Radioland Murders

Comedy, Mystery, Romance

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
Bobcat Goldthwait
Rosemary Clooney	Anna
Christopher Lloyd	Zoltan
Corbin Bernsen	Dexter Morris
Larry Miller	Herman Katzenback
Anita Morris	Claudette Katsenback
Joey Lawrence
Harvey Korman

Director	Mel Smith; Charles Martin Smith
Producer	Fred Roos; Rick McCallum; George Lucas
Writer	George Lucas; Gloria Katz; Willard Huyck
Cinematography	David Tattersall
Musician	Ray Bauduc; Joel McNeely
User Credit 1	Paul Trejo
User Credit 2	Peggy Farrell

Despite George Lucas's name in the credits (as executive producer) and several experiments in computer-generated imagery (seamlessly included but to little avail), this film qualifies as a major dog, a door-slamming farce in which the doors are funnier than the people slamming them. Set in a radio studio on a night in 1939 that a new radio network is being launched, the frenetic and scattered story blends a growing pile of corpses, network and sponsor politics, the crazed efforts involved to put on radio shows, and the on-again, off-again marriage of head writer Roger (Brian Benben) and secretary Penny (Mary Stuart Masterson), the only one who seems to have it together. Benben has a Groucho-like sense of timing and delivery, but he can't elevate surprisingly weak comic material. --Marshall Fine