Sam Kinison: Banned (1991)

Sam Kinison has the easiest job in show business. All he has to do is be fat and scream a lot, and he has thousands of guys squealing as if he were actually funny. As this mostly live home video proves again, Kinison's act features few jokes, fewer insights, and not a single fully formed thought. It's just a lazy vent for rage — a cheap stab at catharsis for hatemongers everywhere.

Sam Kinison: Banned is padded with a warm-up act from Carl LaBove, who shares Kinison's shameless contempt for women and gays. Kinison seems so randomly enraged at women that he voices bitter jealousy over their choice of contraceptives. And he yammers on about having a ''right'' to despise gays, treating intolerance as an act of nobility.

In addition, the tape works in three music videos (none of which was ever ''banned'') including the MTV hit ''Wild Thing,'' which bears a chilling resemblance to the gang-rape scene in The Accused, and ''Mississippi Queen'' in which Kinison dresses up like Sinéad O'Connor for no apparent reason. But then incoherence is the least of Kinison's problems.

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