Rice, Jeff
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author Jeffrey Grant Rice (1944-2015), best known for his novel The Night Stalker (written 1970; 1973), which before publication was adapted by Richard Matheson as the made-for-television film The Night Stalker (1972). The protagonist of both book and film is newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak, whose investigation of a serial killer leads to a Vampire culprit. The next, very similarly plotted episode of The Kolchak Papers, The Night Strangler (1974), is a Tie based on Matheson's screenplay for the follow-up Kolchak film The Night Strangler (1973; vt The Time Killer); here the killer proves to be a Mad Scientist for whom bodily fluids stolen from victims are the key to an elixir of Immortality. This second film was the pilot for the popular Television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-1975), a significant precursor of The X-Files (1993-2002). The latter series' success gave rise to a 1990s revival of interest in Kolchak, leading in turn to Sequels by Other Hands including Anthologies of new Kolchak stories and Comics spinoffs. There was a remake of the television series in 2005 (again see Kolchak: The Night Stalker). [DRL]
Jeffrey Grant Rice
born Providence, Rhode Island: 1944
died Las Vegas, Nevada: 1 July 2015
works (selected)
series
The Kolchak Papers
- The Night Stalker (New York: Pocket Books, 1973) [The Kolchak Papers: pb/photographic]
- The Kolchak Papers #1: The Night Stalker (Massapequa Park, New York: Cinemaker Press, 1993) [vt of the above: The Kolchak Papers: pb/Kevin Barnes]
- The Night Strangler (New York: Pocket Books, 1974) [tie to the film The Night Strangler: based on Richard Matheson's screenplay: The Kolchak Papers: pb/]
- The Kolchak Papers: The Original Novels (Calumet City, Illinois: Moonstone, 2007) [omni of the above two: The Kolchak Papers: pb/Doug Klauba]
links
previous versions of this entry