FOULED-UP PLAY

FOUL PLAY (1978)
dir: Colin Higgins

Crazy #47, February 1979
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble

Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn), a recently divorced librarian, is being encouraged by her friends at a party to get out and mingle. She briefly talks with this guy Tony Carlson, who's really clumsy and it doesn't go anywhere.

She picks up another guy Bob Scott (Bruce Solomon) while driving home, they hit it off and arrange a date later. While driving him, he asks her to hold on to his cigarettes because he's trying to cut down and doesn't want to be tempted. She doesn't know that he's hidden microfilm in it. Later, during their date at a movie theater, he shows up stabbed (not shown) and dies. When she reports the death to the owners, he ends up missing. She tells her landlord Mr. Hennessy (Burgess Meredith) when she gets home and the next day at work her co-worker and friend (Marilyn Sokol) shows her tools to protect herself.

As Gloria leaves work, a man known as "The Albino" (William Frankfather) starts chasing her, and she ducks into a bar, begging the first man she sees, a guy named Stanley(Dudley Moore), to take her home. She's doing it to escape The Albino but he thinks she's doing it to get some. Now she has to run from him as well. Don't we men suck?

At home, she's attacked by a man who wants the microfilm that was planted on her earlier. She faints and when she comes to she sees two cops standing there. It turns out Tony, the guy she met earlier at the party is a detective, and is with his partner (Brian Dennehy). As usual with Crazy, the speech balloons get mixed up in the last panel.

People are trying to kill Gloria because she's caught up in a plot within the church to assassinate the Pope, who will be attending an opera that week. Gloria must now be protected by the police and stays in Tony's houseboat where the two of them start a romantic relationship. When Gloria is at home later, she almost kills a bible salesman, a little person (Billy Barty, here drawn as Herve Villechaise), because because before Scott dies, he says "beware the dwarf".

"The Dwarf" is one of the criminals involved in the plot to kill the Pope. They've kidnapped Tony's partner, who's convinced Gloria to meet him at a building, which as a trap to kill her because she knows too much. When she finds out it's a trap, she runs through the building trying to escape. The building is a massage parlor, and she runs into Stanley in one of the rooms, and he pretend he mistakenly went to the wrong place.

Tony shows up with Gloria and attempt to defeat the assassins, but the one with the gun, The Albino, is already at the opera. Hennessy shows up and has a fight with one of them (Rachel Roberts) in one of the few male/female fight scenes on film. They must get there in time to stop it. They hijack a car that has Japanese tourists who don't speak English but are thrilled to be part of an American car chase.

At the opera they save the Pope and kiss when the curtain rises (Not shown here: Stanley, who's been shown to be a pervert in the other two scenes he was in, is conductor of the orchestra). Here the audience is the cast of Saturday Night Live and Laugh-In, where Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn got their start. Pictured are Henry Gibson (I think that's who that is. He looks more like Peter Lorre), Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, JoAnn Worley, Ruth Buzzi, John Belushi, Arte Johnson, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, and Dan Aykroyd.