Dressed in lurid red leather, motor-mouthing profanities, careening from angry to silly, sexy and savagely funny, Eddie Murphy changed stand-up comedy forever with his Delirious show.
Now, a lifetime after he took the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in August 1983, Murphy is back -- with fresh perspective.
Under a flashy red cover, Delirious returns to DVD as The 25th Anniversary Edition.
This time, it is a two-disc set. You get the original 70-minute edit of the legendary concert, of course.
Among the extras, there are two deleted segments from the stage, one a naughty riff on Buckwheat in response to a heckler.
The new material includes Byron Allen's friendly interview with Murphy. A documentary helps us understand just what an influence the Delirious concert had on an entire generation of comics.
"He took stand-up to rock-star status," Anthony Anderson says.
"Eddie Murphy inspired me to become a comic," Chris Rock says.
"That was the defining moment in comedy right there," Keenan Ivory Wayans says.
There are many other similar shout-outs by name stars from Martin Lawrence to Cedric the Entertainer.
Murphy himself is in a musing mood. He tells Allen about his own comedy influences, starting with Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. He tells us how tame Delirious may seem today, in contrast with the controversy it caused in 1983.
And he fesses up that the flash suit was unplanned.
"The red-leather outfit was an accident," Murphy says. "Whatever I was supposed to wear that night got messed up. It was a last-minute thing that just happened."
And the 22-year-old Murphy just happened to make comedy history one night in Washington 25 years ago.