Top 10 Films About Radio: Rock to Rap

Having covered the Golden Age of Radio in a recent article, Cinema Paradiso returns to the airwaves to recall those films made about radio stations and disc jockeys from the dawn of rock'n'roll to the heyday of hip-hop.

In Top 10 Titles About the Golden Age of Radio, we looked at the key role that broadcasting played in informing and entertaining audiences from the early 1920s onwards. Families listened to the wireless together, as Woody Allen demonstrated in Radio Days (1987), and Hollywood regularly adapted popular shows and imported rising stars. But the studios were less willing to embrace television after regular transmissions started in the late 1940s, as it offered direct audiovisual competition. Indeed, contracted performers were barred from appearing on the small screen without prior agreement.

Burton L. King's 1925 silent, The Police Patrol, had the distinction of being the first feature to screen on American television, when it was shown in six nightly parts of 10 minutes each between 6-11 April 1931. But the W2XBS station didn't always get things right, as it famously aired the last reels of Harold Young's 1934 take on The Scarlet Pimpernel in the wrong order. This was a British picture and another, Sidney Gilliat's The Constant Husband (1955), became the first feature to premiere on television in the United States before it had been shown in theatres.

With the Emmy-winning exception of the William Boyd oaters that preceded the 1954 Hop-a-long Cassidy series, Hollywood films rarely showed on American networks and it wasn't until the Screen Actors' Guild agreed a residual payments deal in 1956 that regular screenings commenced. Only pictures produced before 1948 were made available, with the first being Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong on 5 March 1956. The first feature to be shown in its entirety without edits to fit commercials or schedule slots was Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939), although it was transmitted in black and white on 5 November.

By this date, box office takings had fallen off a cliff and Hollywood had started making movies in colour, widescreen, stereo, and 3-D in an effort to lure punters back into theatres. The front offices soon realised that they were fighting a losing battle, however, and started to invest in their own small-screen operations. Moreover, they not only allowed contract stars to appear on television, but they also started promoting up-and-coming performers who would appeal to younger audiences in the so-called 'exploitation' pictures that reflected juvenile problems and pursuits. As well as stories about high school, fast cars, rebels and delinquents, and bad girls, these B movies also tapped into the growing popularity of horror and science fiction, as the strictures of the Production Code were relaxed slightly to reflect changing social attitudes.

Moreover, the acceptance that television was here to stay and would persuade working adults to remain in their armchairs of an evening rather than schlepp out to the local cinema brought the curtain down on a unique phenomenon that had transmitted the latest Hollywood releases into the nation's sitting-rooms in the two decades prior to 1952 - the Hollywood radio play.

Cinema on the Air

Although the Hollywood studios were denied the chance to buy into radio networks, they forged lucrative deals with programme sponsors, who were keen to have the biggest stars linked to their products. This relationship dated back to the silent era, when cine-variety shows and cinema organ recitals proved popular with listeners. Ordinarily, household names spoke on air to promote their latest projects. But, in December 1927, sports commentator Ted Husing provided a live description of Edmund Goulding's Love, starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Thus, when talkies arrived, it was a natural step for stations to start presenting abridged versions of hit pictures.

As box-office takings fell during the Great Depression, the studios were happy to take sponsor revenue to make up the shortfall. By far the most popular programme was Lux Radio Theater, which was launched in 1934 and hosted by Cecil B. DeMille to showcase titles currently in circulation. But rivals like Hollywood Premiere, Academy Award Theater, Dreft Star Playhouse, Hollywood Startime, and the Screen Directors' Playhouse all had access to the biggest names in American entertainment. Also notable was the Screen Guild Theater, which was run by the Screen Actors' Guild to support the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Among its most notable productions was a reworking of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942), in which Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henried were replaced by Alan Ladd, Hedy Lamarr, and John Loder, a typical practice that allowed the sponsors to sell the story to the audience rather than the stars.

