Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Carl Kolchak:
I promised I'd show up with a haircut, a new hat, and pressed suit... but I lie a lot.

Carl Kolchak:
You must really enjoy your work.

Nurse Eisen:
A well-done autopsy is a joy forever.

Carl Kolchak:
Son, I've seen more dead bodies than you've had TV dinners.

Carl Kolchak:
Captain Leo Winwood and I had a relationship that was long and bloody, like the Crusades, only without the chivalry.

Carl Kolchak:
If you want a job done right, you just have to foul it up yourself.

[Asked why he's going to visit a ritzy interior decorator]

Carl Kolchak:
We're thinking of brightening up the office. [Pointing at Updyke, then at Vincenzo] You are going to be replaced by Boston fern and you a snapdragon!

[Told that a dead panda at the zoo died from a heart attack]

Carl Kolchak:
A raccoon, with a heart attack... maybe you fed it too much cholesterol.

Carl Kolchak:
[about Updyke] He's persona non grata down the library.

Tony Vincenzo:
He's what?

Carl Kolchak:
Yeah, yeah. You see, he, he takes books out. He's got half the books in the library out and they're all over due. As a matter of fact, they've got a warrant out for his arrest.

Tony Vincenzo:
Well, that's not like Ron.

Carl Kolchak:
Oh, I know. I know. I was terribly disturbed about it when I heard it. I don't know, it must be some kind of er, deep-seated illness, a compulsion of sorts, a Biblio... philiac.

Carl Kolchak:
[voiceover] Buck Finemann, seventy two years old. Cantankerous old geezer. No-one liked him much, but they allowed him to play poker with them once a week because he was a terrible card player and had been known to lose as much as seventy five cents in a single evening.

Tony Vincenzo:
Your angle on the hospital dedication, Karl. How did you come up with it?

Carl Kolchak:
Oh, a little research and, er, imagination.

Tony Vincenzo:
Some angle. Two pages condemning the lack of geriatric facilities. [pointing to Emily] What did you promise her this time, orthopedic glitter boots?

Jim Elkhorn:
Macheminido. Er, he was called a bear God, Charles, and I don't really know why since he was invisible.

Carl Kolchak:
[about Updyke] He got a raise?

Emily Cowles:
Not that I'm aware of.

Carl Kolchak:
He was promoted? [Emily shakes head] Then why's he so happy?

Emily Cowles:
You're in trouble.

Coach Toomey:
Actually, Burdett never made the team.

Carl Kolchak:
No?

Coach Toomey:
You see, his butterfly stroke was like an effeminate moth.

Carl Kolchak:
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "The rich are different than you and me." They sure are. They got more money. But there wasn't enough money in the world to save some of the members of Chicago's upper crust from a fiendish force so dark, it can only be called diabolic.

Carl Kolchak:
[voiceover] If a man dresses up like an Indian to rob the Gem Exchange, I say he's strange. If he also bring his pet coyote along, I say he's an Indian.

Carl Kolchak:
[Grabbing his hat and jacket] Okay. If clothes make the reporter around here, then Carl Kolchak can play that game too!

Tony Vincenzo:
Where are you going?

Carl Kolchak:
[Storming out the door] I'm taking the rest of the afternoon off. I am going out and buy myself some new clothes, okay?

Emily Cowles:
[Delighted] Finally!

Captain Jonas:
Now, you're just upset, Mrs. Morton, and thanks to this man and his morbid, macabre babbling!

Carl Kolchak:
Babbling? And you're supposed to be the brightest and the youngest captain on the force, huh? Well, you're not even fit to be captain of the Rockettes! Suck in your gut!

Carl Kolchak:
It has been said don't disturb the dead not for any reason at all. Well I decided to ignore that and I was almost beheaded by a Phantom Sword.

Captain Jonas:
You're telling me that I should go into a barn of bones and- and find someone's skull, and then play pin-the-head on-the-stump?

Tony Vincenzo:
Carl, Carl? What station are you tuned into?

Carl Kolchak:
What?

Tony Vincenzo:
Well, how is the Prince of Fiends going to fit into my new directives? How is it going to do that?

Rosalind Winters:
Uh, do you have a comment to make?

Carl Kolchak:
Well?

Capt. Joe 'Mad Dog' Siska:
Yeah, but you couldn't print it.

Capt. Joe 'Mad Dog' Siska:
Look, Kolchak, I gotta tell you something. Some people dream about retiring.

Carl Kolchak:
Uh-huh.

