... and was written by Robert Zemeckis (in one of his first paid jobs in Hollywood) and Bob Gale, who have become staples in box-office collaborations in the years since. Moreover, the teleplay for Chopper was written by none other than David Chase, whose groundbreaking HBO series,
The Sopranos, was still twenty-five years in the future.
Darren McGavin was always a treat playing Kolchak - as was Simon Oakland as Tony Vincenzo. But, imo,
Kolchak rose to a level of top-notch sci-fi for that era in a handful of episodes that incluided
Chopper,
Horror In The Heights,
The Knightly Murders,
The Spanish Moss Murders,
Zombie [featuring former San Diego Charger all-Pro Earl Faison],
The Ripper and
Vampire.
One of my favorite moments in
Chopper involves Jim Backus, who has a small role in the episode as the owner of a motorcycle shop Kolchak frequents looking for information on vintage bikes. In one of Chopper's final scenes, Kolchak is prowling a gigantic warehouse filled with seemingly hundreds of caskets that had been dug up by city workers to make way for a new development. There are tarps pulled over top of the various rows of caskets, and the names of the departed in each row are scribbled on the side of each one. As Kolchak moves around in the dark, the camera pulls in for a tight close-up on his face against one of the tarps. One of the names listed on that particular tarp is 'Backus.'