By the time television became the dominant home entertainment format, Warner Bros., Paramount, RKO, and MGM all had radio connections that they stood them in good stead when it came to moving into TV. This, in turn, paved the way for the media synergy that exists today, with disparate companies within a conglomerate's portfolio coming together to collaborate on film projects. Without radio, therefore, there would be no Disney empire or Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Don't Knock the Rock

Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell coined the term 'disk jockey' in 1935 in profiling the leading American radio personality of the day, Martin Block. His most famous show was the inspiration for Joseph Santley's Make Believe Ballroom (1949), in which he made a guest appearance. Block also cropped up in Will Jason's Disc Jockey (1951), which explored radio's struggle to prevent audiences defecting to television.

What brought listeners back, however, was not quiz shows, thriller serials, magazine programmes, sports, or movie adaptations. Although its roots lay in African American rhythm and blues, Ohio DJ Alan Freed was among the first to popularise 'rock'n'roll' on his WJW radio show, although we'll leave the tangled web of its origins to Tony Palmer's landmark series on the evolution of rock music, All You Need Is Love (1977). Always ready to promote himself, Freed appeared in seven films, including Fred R. Sears's Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, and Will Price's Rock Rock Rock! (all 1956). However, as Floyd Mutrux's American Hot Wax (1978) reveals, his reputation never recovered from the payola bribery scandal of the early 1960s.

Among the other DJs to make names for themselves during this period were Wolfman Jack and Murray the K. The former guested in Russ Meyer's The Seven Minutes (1971) and helped Richard Dreyfuss track down his dream girl in George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973), while the latter can be heard on a transistor radio in the back of a car in David and Albert Maysles's What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA (1964), which was repackaged as The Beatles: Their First Visit (1991). Eric Idle parodied the scene in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978), with a little help from Bill Murray the K.

Released the same year, Robert Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand recreated the excitement of Beatlemania breaking Stateside and uses a radio competition to get six girls from New Jersey into a show to scream at the Fab Four. Tom Hanks similarly demonstrated the importance of radio in promoting The Wonders in the nostalgic treat, That Thing You Do! (1996). But radio remained a factor in making or breaking rock and pop acts way beyond the Swinging Sixties, with Edward Furlong and his mates despairing after losing some tickets to a 1978 Kiss gig won in a radio phone-in in Adam Rifkin's Detroit Rock City (1999).

Radio Rebels

Such was the diversification of popular music in the 1960s that the major networks and main city radio stations struggled to find ways of appealing to everyone. In Britain, the BBC held a monopoly over the airwaves, but continental stations like Radio Luxembourg inspired a vogue for pirate radio stations in the 1960s. The most famous was Radio Caroline, whose story was borrowed for Richard Curtis's The Boat That Rocked (2009), which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Nick Frost as maverick DJs, The Count and Doctor Dave. Released either side of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act that outlawed such floating stations on 15 August 1967, Jeremy Summers's Deadline Diamonds (1965) and Jack Grossman's Pop Pirates (1984) showed how they worked. The former was filmed aboard the MV Galaxy, which was home to Radio London, while the latter can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of The Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box (2018).

At the other extreme, the illicit nature of pirate radio made it an ideal bedfellow for pornography, with Bethel Buckalew's The Dirty Mind of Young Sally (1972) and Bud Lee's Tasty (1985) being among a clutch of films to centre on DJs encouraging listeners to discuss sex on the air. However, the pirate concept also fed into the counterculture, with several stations airing radical political opinions between the tunes. The majority of related films have disappeared into the ether, but they came from countries as varied as West Germany (Sigi Rothemund's Piratensender Power Play, 1981), Greece (Giannis Dalianidis's Good Evening to You, 1982), Norway (Morten Kolstad's Piratene, 1983), Canada (Clement Virgo's Rude, 1995), Hungary (Támas Sás's Kalózok, 1999), Brazil (Helvécio Ratton's Something in the Air, 2002), and New Zealand (Charlie Haskell's Pirates of the Airwaves, 2014). Italy was particularly hooked on pirate operations, with Luciano Ligabue's Radiofreccia (1998) being followed by Marco Tullio Giordano's One Hundred Steps (2000) and Guido Chiesa's Working Slowly (Radio Alice) (2004).

Freedom of speech was the rallying cry for many of these stations, although it was largely kept in check on the American Forces networks. Even Adrian Cronauer followed Uncle Sam's script on the Dawn Buster show broadcast from Saigon in the mid-1960s. However, his presentational style was ramped-up in a glorious display of subversive panache by Robin Williams in Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). Bruno Kirby's fill-in slot is equally hilarious, but it's the biting satire delivered by the motor-mouthed Williams in an Oscar-nominated performance that gives this picture its pirate spirit.

