Dragnet (1987)

Christopher Plummer: Whirley

Photos 

Quotes 

• Joe Friday : [Friday addresses Whirley after he has entered a bathroom stall]  Hold it right there, Whirley. Police officer, you're under arrest.

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : I beg your pardon, what is this? Some kind of a feeble joke?

  Joe Friday : Oh, it's a real knee-slapper, friend, if you consider California Penal Code section 4A, 4207A, 597 and 217: Theft, Kidnapping, Cruelty to Animals, and Attempted Murder something to laugh about.

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : [seated on the toilet with his pants around his ankles]  I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.

  Joe Friday : My partner and I witnessed that little torchlight picnic you threw last night, we're gonna put you where your kind always ends up - in a seven by seven foot grey-green metal cage in the fifteenth floor of some hundred-year-old penitentiary, with damp, stinking walls and a wooden plank for a bed. Sure, this city isn't perfect, we need a smut-free life for all of our citizens; cleaner streets, better schools, and a good hockey team. But the big difference between you and me, mister, is you made the promise, and I'm going to keep it.

  [everyone applauds] 

• Joe Friday : Ah, sure, but just like every other foaming, rabid psycho in this city with a foolproof plan, you've forgotten you're facing the single finest fighting force ever assembled.

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : The Israelis?

• Joe Friday : [after realizing Whirley is the mastermind behind PAGAN]  How do you see yourself going down in history? Pagan or reverend, devil or angel?

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : Why, both, of course. One can't exist without the other. Without the Jerry Caesars, there'd be no moral outrage. What's the good of moral outrage... unless you have something tangible to direct it against? By this time tomorrow, thanks to that poison gas you've been tracking like some flu-ridden bloodhound, Mr. Caesar will be sitting in that big Jacuzzi in the sky, and I'll control both sides of the equation.

  Joe Friday : Sure, but like every other psycho in this city with a foolproof plan, you've forgotten you're facing the finest fighting force ever assembled.

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : The Israelis?

  Joe Friday : Try the decent, hardworking men and women of Los Angeles.

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : Forgotten about them? My dear Sergeant, I'm absolutely counting on them.

• Jane Kirkpatrick : [the mayor, in an interview on a TV program]  What a deep honor it is for this city that you have chosen Los Angeles to be the new focal point for the Moral Advancement Movement of America

  [MAMA] 

  Jane Kirkpatrick : .

  Reverend Jonathan Whirley : Oh, it's quite simple, uh, really, uh, Jane. If one wishes to effect a financial upheaval in this country, one should set his or her sight on Wall Street. If one wishes to revolutionize the, uh, political system, he or she would naturally go to Washington, heh, heh. But, uh, when dealing with, uh, pornography, filth, crime, degradation, what better place is there to begin with than Los Angeles, the current capital of depravity in what sadly passes for the modern world.