Capt. Joe 'Mad Dog' Siska:
I dream about breaking your face.

Carl Kolchak:
I love you too, Siska. Listen. How's your therapy coming along? A-okay?

Capt. Joe 'Mad Dog' Siska:
Shut up.

Carl Kolchak:
What happened to Mason?

Sgt. Mayer:
Isn't it obvious? The guy was smoking in bed.

Carl Kolchak:
I didn't see any ashtrays.

Sgt. Mayer:
That's his problem.

Carl Kolchak:
Well, Mrs. Sherman, do you remember me? I'm with Sgt. Mayer.

Mrs. Sherman:
Well, he certainly takes a dim view of you.

Carl Kolchak:
Well, He's a little dimwitted anyway.

Carl Kolchak:
Now do you know anything about these kinds of things?

Maria:
Oh, well, it's a, it's, uh, a malicious and lost spirit of the dead person who's, uh, trying to wear down a living human being and take over his body, someone he envies and... what spirit would envy you?

Carl Kolchak:
[Opening monologue] There are sections of Chicago the guidebooks don't refer to. You can't blame them, really. The guidebooks' function is to sell the glamour and excitement of our Windy City, and whichever way you dress it up, old age is neither glamorous, nor exciting. Roosevelt Heights used to be a plush neighborhood, but the plush neighbors moved uptown, leaving the old people... and old people don't move easily; they become set in their surroundings. Their friends live next door, they've been going to the same store for twenty-five years, and probably the most important of all... they can't afford to relocate even if they wanted to. The battle of fixed income versus galloping inflation never ends... but even inflation took a backseat here in Roosevelt Heights, as a far greater fear overtook the residents... a terror which effectively dwarfed everything else.

Carl Kolchak:
The Rakshasa have magical powers, Tony. They seduce their victims to death by taking on the image of someone the victim trusts.

Tony Vincenzo:
And poor Harry Starman... he trusted you? Obviously he never had to depend on you to come up with a cogent story... something that'll turn a profit!

Lane Merriott:
Well, the Rakshasa is the disciple of Ravana. Ravana, whose deeds were so horrible he stopped the sun and moon in their course.

Carl Kolchak:
You know, I had a date in with a girl in college just like that once.

Lane Merriott:
Mr. Kolchak! I value my time. If it is your intention merely to be a music hall wag, please state so.

Carl Kolchak:
I'm trying to find out about a creature named a raka... rakashusi... rakalaki... rakasomething. I didn't hear it too well.

Lane Merriott:
There are a *plethora* of Indian words beginning with those syllables.

Carl Kolchak:
Well, *this* "rak" takes pleasure in eating human flesh.

Lane Merriott:
[nervously, as customers look somewhat grossed out at them] You're talking about the Rakshasa!

Harry Starman:
What about the rats?

Carl Kolchak:
Well, we all have rats, sir. You should see the one I work for.

Carl Kolchak:
I'd have liked to have told Miss Emily that the Rakshasa appeared to me as her. According to the legend it meant that I trusted her. But then I would also have had to tell her that I shot a steel arrow straight into her. I don't think she would have appreciated that.

Tony Vincenzo:
It says here the Andrews family changed their name from Arguello. And they're from Jalisco, and the hotel chain started in Veracruz.

Carl Kolchak:
It's Ha-lisco, Tony, not Ja-lisco.

Tony Vincenzo:
Oh, excuse me, Jose. I don't care if they came from Hersey City, New Hersey! There are Mexicans there too, but none of them are Aztecs.

Carl Kolchak:
Businessman? What businessman keeps a mummy in the basement and a dummy in a key staff position?

Tony Vincenzo:
Carl, you yourself said that the mummy vanished, right?

Carl Kolchak:
Yeah.

Tony Vincenzo:
You had a terrible hit on the head, and you saw things. And as for having dummies in key staff positions, I'm as guilty as the next.

Carl Kolchak:
[Voiceover Intro, a groggy Kolchak has been doped by the Feds] I don't know when I was in this office last. In some ways it feels like I never left. [pause] No, that's not right. For a while I was away, far away, in the hands of men with no faces. They broke me down, broke my story down, and convinced me it hadn't happened the way I remembered. [Gropes for his tape recorder] Memories fade fast enough without chemical help. But if I don't tell this story now, I'm afraid I never will. Now... what was that date?

Carl Kolchak:
Tell me, do mortuaries give you a weird feeling?

Carl Kolchak:
Well, it looks like a freezer. But it's so hot and damp and humid in here, you could steam littleneck clams.