Echoes can be heard in Allan Moyle's teenpic, Pump Up the Volume (1990), which enables Christian Slater to transform from mild-mannered high school student Mark Hunter into Happy Harry Hard-on, who runs his own pirate radio station from the basement of his parents' suburban home in Phoenix, Arizona. When a classmate commits suicide after sharing his anxieties on air, however, the authorities decided to shut down transmission, even though Happy Harry has become a cult figure on campus.

Commercial radio had come to Britain in 1973, but the need to attract advertisers meant that playlists had a mainstream bias. This left a window for a new breed of pirates, as Isaac Julien revealed in Young Soul Rebels (1991), which was set against the backdrop of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in 1977 and focused on Soul Power, the pirate radio station run from a Dalston tower block by African Caribbean duo, Chris (Valentine Nonyela) and Caz (Mo Sesay). The edgy vibe can also be felt in Jules Beesley's Radio Free Steve (2000), which follows the post-apocalyptic misadventures of pirate broadcaster Ryan Junell and claims to be a lost film from 1984 in poking fun at the milieux depicted in pictures like Hal Needham's Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979).

While most of the pirate pictures focus on male DJs, Peter Howitt's Radio Rebel (2012) turns the tables by showing how podcaster Debby Ryan earns a following by lampooning the house style at SlamFM, the Seattle station run by her stepfather. When she confides her secret identity, however, he offers her a shot at the big time. This Disney Channel offering is pure feel good, but there's more edge to Justin Simien's Dear White People (2014), as African American media student, Tessa Thompson, uses her show on the Winchester University radio station to expose racism on campus.

The rise of hip hop transformed radio Stateside, but there was considerable resistance to it finding a radio berth. In Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives (2015), Robert Garcia divulges how the WKCR station at Columbia University gave Adrian 'Stretch Armstrong' Bartos and Bobbito Garcia the licence to play rap pioneers like the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Wu Tang Clan, Jay-Z, The Fugees, and Eminem before they had become known.

Having impressed on debut with Frontier Blues (2008), Iranian-British director Babak Jalali turned his attention in Radio Dreams (2016) to PARS-FM, a Farsi radio station based in San Francisco that is gearing up for a concert broadcast featuring both Metallica and Afghanistan's first rock band, Kabul Dreams. This really should be on disc, but Cinema Paradiso can offer the BBC mockumentary series, People Just Do Nothing (2016-18), which centres on the Brentford-based pirate station, Kurupt FM, and its presenters, 'MC Grindah' Zografos (Allan 'Seapa' Mustafa), Kevin 'DJ Beats' Bates (Hugo Chegwin), and Steven 'DJ Steves' Green (Steve Stamp), and their manager, Chabud 'Chabuddy G' Gul (Asim Chaudhry). A feature spin-off, Jack Clough's People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan (2021), is also available. As is Reggie Yates's Pirates (2021), which joins pirate DJs Cappo (Elliot Edusah), Two Tonne (Jordan Peters), and Kidda (Reda Elzaouar) in their bid to get tickets to the hottest nightclub in London on Millennium Eve. Shifting forward to 2001, Theresa Ikoko's BBC series, Grime Kids, draws on a book by DJ Target to show how five friends from Tower Hamlets seek to use the summer after finishing their GCSEs to get their music played on pirate radio station, Rinse FM.

Out-of-Studio Experiences

Although the popular image of a radio personality has them seated behind a microphone wearing large headphones, they are rarely confined to soundproofed studios on screen. In Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), for example, American reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) assumes the alias 'Huntley Haverstock' in order to report on conditions in Europe as war clouds loom. In the closing scene, he broadcasts live during an air raid on London so that his compatriots can realise that Isolationism is no longer a viable policy for the United States. British men and women were still in uniform well into the 1950s and army padre Alastair Sim seeks to boost morale in camp with a panel discussion similar to the BBC programme, The Brains Trust, and invites radio academic Colin Gordon to be one of he team. Naturally, things don't go according to plan in Frank Launder's Folly to Be Wise (1953) and a radio reporter also finds himself swimming against the current in José Ferrer's The Great Man (1956), when he's asked to organise a tribute to a serial star who was anything but popular with his castmates.

