KILLER MATERIAL

Who steals a professional comedian’s jokes steals . . not trash, or merely cash, but something akin to a piece of the soul.

At least, so says stand-up comic Biff Kincaid, who speaks with the authority of a veteran headliner. Thus, when he discovers that second-rater Roger Fisk—rich, rapacious, distinctly non-risible—plans to tape his act for the purpose of appropriating hunks of it, he’s outraged. Hard to believe it all started so innocently—with the phone call to Biff from Art Westcott, a comedian friend. Could Biff fill in for him that night at Club Chortles? No problem. Biff could, and does, but it’s there that he runs into the first of Fisk’s larcenous minions. Having caught Ned Londo in the act of purloining, Biff, as deft with his punches as with his punch-lines, makes the low-life regret it. Shortly afterward, however, he learns that Art Westcott is no more, murdered for his material by another Fisk hireling. "I don’t like it when bad things happen to good comics," growls Biff, clearly a stand-up guy in several senses. Bodies fall and blood flows as he launches a Grail-like mission to find the nefarious Fisk, a grievous discredit to an honorable profession. And when he does—bam goes Biff and down goes Fisk, who’s whisked away to the Milton Berle wing of the netherworld that’s reserved for the thieves of killer material.

Short on plot, wit, and laughs: a debut from a professional comedian that succeeds mostly in making funny men drab.