Captain Maurice Molnar:
Well, it's out of order.

Carl Kolchak:
Yeah, it stinks, too. It smells of mildew. Phew!

Captain Maurice Molnar:
Maybe it's your undershirt.

Ron Updyke:
It seems some dangerous animals did escape, including two large apes, a pair of adult African gibbons, as well as a Malayan tiger, a civet cat, and a pie-cost.

Tony Vincenzo:
What's a pie-cost?

Ron Updyke:
89 cents. [chuckles]

Carl Kolchak:
The people's candidate. Fearless, independent and energetic. Why can't the people's candidate be like the rest of us - Timid, insecure and lazy?

Carl Kolchak:
The old cliche that politics makes strange bedfellows is only too true. At one time or another, various and sundry politicians have found themselves, when it proved expedient, of course, sharing a blanket with the military, organized crime, disgruntled, gun-toting dairy farmers, the church, famous athletes, the comedians - the list is endless. But there was a senatorial race not so long ago right here in Illinois where the strangest bedfellow of all was found under the sheets. The strangest... and certainly the most terrifying.

Carl Kolchak:
I was a young man when I started waiting for that elevator, but there's two things that just can't be rushed: anyone who's paid by the hour and an office building elevator.

Carl Kolchak:
Tony! Tony, Palmer is evil incarnate! He's going to go all the way to the White House, to the Oval Office!

Ron Updyke:
[Kolchak's looking through a book of dog pictures] The Kolchak family album?

Carl Kolchak:
What don't you like about this hat?

Tony Vincenzo:
What's under it.

Carl Kolchak:
[taking Miss Emily's bottle of holy water] It's okay, Emily, God will understand, I hope.

Tony Vincenzo:
You know, I had once planned to enter the priesthood.

Carl Kolchak:
And then the Inquisition ended and all the fun went out of it for you.

Carl Kolchak:
Uh, what's it like living with Bob?

Lorraine Palmer:
He's perfect.

Carl Kolchak:
I wish I were.

Lorraine Palmer:
So do I. Good night!

Tony Vincenzo:
Well, I don't mind political expos?s if the facts are there. But, Kolchak, why does our political expos? have to have a dog in it?

Receptionist:
Here you are, Mr. Kolchak.

Carl Kolchak:
Thank you very much. Anybody important here today?

Receptionist:
No, just a bunch of reporters.

Carl Kolchak:
As the great Louis Pasteur once said, "Any schmo can invent a rabies vaccine, but when will we find a cure for stupidity?"

Capt. Vernon Rausch:
[to Kolchak] You are a man who has resorted to lies and chicanery to the point of being pathological. I believe that you suffer from autosuggestion, and in an obsessive desire to win approval expressed through the need for a big story, you convince yourself that what you want to be true is true. In short... I believe your brain has turned to onion dip.

Carl Kolchak:
[stammering as to felonious intentions] Neither one, so, uh, don't get excited.

Minerva Musso:
[speaking on the telephone in bed] Oh, he says I shouldn't get excited. [laughs] Depressing little man.

Carl Kolchak:
Uh, Carl Kolchak, uh, I.N.S.

Minerva Musso:
[speaking on the telephone in bed] Oh, he's a newspaper man. That explains it. [laughs] Ring you back, kiddo.

Carl Kolchak:
I'm, I'm sorry about this whole thing. I really am. But I did see that armor. Who was this Black Cross Knight? I mean where did this armor come from?

Mendel Boggs:
I wouldn't give you another piece of information if you held me down and let a pack of rats run through my clothes willy-nilly.

Carl Kolchak:
[voiceover intro] If by chance you happened to be in the Windy City between May 25 and May 29 of this year, you would have had good reason to be terrified. During this time Chicago was stalked by a horror so frightening, so fascinating, that it ranks with the great unsolved mysteries of all time. It's been the fictional subject of films, plays, even an opera. Now, here, are the true facts.

Carl Kolchak:
For once be a cop instead of an ostrich!

Carl Kolchak:
[reading a letter to Miss Emily] Dear Miss Emily, the three dumbest things in the world are you, your column, and your paper. I am overwhelmed by the accumulated dumbness. PS Do you know of a cure for acne? A friend of mine has it.

Carl Kolchak:
Now, if you can help me, I, uh, I can make it worth your while.

Ted Chapman:
How do you know how much my while is worth?

Lieutenant Irene Lamont:
Did a guy come in here wearing a seersucker suit with red hair?