One recalls Tony Hancock being in a similar situation when he's fired from playing rustic type Joshua Merriweather in 'The Bowmans', a lampoon of the long-running radio show, The Archers, in the BBC sitcom, Hancock (1961). Another case of fame going to a radio star's head can be found in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957), as radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Paricia Neal) turns country drifter Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes (Andy Griffith) into a folksy celebrity, only for him to spiral out of control when he's given his own TV show in New York.

A blind DJ becomes the eyes and ears of 'the last American hero' in Richard C. Sarafian's classic road movie, Vanishing Point (1971), as the philosophising Super Soul (Cleavon Little) eavesdrops on the police radio to keep Kowalski (Barry Newman) ahead of the game, as he strives to win a bet by driving his white Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. Another wayward anti-hero needs to a heed a DJ in Bob Rafelson's undervalued drama, The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), as Philadelphia talk show host David Staebler (Jack Nicholson) tries to persuade hustling sibling Jason (Bruce Dern) out of a rash investment in Hawaii during a day trip to Atlantic City.

Released in the same year that Buggles topped the charts with 'Video Killed the Radio Star', Christopher Petit's Radio On follows David Beames on a trip from London to Bristol to discover why his brother committed suicide. Produced by Wim Wenders and featuring a cameo by Sting, this monochrome masterpiece makes our survey because Eames is a presenter for the factory radio station run by United Biscuits. The voice over the airwaves is more malevolent in Walter Hill's The Warriors (both 1979), as the DJ (Lynne Thigpen) calls for gangs across New York to track down the eponymous nine-strong crew from Coney Island after they are framed for a murder by the Gramercy Riffs.

The internecine strife is between Glaswegian ice cream sellers in Bill Forsyth's fact-based Comfort and Joy (1984), which lands radio DJ Bill Paterson in the middle of a frosty turf war. The Italian element is provided by Roberto Benigni in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law (1986), while the DJ is Lee 'Baby' Slims, the moniker used by Tom Waits's jailbird, who treats Benigni and cellmate John Lurie to some of his patter. Just as radio had been a constant noise in the background plugging disco hits in Michael Schultz's Car Wash (1976), so the boombox carried by Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) plays Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power', to reflect the mood in the neighbourhood where pizzeria owner Sal Fragione (Danny Aiello) refuses to add African American faces to his Wall of Fame in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989). This simmering social saga is punctuated by the interjections of Samuel L. Jackson as Mister Señor Love Daddy, the DJ on the Bedford-Stuyvesant station, We Love Radio.

FBI agent Debra Winger plans on putting someone behind bars when she goes undercover in a farming community following the murder of a Jewish radio host in Costa-Gavras's Betrayed (1988). But it's into Golden Raspberry territory for Renny Harlin's The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990), in which a 'rock'n'roll detective' goes looking for a groupie named Zuzu Petals after a musician is murdered on stage and his DJ friend is electrocuted live on air. The disc jockey voiced by Steven Wright in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) hosts a show for 'cool cats and reservoir dogs' called K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies, which provides the perfect excuse for playing Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle With You' while Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) tortures cop Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz).

Another DJ closely connected to death is Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), a New York shock jock whose careless talk causes a mentally unstable caller to commit mass murder in a chic restaurant in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King (1991). After three years of depression, help comes in the unlikely form of the homeless Henry 'Parry' Sagan (Robin Williams). Seattle talk show host Frazier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) is more careful with his remarks after he returns home from Boston, where he had been a recurring character in Cheers (1982-93). In Frasier (1993-2004), Dr Crane discusses psychiatric issues with his listeners, when not squabbling with his therapist younger brother, Niles (David Hyde-Pierce). The show won the Primetime Emmy for Best Comedy five years in a row, although the 2023 revival, which takes Frazier back to Boston, has received mixed reviews.

A rigged radio contest in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997) sends Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) to Planet Flohston aboard a flying hotel with flamboyant talk show host Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker). Back on terra firma, estate agent André Dussollier writes radio plays in his spare time in Alain Resnais's enchanting musical, On connaît la chanson (1997). He claims to go on guide Agnès Jaoui's walking tours around Paris to research his scenarios, but really he's in love with her.

