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Darren McGavin; Carol Lynley; Claude Akins; Ralph Meeker
One of the best. Darren McGavin plays the irascible Carl Kolchak in a short-lived series that would become the inspiration for everything from X-Files to Buffy to Werewolf (check out the name Janos Skorzeny).

In a clever merging of the supernatural and noir genres, newsman/gumshoe Kolchak stumbles upon what appears to be a real live vampire living and feeding in Las Vegas. Despite constant resistance from the authorities, who stodgily refuse to believe that such a thing might exist, Kolchak is able to piece together the puzzle (with the help of his prostitute girlfriend, gorgeously under-played by Lynley) and catch the nasty in a delirious gothic finale.

Dark, fast-paced, and very violent, The Night Stalker is smart and scary, and far more successful than it has any right to be at combining tropes of horror, private eye, police procedural, and film noir (all with a decidedly late-sixties bongo/jazz flute score). Master director John Llewellyn-Moxey would go on to direct some of the finest MOTW, including The Strange and Deadly Occurrence, as well as Charlie’s Angels. But the real star here is the sharp script by short-story legend Richard Matheson (“Duel”, “Prey”, “I am Legend”), which manages to be a sobering reminder that old white men run the world (the ending is decidedly downbeat) while introducing a remedy in the vital, charismatic character of Kolchak, brilliantly played by McGavin. The best-rated TV movie of its time upon original airing.