“Chopper” quotes from Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Carl Kolchak

[voiceover] The teenage years - sixteen candles, fervent passions, aimless joyrides, and the forbidden taste of beer - a time the world allows for sowing one's wild oats; but, for some individuals I came to know in the summer of their discontent, it had been a time when they had sown the seeds of their own destruction.

Carl Kolchak

There's an old simple axiom about the dead: Don't disturb them, not for any reason at all. Well, I decided to ignore that, and, so, I was almost beheaded by a phantom sword.

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!

And 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?

[Luis is trying to get a guillotine exhibit working] Ah, that's just marvelous, Luis. Fix it! And never mind excuses about 200-year-old wood, either. Hmm. I'm sorry, Mr. Kolchak, but you'll have to come back tomorrow. The exhibit starts tomorrow, and we're unprepared. We're totally unprepared.

Carl Kolchak

Yeah, well, I'm only sorry I'm not gonna be able to make the exhibit. Maybe I can help you out with a feature story or... Even with pictures.

[Luis tests the guillotine exhibit behind them] Wax. Wax, Luis! And some good old-fashioned elbow grease!

Carl Kolchak

That always helps. Yeah.

I like your idea, Mr. Kolchak. But no pictures until we get it working right.

Carl Kolchak

Oh, certainly.

What, um, aspect of the Reign of Terror would you like to concentrate your oeuvre on?

Carl Kolchak

Oeu...

Picture ramifications? Social problems? Historical antecedents, perhaps?

Carl Kolchak

Well, actually, I was thinking more about the supernatural aspects.

The supernatural aspects of the Reign of Terror? That's inane.

Carl Kolchak

But original.

[chuckles] There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.

Carl Kolchak

Yeah, I know. I know that a lot of heads we're chopped off during that Reign of Terror. But, uh, were there any unearthly events resulting from that lopping off of heads? I mean, that you know of.

You're not interested in history, Mr. Kolchak. You're interested in wives' tales.

Use some steel wood, Luis!

Carl Kolchak

Try graphite! What about those wives' tales?

Oh, there was some... [scoffs] nonsense about, uh, burying the executed in common graves. Well, with careless gravediggers and what have you, the heads and the bodies were often separated, sent to different locations.

Carl Kolchak

Oh, you mean like what happens to luggage out at the airport?

Exactly. Happened to me when I flew into Chicago.

Carl Kolchak

It happens all the time here. It's terrible. What happened to those headless bodies?

Oh, legend has it that headless specters, corpses were seen wandering around the streets of Paris, attempting to wreak revenge on those that had decapitated them.

Carl Kolchak

What did the people in Paris do about these wandering corpses?

A program was instituted to rebury the heads with the bodies, and to make sure that future burials were done with care.

Carl Kolchak

And that stopped the dead from walking, right?

Legend would have us believe it did.

[sighs] Will you get off that platform? I'll do it myself, Luis!

Carl Kolchak

Uh, Dr. Strig?

Yes?

Carl Kolchak

Try shoe polish.

Shoe polish?