WARNING: SPOILERS

In 1976’s “Silver Streak,” written by Colin Higgins, we spend more than an hour waiting for the new hot comic—Richard Pryor—to show up. When he does, we go, “About time!”

In 1978’s “Foul Play,” written and directed by Colin Higgins, we spend more than spend 40 minutes waiting for the new hot comic—Chevy Chase—to show up after a brief, bumbling appearance before the opening credits. When he does, we go, “Uh ... I guess?”

Keeping the big new comedy name at arm’s length, and then springing him on us as if he were Spielberg’s shark, probably wasn’t a theme for Higgins. Just happenstance. Both movies are about innocents (Gene Wilder, Goldie Hawn) caught in someone else’s murderous plot; both comedians are the second-half helpmates. The movies are Hitchcockian homages but this one is underlined. Is that why Higgins began to direct? He felt Arthur Hiller in “Silver Streak” didn’t nail those moments?

Sick transit
This was Chevy Chase’s first movie after leaving “Saturday Night Live,” so I remember it being a big cultural deal: the first Hollywood movie from the first breakaway star of the new big sketch-comedy show. Sadly, my father’s synopsis was echoed by a lot of critics 

Even at age 15 I felt this, but then I didn’t get the game then. I thought “SNL” lampooned the culture because they had better ideas, and once it was their turn, boy, they’d really show everyone. Instead, they became part of the same hypocrisy.

Dad had a whole host of problems with “Foul Play,” I remember. About two-thirds of the way in, the San Francisco cops finally believe Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn) that men are trying to kill her because they find evidence of an imminent assassination plot. But who will be assassinated? The cops scratch their heads over this for minutes of screentime. Meanwhile, on a TV in the background, we see that the Pope arriving in San Francisco.

Even after they figure out the Pope is the target—because some radicals have a post-Sixties disappointment in the wealth of religions, or some such—and the venue is the San Francisco Opera House’s performance of “The Mikado,” starting right now, they can’t just pick up a phone and say “Get the Pope out of there!” Chevy and Goldie have to spend, what, 20 minutes of screentime careening through the hills of San Francisco in three different vehicles, while mocking rural America (the “Far out!” dude) and Japanese tourists (“Kojak! Bang bang!”)? It's kind of interminable.

But it was fun revisiting this, because it reminded of all I didn’t know at age 15. Among the remembered revelations:

• I didn’t know who/what the Pope was, and why he was important
• I didn’t know from albinos

Gloria Mundy (god, that name!) is a recently divorced librarian whose friends are giving her polar-opposite advice. One says you need to get back in the game, girl, take chances, while the other, her colleague, Stella (Marilyn Sokol), constantly warns her about being raped. She suggests carrying mace and brass knuckles.

Gloria winds up listening to the former first. Driving home along the California coast from an afternoon party—with Barry Manilow’s “Ready to Take a Chance Again” playing over the opening credits—she decides the way back into the game is to pick up a hitchhiker standing next to a fizzling car. His name is Scotty (Bruce Solomon), and he seems distracted. He’s less interested in the absolutely adorable blonde who picked him up than in the car that seems to be ominously tailing them. Back in town they agree to meet that night at an arthouse cinema showing an old Alan Ladd picture (the non-existent “Killers Walk Among Us”), but not before he leaves his cigarette pack, with some crucial film, in her purse.

Then he doesn’t show. So she goes in alone. Then he shows up mid-movie and bleeds all over the popcorn before collapsing. She screams and runs to get the manager. They stop the film, turn up the lights, and … nothing. No body. No blood on the popcorn. Nothing. No one believes her. No one saw other men hustling the body out.

Let's pause for a second. Later we find out Scotty was an undercover cop, so … why, when they first get in town, doesn’t he get dropped off at the precinct? Or when he gets mortally wounded—shouldn’t he find a cop? Or a hospital? No, remember the cute blonde who suggested a movie date? Much better! Oh, and don’t tell her all you know, like “Hey, they’re going to kill the Pope!” No, be elliptical. Just say: “Beware of the Dwarf!”

Anyway, now the bad guys are after her—and she doesn’t know why. The film in the cigarette pack, by the way, is a true Hitchcockian maguffin. It never factors in. It winds up in a fireplace and no one ever sees it. It only serves to get Gloria in trouble.

The next day at work, she’s told a dwarf came by to see her while she was at lunch. Cue ominous music. For some reason, she still closes up, which is when she encounters not a dwarf but an albino! Who is trying to kill her! Escaping to a nearby singles bar, she asks a hapless man (Dudley Moore, making his Hollywood movie debut) to take her home. He does. Throughout, of course, he keeps getting the wrong idea. She says things that indicate sex, but in a tone that indicates not, and he keeps ignoring the tone. His pad is also a fount of sad ’70s sexual kitsch. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to escape from him. She just has to look at him, stripped to his undies, binocs around his neck, while a porno plays on the wall, and say, “What are you doing?” and he’s properly shamed. Hey, guess what? She encounters him again in a massage parlor! And then again when he's conducting the San Francisco Opera! So wait, shouldn't he have a better apartment then? Isn't that a prestige gig?

Anyway, like this for a while. Her building manager is the kindly Mr. Hennessey (Burgess Meredith) who knows karate. A dwarf shows up (Billy Barty) and she attacks him and sends him to the hospital—even though he’s just a Bible salesman. Turns out Scotty’s message is even more elliptical than we thought: “The Dwarf” isn’t a little person at all but the nickname of an assassin with the improbable name of Stiltskin (Marc Lawrence). He’s working with a clown college of bad guys, including the twin brother of the archbishop we see killed in the cold open (Eugene Roche), and his housekeeper, the severely German Gerda Casswell (Rachel Roberts), who, with the Albino (William Frankfather), is leading the charge. 

Detective Tony Carlson (Chase) eventually figures all this out after many glib remarks while bedding the woman he’s charged with protecting. Chase’s shtick has aged poorly. Lines like this, which had a cutting-edge insouciance back then, come off differently now:

Listen, it’s Gloria, right? You're a really nice girl and I'm a nice guy, and you're very pretty with or without cleavage. And what do you say … would you like to take a shower?

Or this:

Tony: I play Detective. You play Lady in Distress.
Gloria: Hey, wait a minute. It’s my ass they're after!
Tony: I’m sorry. You're right. That was a stupid, glib, chauvinist remark and I apologize. It is your ass they're after. And it's my job to see to it that …  I get there first.

Hyuk.

Old times
The movie caused controversy, I believe, with the albino community, and maybe the little person community. Did Japanese tourists complain? Or hicks who say “Far out!” too much? They all had cause.

But the movie did well at the box office, and Chase and Hawn teamed up again two years later with “Seems Like Old Times.” That one did less well. Both had bigger hits that same year: “Caddyshack” for him, “Private Benjamin” for her. Writer-director Colin Higgins also hit it big with “9 to 5.” Then he did “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” which tanked. He died young, sadly.