'Best of Laugh-In': Verrry interesting

Here's the start of modern entertainment. In 1968, "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" turned TV - and pop culture - upside down. This was a satiric sketch show on speed, for a nation suddenly hot to be hip. Every Monday night, producer George Schlatter's beautiful-downtown-Burbank cast of crazies filled a comic blender with current events, fluorescent fashions and outre attitude.

No more extended skits delivered from beginning to end. "Laugh-In" cut to the chase, pitching out punch lines with a giddy laugh or a dah-dum! music cue, then jump-cutting to the next kaleidoscope of "quickies."

Veteran comedy team Dan Rowan (straight man) and Dick Martin (cut-up) reinvented themselves hosting this cool party. It actually included the weekly segment The Party, where madly dancing merrymakers froze every few seconds for another pithy punch line on topical buzz: the Pill, drugs, Vietnam, hippies, race.

They introduced an overflowing young ensemble, with kooky characters - Lily Tomlin as the Tasteful Lady or 5-year-old Edith Ann, Henry Gibson as flower-toting poet, Jo Anne Worley as lady loudmouth, Goldie Hawn as the giggling girl in a bikini with slogans painted all over her boogieing body. TV and movie stars flocked to sock-it-to-'em, too - from old-timers like John Wayne and Jack Benny to younger talent like Peter Sellers, Johnny Carson and Cher. (Plus Richard Nixon!)

MY SAY Schlatter's best-of compilation captures the show's freewheeling vibe and all its component parts, right down to the show-ending Joke Wall, where cast members threw open tiny doors to trade barbs of humor as the credits rolled.

Hindsight elevates "Laugh-In's" influence alongside the more heralded "Monty Python," illuminating its free-form blend of visual gags, non sequiturs and random chaos. I mean, novelty act Tiny Tim tiptoeing through the tulips - top that, Brits!

But this highlights hour may be a bit too rapidly random, jumbling '60s show gems with recent Schlatter reflections, then throwing in cast memories from 1993's reunion special (in case you're wondering why Hawn looks oddly young and Tiny Tim looks alive).

BOTTOM LINE Fun flashback still socks quite a comic punch.

GRADE A-