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KIDS IN THE HALL WOULD BE AT HOME ON 'SNL'

By By JODY LEADER, Los Angeles Daily News

The five-man comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, cited as the hot new comedy team in Rolling Stone magazine's recent issue, writes and performs sketches that would be right at home on Saturday Night Live: A teen-age boy makes the moves on his mother's 70-year-old friends, a man with a cabbage for a head uses self-pity to get his date under the sheets, and a grown-up crybaby wonders why his girlfriend has dropped him.

So it's no surprise that Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels is the executive producer of the troupe's new HBO comedy special shown Saturday night -- On Location: The Kids in the Hall. Directed by Robert Boyd and filmed in southern Ontario, this broadcast marks the American TV debut of this 4-year- old Canadian troupe.

Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson look years younger than the 25- to 29-year-olds they are, making it easier to play teen-agers and women -- which they do often. In one skit, Thompson gives a hilarious monologue as a middle-aged mother who has just learned that her son is gay -- as her catatonic husband sits nearby.

In another, a group of clean-cut teen-agers sits in a junkyard and drink innocent, amiable toasts to their recently deceased buddy Reg. We learn later that Reg died at their own hands -- a victim of ritualistic murder.

The Kids in the Hall take their name from Jack Benny's radio show. Using jokes on the air that were pitched to him from young writers waiting outside the studio, Benny began calling them ''the kids in the hall.'' ''The biggest mistake we made,'' said McDonald in a recent interview, ''was calling ourselves kids, because everyone could say, 'Oh, those spoiled kids!'''

On Location: The Kids in the Hall is produced for HBO by Broadway Video. Broadcast dates are 11 p.m. Tuesday, 12:30 a.m. Oct. 20 and 1:30 a.m. Oct. 24.

1988 News and Sun-Sentinel Company

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