Jean Domingue, the owner of Haiti's oldest and only free radio station is profiled by director friend Jonathan Demme in The Agronomist (2003), which also charts the Caribbean nation's traumatic recent history. However, the truth is harder to verify in the case of Anthony Godby Johnson, which prompted Armistead Maupin to write the semi-autobiographical novel that was adapted by Patrick Stettner as The Night Listener (2006). Playing against type, Robin Williams stars as Gabriel Noone, a late-night radio host who becomes intrigued by Peter Logand, a regular teenage caller who claims to have written a memoir of how he contracted AIDS.

Jodie Foster earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Erica Bain, a talk show host who becomes a vigilante on the streets of New York after her fiancé is murdered in Neil Jordan's psychological thriller, The Brave One (2007), which owes much to Michael Winnner's Death Wish (1974). There's more violence on show in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007), as radio DJ Sydney Tamiia Poitier becomes one of the first victims of Kurt Russell's souped-up killer car.

Fans of Patrice Leconte will lament that Tandem (1987) is not one of the titles available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, as Jean Rochefort and Gérard Jugnot excel as the radio quiz host and his assistant taking their show the length and breadth of La Patrie. All the more frustrating is that Romain Levy's similarly themed Radiostars (2012) is also unavailable, as radio celebrity Manu Payet, sidekick Clovis Cornillac, and comedian Douglas Attal make a fine team on a trek to re-connect with their audience. In fact, there are numerous French films with a radio theme, including Jean Yanne's Everybody He Is Nice, Everybody He Is Beautiful (1972), Élisabeth Rappeneau's Fréquence meurtre (1988), Yves Boisset's Radio Corbeau (1989), Pierre Pinaud's On Air (2012), Lionel Baier's Longwave (2013), and Mikhaël Hers's The Passengers of the Night (2022).

Jane Fonda plays a radio reporter visiting a besieged sausage factory with director husband Yves Montand in Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's Dziga-Vertov tract, Tout va bien (1972), while Niels Schneider plays a radio correspondent caught up in the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War in Guillaume de Fontenay's Sympathy for the Devil (2019). The duties of a radio journalist are covered in Nicolas Philibert's La Maison de la Radio (2013), which provides a day-in-the-life insight into the studio and outside broadcasts produced across a range of topics and pursuits by Radio France.

When a radio falls from the sky, a Tibetan Mastiff named Bodi (Luke Wilson) leaves Snow Mountain for the big city in the hope of becoming a guitar hero in Ash Brannon's Rock Dog. By contrast, radio journalist Eric Bana and technician Ricky Gervais get themselves into a pickle without leaving home when they lay low in New York after claiming to have been taken hostage during a Latin American uprising in Gervais's Special Correspondents (both 2016).

Also out of reach for the moment is Andrew Patterson's The Vast of Night (2019), which harks back to New Mexico in the 1950s to show what happens when a small-town radio host and a switchboard operator latch on to a disturbing frequency during the graveyard shift. But don't miss out on Mike Mills's C'mon C'mon (2021), which requires roving radio journalist Joaquin Phoenix to travel to Los Angeles to take care of his nine year-old nephew. In only his fourth film, Londoner Woody Norman received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his irresistible turn.

Lastly, we venture into the world of podcasting for B.J. Novak's Vengeance (2022), in which Novak's character leaves New York and heads for West Texas when he hears that an old flame has died in mysterious circumstances. Moreover, Novak believes that his investigation and depiction of the family's grief will make a great show.

Red Light Zone

When the red light goes on in a radio studio, an intimate connection is forged between the speaker and the listener. It may be a one-way communication, but the best broadcasters always make it seem as though they are talking directly to an individual rather than addressing a multitude. While it can capture the hushed atmosphere of the studio, cinema never quite manages to recreate that unique bond, even when a talk show host chats one-to-one with a caller. Nevertheless, a number of fine films have been set in radio stations, including Stuart Rosenberg's WUSA (1970), which feels more relevant than ever, as Paul Newman plays a radio announcer in New Orleans who slowly comes to realise the station's sinister right-wing agenda.

