Radioland Murders (1994)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Mel Smith

Writers (WGA):

George Lucas (story)
Willard Huyck (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

21 October 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Mystery | Romance

Tagline:

At station WBN, the hits just keep on coming.

Plot:

In 1939, WBN, a fourth radio network, is about to take to America's airwaves. As if the confusion of the premiere night wasn't enough...

Plot Keywords:

Fire Hose Used As Rope | Indiana Jones Spoof Scene | Murder | Radioland | Radio

Cast

Brian Benben	...	Roger Henderson
Mary Stuart Masterson	...	Penny Henderson
Ned Beatty	...	General Walt Whalen
George Burns	...	Milt Lackey
Scott Michael Campbell	...	Billy
Brion James	...	Bernie King
Michael Lerner	...	Lieutenant Cross
Michael McKean	...	Rick Rochester
Jeffrey Tambor	...	Walt Whalen, Jr.
Stephen Tobolowsky	...	Max Applewhite
Christopher Lloyd	...	Zoltan
Larry Miller	...	Herman Katzenback
Anita Morris	...	Claudette Katsenback
Corbin Bernsen	...	Dexter Morris
Rosemary Clooney	...	Anna

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS

Certification:

Iceland:12 | USA:PG | Argentina:13 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Castle Hayne, North Carolina, USA

Company:

Lucasfilm

Trivia:

After Star Wars was released, the film was announced in 1978 as "George Lucas' next movie." Steve Martin was said to have accepted a role.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the end of the film the camera pans up to the top of the building, showing the damaged WBN logo. However, the holes where the letters came out of the wall are missing.

Quotes:

Wild Writer: What if the wife smashes him over the head, with a frying pan, and then chops him up into hundreds of tiny pieces with her shiny new carving knife?
Father Writer: No, I don't think so.
Son Writer: It's a family show!
Wild Writer: Okay, then what if she does it to the whole family?

Movie Connections:

References King Kong (1933)

Soundtrack:

That Old Black Magic

Affectionate

Unfairly and almost universally trashed, this is a charming and atmospheric imagining of a hectic night in the life of a Chicago radio station whose ambition it is to go national. The sponsors are a tough sell, nothing is going as planned, and everything is pure chaos, compounded by a mounting tally of murder victims.

"Radioland Murders" is one of the noisiest and busiest live-action movies I've seen, literally wall-to-wall in every frame with rapid-fire slapstick and pratfalls, and it does not quite work as a comedy, but even as a comedy, it's breezy and pleasant in the face of its frenzied pace -- not unlike an old Warner Bros. cartoon of the Merrie Melodies variety. Better, though, it works as a nostalgic notion of old-time radio. The staggering gaps in logic and plot are meant to be ignored, as this is fantasy; it embraces the idea of radio in its heyday as the missing link between paperback adventures and television, requiring the listener's imagination to do half the work, while television requires none of it. The movie amounts to what could likely be a 9-year old listener's visual projection of what he's hearing on the radio.

It's technically dazzling, too, with the lens darting into rooms, out of windows and around the action becoming its own frenetic participant, and there's some breathtaking shots of the exterior of the station, often accentuating its height and distance from the city street far below. Brian Benben and Mary Stuart Masterson might strike the same one or two chords throughout the movie, but they're likable, as is this movie. And Scott Michael Campbell is very funny as Billy the pageboy, a kind of wide-eyed Quentin Tarantino of the radio age; fast-talking (everyone in the film is fast-talking, actually) and easily distracted (the look on his face as he accidentally barges into the ladies' dressing room and becomes mesmerized by the sight of the topless actresses is priceless), his entire grammar and understanding of life is derived from the radio shows of which he has encyclopedic knowledge.

Finally, "Radioland Murders" closes with some wistfully ironic thoughts (the movie is mostly free of contemporary irony, with the exception of this and an unsuccessful line about warning labels on cigarette packs) about television (best summed up by three uniformed cops hypnotized by a cathode ray tube) and the immortality of radio. A movie more about myth than story, "Radioland Murders" is written in the scattershot style of the radio programs depicted. It might merely be a sanitized and moderate entertainment (particularly when viewed against something like "The Hudsucker Proxy"), but it's affectionate, features lively music, looks great, and is completely innocent.