Receptionist:
There was a Mr. Kolchak. I believe he was with a nickel firm in New Mexico.

Lieutenant Irene Lamont:
He's got nothing to do with nickel. He's the proverbial bad penny. Now, where is he?

Carl Kolchak:
Whatever happened to "I'm okay, you're okay"?

Capt. Joe 'Mad Dog' Siska:
Well, to tell you the truth, you're not okay! The people in group therapy didn't tell me I was ever gonna meet anybody as un-okay as you are.

Carl Kolchak:
Did you know Mickey Patchek?

Madame Trevi:
I never met him. I wish I could say the same about you.

Carl Kolchak:
Okay, how much is it?

The Figure:
There is no charge. A nominal contribution will be appreciated. [One bill is put into urn] Not that nominal.

Carl Kolchak:
They should meet my boss. He'd turn Buddha into a chain smoker.

Tony Vincenzo:
I'm tired of it, Kolchak. I am fed up. I've got a brother-in-law who's got a 14 year old he's always bailing out of juvenile hall, but I've got you, and you are worse!

Carl Kolchak:
They booked me for murder just like I thought they would, but then after 12 hours they let me go. They never said why, but while I was sitting in Lt. Matteo's office waiting for execution. I happen to see a coroner's report on Catherine Rawlins. I quote the coroner "The tissue structure of the individual appeared to be that of a female species human who had been dead at least three years this is a medical conundrum for which I have no explanation". Three years!

Paula Griffin:
Is this that important to you?

Carl Kolchak:
Oh, very.

Paula Griffin:
Okay. But next time, don't try to con me. Just lay it on me.

Carl Kolchak:
Now wait just one minute. If you put me someplace against my will and something happens to me, you're gonna have to write a new chapter in the Maritime Code, or my editor's name is not Antonio Vincenzo.

Captain Julian Wells:
Your editor. Release him. Not here, outside!

Ron Updyke:
I think I'm getting sick.

Tony Vincenzo:
Well, how about all those megavitamins you've been taking, and the massive doses of Vitamin "C"?

Ron Updyke:
They're making me sick.

Kaz:
Hey, why don't you take another cab?

Conventioneer:
[speaking with a hangover] Who do you think you're talking to, cabbie? I am the president of my own feed company. I flew here first class. I'm staying at the Randolph, the biggest hotel in the world. Twenty-four hundred rooms.

Kaz:
Hey, sport, you are not staying at the biggest hotel in the world. The Hotel Rossiya in Moscow has thirty-two hundred rooms and your hotel's nothing.

Conventioneer:
[pauses] Who counts Communists?

Tony Vincenzo:
Carl, do you mind if I read the copy? After all, I am the bureau chief here.

Carl Kolchak:
Yes, absolutely, Tony. Absolutely. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I'll spitball a few ideas at cha.

Tony Vincenzo:
Spitballing a few ideas is when you start a feature, not when you're polishing it.

Carl Kolchak:
No, no. That's the way I work, Tony. See, I spit and polish at the same time.

Sergeant Orkin:
You're Kolchak?

Carl Kolchak:
Yeah, that's right.

Sergeant Orkin:
You're the one the precinct captains are always talking about?

Carl Kolchak:
What do they say?

Sergeant Orkin:
That you're a pinwheel.

Carl Kolchak:
[speaking offscreen] According to the police Willie had died from severe blows. It was a gangland killing.There were no suspects their were no leads. So what else was new.

Carl Kolchak:
[voiceover intro] Popular folklore would have us believe that deep in the underworld there are ruthless men who fear nothing. [cynical pause] This story should debunk that myth.

Carl Kolchak:
[last lines] Francois Edmonds, the deceased, was buried for a third time at public expense. A *third* time. However, this time rock salt was poured in his mouth, and his lips were sewn shut. City officials will deny this. But you can see it for yourself. If you'd care to venture out to St. Lucy's Cemetery and... exhume the corpse. Be my guest.

Carl Kolchak:
[speaking of an informant] The Monk was of a lower order. He had never taken the vows of poverty or silence.

Carl Kolchak:
[Voiceover intro] I knew this one would be more than the biggest story of my career. It was the biggest story in the lives of everyone on this planet. I fought for the story, fought harder than ever before. I wanted people to know, to be prepared... if you can be prepared for something like this.

Carl Kolchak:
Then I'll have to start at the beginning, with the autopsy on the dead panda.

Tony Vincenzo:
[while dining] Carl, start somewhere else, will ya?