Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ordinary television situation comedy. Most jokes are on the order of a character's exclamation at a policeman's inopportune knock: "Don't just stand there... panic!" Many of these jokes seem dated in Man for Man as well as on television. But other do not, largely because the plot of Man for Man is a bit less bland than most situation comedies: at the end of the play, for example, four out of the eight male characters--all of whom are homosexual in varying degrees--have been shot to death...
...shot unless I pull the trigger," he reassures everyone,) and Cosmic Debris, who claims to be an old friend of Uncle Harold ("Poor old Harold," he sniffs miserably. "Sometimes I think all he ever lived for were the mangoes and the potted palms.") As in any other farce, the plot finally comes unravelled with a bang--four, in fact. Afterwards, two women--Funny Uncle Harold's nieces--come on stage, make the survivors carry off the bodies, and offer a sort of moral: "You know the old saying: Put seven men in a room, and nine will come out dead...
...action is in development of vacation-home and retirement-home communities from Quechee Vt. to Sun City, Ariz. Second homes will account for 300,000 of this year's 2.1 million housing starts. Large land corporations have sprung up to meet the demand. Typically they buy a huge plot, bulldoze a few roads, dig out an artificial lake or build a golf course, and sell lots to the public...
...fights-all staged by the star himself-have an almost choreographic flow. Their frequency, which keeps the movie racing blindly along, leaves little room for plot, and only a minimum is supplied. Bruce Lee (who starred last spring in Fists of Fury, one of the first of the current wave of Kung Fu epics) is engaged to penetrate an island fortress ruled by Han (Shih Kien), a sort of made-in-Hong-Kong version of Doctor No. Han traffics in dope and white slavery; his only contact with the outside world is the martial-arts tournament he holds every three...
...never been possible to get a feature's worth of laughs out of one. Indeed, it is doubtful that the cop-crook reversal even qualifies, at this late date, as a genuinely good idea. Even if it did, it would require the support of dozens more-plot twists, character revelations, surprising situations and, above all, gags, gags, gags-to make it work...