Kolchak: The Night Stalker (TV Series)

The Knightly Murders (1975)

Darren McGavin: Carl Kolchak

Photos 

Quotes 

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

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

  [laughs] 

  Minerva Musso : 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] 

  Minerva Musso : Ring you back, kiddo.

• Carl Kolchak : I'm, I'm sorry about this whole thing - I really am - but I did see that armor. Now, just... who was this Black Cross Knight? And 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 : Well, Captain, in a manner of speaking, two gentlemen are dead of two very bizarre means - an oversized arrow, and an obese ice pick. Now I can not minimize the concern that I have that these murders are somehow interrelated, if for no other reason than that you're handling the investigations of both.

• Carl Kolchak : [after he learns he has to buy a plaque as a bribe]  I got a hunch it'll be a walnut.

• Carl Kolchak : Tuesday, 11:15 pm. If you know anything about Chicago politics, you'll understand why a 63-year-old ward captain was braving the ungentle hour and the less-gentle streets. You see, Ward Captain Leo J. Ramutka was returning hone from a wake: an Auf Wiedersehen to a loyal, registered voter he knew would one day meet him at that great polling station in the sky. What Ward Captain Ramutaka failed to foresee was how soon that meeting would be.

• Ron Updyke : The interior decorator? You?

  Carl Kolchak : Yes. We're thinking of brightening up the office. You are gonna be replaced by a Boston fern, and you...

  [he points to Vincenzo] 

  Carl Kolchak : ... a snapdragon.

  Tony Vincenzo : Why do I always feel like I don't belong here?

• Carl Kolchak : What is important is that it takes 420 pounds pressure - psi. - to crush a telephone. Now, it says right here that a medieval knight in full armor and in full weaponry weighs well over 400 pounds.

  Tony Vincenzo : Oh, I feel much better. All my life I wanted to know that a medieval knight could crush a telephone.

• Carl Kolchak : Mendel... Mendel Boggs. What do you know about him?

  Minerva Musso : Mendel? With diligence, he might make village idiot.

• Mendel Boggs : Who are you?

  Carl Kolchak : A recorder of events great and small, an instrument of the free press! I'm a reporter.

• Capt. Vernon Rausch : He was stabbed.

  Carl Kolchak : Stabbed?

  Capt. Vernon Rausch : [Makes a stabbing motion toward his chest]  You know.

  Carl Kolchak : Yes, of course. But... stabbed by what?

  Capt. Vernon Rausch : Fair question. Something round and sharp. I'd say, a structural facsimile to an ice pick.

  Carl Kolchak : Ice pick.

  Capt. Vernon Rausch : There is, however, one disconcerting wrinkle to that premise. This particular instrument would have to have a three-inch diameter.

  Carl Kolchak : Then it isn't an ice pick!

  Capt. Vernon Rausch : All right, I'll buy that. I can buy a direct question, and I respect you for it.

  Carl Kolchak : [totally confused]  Thank you, Captain.

• Carl Kolchak : You don't know, right? Okay. Well, if you don't know, you don't know. Harry Truman said that in 1949.