Radioland Murders (1994) on Netflix
In 1939 Chicago, station WBN launches a new radio network on its inaugural night. Writer Roger Henderson works there while his wife Penny seeks a divorce, and crimes threaten the station.
- Netflix2.4/5
- IMDb6.2/104,171 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes32%
Trailer
Plot summary
General Walt Whalen launches a new radio network at station WBN in Chicago in 1939, and on the inaugural night he needs his staff to impress Bernie King, the station's main sponsor. The crew includes page boy Billy Budget, engineer Max Applewhite, conductor Rick Rochester, announcer Dexter Morris, director Walt Whalen Jr. and stage manager Herman Katzenback. Among them are writer Roger Henderson and his wife Penny, an assistant director, who is seeking a divorce. When King calls for rewrites, the writers, unpaid for weeks, complain. Then a series of crimes strikes the station, and the Chicago police are brought in to solve them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Radioland Murders (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Steve Martin and Cindy Williams were approached for the two leads of Radioland Murders in the 1970s, but the film then languished in development hell for over 20 years before it was made.
- The last days of shooting were so frantic that Mel Smith and George Lucas each directed separate units at the same time and the crew worked 24-hour days, actor Michael McKean recalled, calling the result "cinematic pickup sticks".
- Christopher Lloyd agreed to make a small appearance as the eccentric sound designer Zoltan only on the condition that all of his scenes were shot in one day.
- Production designer Gavin Bocquet disguised the film's limited rooms inside a beehive-like structure, while the building exterior and rooftop transmission tower were made with digital mattes by visual effects supervisor Scott Squires at Industrial Light & Magic.