While this is not currently available, Cinema Paradiso users can settle down to enjoy John A. Alonzo's FM (1978), which stars Michael Brandon as the morning DJ on Q-SKY who opts to strike rather than run adverts promoting the US Army. Boasting a wonderful soundtrack and guest appearances by the likes of Jimmy Buffet, Tom Petty, and Linda Ronstadt, this forgotten gem features a comic turn by Martin Mull, who also voices the older Will Forte in David Wain's A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018), which includes a segment about National Lampoon's radio show in the early 1970s.

The tensions run higher in Oliver Stone's Talk Radio (1988), which was adapted from a Pulitzer-nominated play that was inspired by the 1984 murder of Denver radio host, Alan Berg. Co-writer Eric Bogosian makes a deep impression as Barry Champlain, a provocative Jewish talk host whose Dallas show is about to be syndicated across the United States. However, his talent for baiting people on and off air is about to cost him dear. Bogosian's script and pulsating performance earned him a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Outstanding Single Achievement.

Another DJ unafraid to say what he thinks is Howard Stern, whose chequered career is chronicled in Betty Thomas's Private Parts (1997). Stern rejected 22 scripts before settling on this flashbacking format, which shows how he became America's most controversial 'shock jock' in collaboration with co-hosts Fred Norris and Robin Quivers. Back in the 1960s, Ralph 'Petey' Greene took speaking his mind to another level, as Kasi Lemmons reveals in Talk to Me (2007), which stars Don Cheadle as the ex-con who becomes a cult figure on the WOL station in Washington, DC under the guidance of his manager, Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Seemingly forever on one last chance, Greene, who was on air when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, was also profiled in Loren Mendell's documentary, Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene (2008).

Stern's antics in the studio clearly impact upon Brian and Stewie Griffin's stint as Dingo and the Baby, when they take over from Weenie and The Butt on Quahog's WQHG-FM station in the 2006 'Mother Tucker' episode of Family Guy (1999-). Denis Lawson is always on the verge of being fired in The Kit Curran Radio Show (1984), an ITV sitcom that pitted wideboy DJ Denis Lawson against Radio Newtown's stern boss, Brian Wilde. The station in the short-lived ITV2 series, FM (2009), was Skin 86.5 FM. But the misadventures of DJs Chris O'Dowd and Kevin Bishop and producer Nina Sosanya were terminated after just six episodes. See what you think, with a single click on the Cinema Paradiso link.

Although it centred on a satellite station, KYTV (1989-93) was spun off from the hit BBC show, Radio Active (1980-87), which shared the Oxford Revue cast of Angus Deayton, Philip Pope, Geoffrey Perkins, Michael Fenton Stevens, and Helen Atkinson Wood. Alan Partridge also started his career on radio, as the sports presenter on the BBC cult classic, On the Hour (1991-92). This found its way on to television as The Day Today (1994), with scripts by Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris. The spoof chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You (1995) made the same journey. But Alan's time on the box proved short-lived and he found himself holding down the graveyard shift on Radio Norwich and living in a travel lodge in I'm Alan Partridge (1997-2002). Bouncing back from further setbacks, he landed at North Norfolk Digital for Mid-Morning Matters With Alan Partridge (2010-16).

Coogan's eagerness to pursue other avenues has resulted in Alan being periodically parked. But he returned for Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life (2012) and Open Books With Martin Bryce (2013), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Partrimilgrimage - The Specials. The first show brought Coogan a BAFTA and he followed it with Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle (2016) and This Time With Alan Partridge (2019-), which lampooned The One Show (2006-). Between these ventures, Alan hit the big screen for the first time in Declan Lowney's Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013), which sees long-suffering assistants Lynn Benfield (Felicity Montagu) and Sidekick Simon (Tim Key) get caught up in a siege after a gun-toting Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) takes exception to being fired from North Norfolk Digital.

This wasn't the first film in which a DJ is taken hostage at a radio station, however. Patrick McGoohan played a Canadian presenter whose show is taken over by terrorists in Alexis Kanner's Kings and Desperate Men (1981), while Joe Mantegna is held at gunpoint (well, water pistol-point) by heavy metal wannabes Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler, and Steve Buscemi in an effort to get him to play their demo tape in Michael Lehmann's Airheads (1994). Michael Kevin Walker essays a DJ named Jack the Ripper whose studio at 99 Rock in Woodstock is taken over by the disgruntled Daniel Haas in Mike Gioscia and Kurt St Thomas's indie, Captive Audience (1999).

