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Instant Favorite.

Excellent adaptation.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

I remember watching this in the theater and it being so funny (for so long) that I couldn't breath I was laughing so much. Both my girlfriend and I had to look at the floor of the theater to look away from the screen to try and reduce our laughing because our sides hurt so much.Maybe if I watched it again I might not laugh quite so much but I remember laughing more at this movie than any other. And no, I wasn't a silly teenager at the time, I was in my 30's.I loved the fast, fast pace and the constant stream of jokes and sight gags. It does help if you can pay attention and keep track of everything that is going on. This is not a sophisticated comedy by any means, just a lot of good, clean fun (well, except for the murders). ;-)Just a (very) lot of fun.

If you like the old radio shows, films set in the '30s and mysteries, this should be the film for you. The three things mentioned are favorite things of mine, but alas, I didn't enjoy this movie. The thin plot centers around a Phantom of the Radio (a disembodied voice) who says something sinister over a microphone, and then someone is murdered. Apparently all the people who are murdered worked together at another radio station that was involved in a scandal. One of the writers, Roger Henderson (Brian Benben becomes a suspect. He's the husband - possibly soon to be ex-husband of Penny Henderson (Mary Stuart Masterson) who manages to somehow keep the station going with no scripts and people dying all around her."Radioland Murders" has a crackerjack cast - besides the above, the cast includes Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Ned Beatty, Harvey Korman, George Burns, Scott Michael Campbell, Brion James, Anne DiSalvo - the list goes on.The radio shows (Lloyd's character is the sound effect man), the commercials and the music are absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately the director kept cutting from those elements to something else - either yelling or slapstick or both. The slapstick was incessant. Some slapstick is funny; constant slapstick becomes annoying. Certainly there are ways to show a chaotic, disorganized radio station without papers flying all over the place every two minutes and everyone getting knocked over and screaming. As far as the murders, they happen so quickly and so soon into the film that it was hard to know whom exactly had bought it.The acting is mostly good except for Benben, who for reasons of his own decided to pretend he was a wisecracking guy from the '40s instead of just doing the role. This is the same thing that ruined the "Nero Wolfe" show on A&E - you don't put an era on like a shoe, you ARE in the era, or you come off as being an external actor.Big disappointment. A shame because it had some great elements going for it.

When this came out, the reviews were generally bad. But the idea intrigued me. So I tracked down the video and found that I liked it a lot. It's about a radio station where they are trying to change from a local station to a national network, with a romantic subplot, and the body count starts piling up too. It's kinda like "The Old Dark House" or "The Cat And The Canary", mystery comedies with a lot of things happening to a lot of characters in one night. Admittedly, it's uneven, and not all of the comedy works. It's frantic and zany, and the characters come and go and then come back again. Just when you've forgotten about one subplot, it pops back. Either that, or somebody new has turned up dead. So, if you are a little adventurous, I'd recommend that you give it a try.

This movie is such a loving recreation of a bygone era that if you let yourself go with the flow - and with the body count - it's hard not to find pleasure in it. The music is lovingly recreated - with even a nod to Spike Jones and his City Slickers; the dialogue is fast and furious, with lessons learnt not only from the Marx Brothers but also from other screwball comedies of the 1930s. The plot - well, the best thing about the plot is the way in which it thickens nicely as each corpse is added!And there is the King Kong pastiche - complete with biplane circling the top of the skyscraper. Though in this case it is not Beauty which kills the Beast, and the villain's fall is not as spectacular as that of the mighty Kong, though I liked the way that ant-like figures could be seen scurrying to the site of the impact far below. The all-pervading chaos reminded me of HELLZAPOPPIN' - and it would make a nice double-feature with George Clooney's GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK!