New 'Night Stalker' looks to follow in past's creepy footsteps

Frank Spotnitz will never forget Jan. 11, 1972.

That was the day ABC broadcast ''The Night Stalker," a thriller about a headstrong newspaper reporter, Carl Kolchak, who is convinced a vampire is on the loose in Las Vegas. The film, which starred Darren McGavin, quickly became a cult classic and spawned a short-lived TV series that later inspired ''The X-Files."

''It scared the pants off of me," recalls Spotnitz, a television producer who was 11 years old at the time. ''It seemed so real."

Tonight at 9, Spotnitz, who worked for eight years as a producer and writer on ''The X-Files," is hoping to spook a new generation with the premiere of his ''Night Stalker" remake series on ABC.

As in the original film, Kolchak works as a reporter, this time in Los Angeles, where he hopes to somehow link unexplained violent crimes to the bizarre murder of his own wife 18 months before.

Stuart Townsend (''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") stars as Kolchak. Gabrielle Union (''The Honeymooners") is Perri Reed, the senior crime reporter at the Beacon who is very skeptical about Kolchak's theories and his personal history.

Tonight, the duo will chase a coyote-like creature back to its cave after it brutally murders a pregnant woman and kidnaps a little girl. Next week, they will battle a cult leader who apparently has telepathic powers to force people to kill their family members, even though that cult leader is in jail.

''The mythology of the show is good versus evil," Spotnitz says. ''I believe there is evil in the world . . . and evil seems more powerful than good because evil is not handicapped by a conscience or morality or mercy. So how do you win?"

''The Night Stalker" is up against some tough competition in the scary category this season. ABC's alien-drama ''Invasion" has already created buzz. There's also ''Threshold" on CBS, ''Surface" on NBC, and ''Supernatural" on the WB.

What's more, viewers today -- after watching shows like ''The X-Files" or ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- need to see more than a mummy or a werewolf to jump out of their seats.

''I want to be genuinely frightened or mystified," says Nancy Holder, a fan of the original ''Night Stalker" and author of 20 novelizations of ''Buffy" and ''Angel," including most recently ''Queen of the Slayers."

Holder, who teaches creative writing at the University of California at San Diego, says the key to penning horror stories is creating not only a hair-raising monster but also establishing a likable protagonist. ''I want to care deeply about Kolchak or I won't care about the show," she says.

Joseph Nassise, president of the Horror Writers Association in Palo Alto, Calif., says that replacing the original Kolchak -- a beloved but rumpled Matlock type who wore a seersucker suit and straw hat -- is a major hurdle. ''I loved Darren McGavin for his average Joe-ness," he says, adding that some hardcore fans will no doubt believe that ''the new guy won't hold up."

Let's not forget that ''Kolchak: The Night Stalker" has already failed once as a TV show. It aired on ABC for just one season, from 1974 to '75. Spotnitz says the show's concept was faulty because Kolchak was a down-and-out reporter who never got the story. ''He came across headless motorcyle riders, mummies, and werewolves and everybody would cover it up. It was the same thing every week," Spotnitz says. ''In today's world, you can't do a series like that. The public wouldn't accept it."

On the new series, investigative reporters Kolchak and Reed will solve some mysteries, although the truth may not always be published. ''This time around, what's important for Kolchak isn't so much getting the story in the paper but finding out the truth so he can solve his wife's murder," Spotnitz says.

After all those years working on ''The X-Files," one would expect Spotnitz to be fresh out of spooky tales. He insists, however, that he still has some scare left in him. ''I love this genre, which is exactly the kind of genre I adored as a child," he says.

The producer, who was approached by Touchstone Television to create the remake, says he's prepared for critics to compare Kolchak (the zealot) and Reed (the skeptic) with ''The X-Files" characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. ''The idea of a believer and a skeptic is part of supernatural literature," he says. ''Even in 'Jaws,' there are skeptics who don't believe."

With so much of his attention focused on dark things, Spotnitz must be a paranoid, nervous wreck, right?

''Honestly, I'm not easily scared," he says. ''When I watch an episode that I think is particularly scary, my response is to laugh."

Suzanne Ryan can be reached at sryan@globe.com