Budd Friedman
In the 1970s, Richard Pryor dropped like a bomb into the sanitized landscape of American television. Raised in his grandmother’s Illinois bordello, he became famous for his expletive-filled stand-up routines about the black man trying to survive in the land of whiteys. His transition to television was stormy, and he had to battle to get every scene past the censors. The sacrifices he made to the white establishment contributed to a self-loathing that plagued him throughout adulthood. Seven marriages, and chronic drug abuse fueled endless media interest — as did Pryor’s setting himself on fire whilst freebasing cocaine. A string of friends including Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams recount how whenever Pryor was poised on the brink of mega success, his behavior would sabotage him — for most people to understand the comic legend you need to “omit the logic”. CN
A quirky anthology, consisting of four separate short films connected by host segments. The first one, BOOGIE WITH THE UNDEAD, has an all girl rock band booked to play a gig in a town overrun by flesh-eating zombies. In the second one, THE DEVIL’S DUE AT MIDNIGHT, a coven of beautiful witches conjure up Brad Dourif as The Devil, and endures the inept attacks of witch killer Ken Foree. In the first long segment, HER MORBID DESIRES, an actress gets the lead role in a vampire movie, only to discover that starlets are being murdered on the set. The other long segment, CRY OF THE MUMMY, has the reincarnated mummy, formerly the last Pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty, looking to sue the movie studios because he can’t get work as a mummy. His new lawyer offers to represent him as an agent, but the mummy will only work in film if he can direct.
