Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip

Pryor is a one-man comic circus: mime artist, piss artist, wisecracker and, briefly in 1981, human firecracker. His freebasing accident gives him the chance to get one back at his fans when he strikes a match at the end of his gig and waves it at the audience: 'Richard Pryor running down the street, huh? I know all that shit you have been saying while I was away'. But nothing's burned out inside him. The jokes still go off like repeater fireworks, a second punchline catching you unawares just when you thought your sides were splitting for real. Pryor's act (and the filming of it) is so smoothly articulated , one subject detouring into another, that it's impossible to isolate favourite individual routines. But you have to see it - a couple of times - to savour the satire and relish the wit of the solo stand-up comic who's so slick and smartassed he makes Alexei Sayle look like a glove puppet and George Burns a dinosaur.