adaptation is written by Jeff Rice (making it very desirable) and drawn by Gordon Purcell (who does a workmanlike job). It draws both from the TV movie and from the novel offering up yet a third iteration of the original Kolchak story.

I don't recommend either of these unless you're already a fan of the franchise, but if you are, then you won't be disappointed by these other "versions" of the story.

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