Coming more up to date, Eddie Marsan's plan to expose Russian interference in the Brexit referendum is thwarted by gunmen who seem to know a good deal about his past in Pedro C. Alonson's Feedback (aka Hostage Radio, 2019), while four friends devastated by the break-up of The Smiths force a Denver DJ to play the band's music through the night in Stephen Kijak's Shoplifters of the World (2021). Based on an actual incident in 1988, this has yet to be released on disc in the UK, despite Morrissey confiding to his website: 'I laughed, I cried, I ate my own head.'

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter provides the basis for Jon Amiel's Tune in Tomorrow (1990), which is set at the WXBU radio station in New Orleans in the 1950s and shows how Peter Falk weaves the romance between co-worker Keanu Reeves and neighbour Barbara Hershey into his soap drama, Kings of the Garden District. The internal workings of another popular show are laid bare in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (2006), which features creator Garrison Keillor as the host of a long-running variety show that is facing the axe because the new owners of its parent company plan to demolish the theatre in St Paul, Minnesota, where an ensemble that includes Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, and John C. Reilly record their weekly episodes.

Virginia Madsen has an ethereal cameo and brother Michael co-stars with James Woods and Griffin Dunne in Barnet Kellman's Straight Talk (1992), which follows Dolly Parton from small-town Arkansas to Chicago, where she accidentally becomes the new call in therapist on the radio station where she's working as a telephonist. While Dolly's Shirlee Kenyon is true to her word, Billy Magic (Kevin Bacon) is anything but trustworthy in Guy Ferland's Telling Lies in America (1997), a Joe Eszterhas-scripted saga about Karchy Jonas (Brad Renfro), the 17 year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant who is drawn into the orbit of a 1950s DJ who is caught up in the payola scandal of taking bribes to play records on air.

A DJ's daughter who has become a radio relationships expert is dumped by her boyfriend just before a big live show in Ron Oliver's Romantically Speaking (2015). But such a setback wouldn't bother indomitable retired businesswoman Shirley MacLaine in Mark Pennington's The Last Word (2017), as she decides to become a radio presenter after hiring journalist Amanda Seyfried to write her obituary. This sleeper hit deserves to be better known, but Jeremy Saville's Loqueesha (2019) is best remaining in infamy, as the writer-director plays a white sad sack bartender who becomes a syndicated radio celebrity by pretending to be an African American agony aunt.

Love Is on the Air

Radio is sometimes called 'the theatre of the imagination' and this romantic notion chimes in with the number of love stories that involve radio stations, shows, and presenters. Glenn Ford plays a widowed network executive whose young son (Ron Howard) decides he's ready to start dating again in Vincente Minnelli's The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963). This spawned a TV series that ran into the 1970s and it's hard to ignore the echoes while watching Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993), which also owes a debt to Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957). The radio connection comes when eight year-old Ross Malinger persuades widowed father Tom Hanks to go on a talk show on Christmas Eve to disclose how much he is missing his late wife. Among those listening is Baltimore Sun journalist, Meg Ryan.

French radio psychologist Geneviève Bujold becomes prostitute Lesley Ann Warren's roommate in a bid to help her find love with drifter Keith Carradine in Alan Rudolph's Choose Me (1984). Los Angeles radio employee Jamie Lee Curtis also embarks upon a dangerous liaison with married photographer James Keach in Amy Holden Jones's Love Letters (1984), which was produced by Roger Corman after he had been so impressed with the onetime editor's directorial debut, The Slumber Party Massacre (1982).

Divorced Los Angelinos Matthew Modine, Paul Reiser, and Randy McQuaid all listen to forthright therapist Rob Reiner in Sam Weisman's Bye Bye Love (1995), only for the latter to confront him for messing up his life. Janeane Garofalo has a supporting role, although her radio pet expert forms the focus of Michael Lehmann's The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996), a variation on the Cyrano de Bergerac theme that sees her ask model friend Uma Thurman to impersonate her when listener Ben Chaplin falls for her. Garofalo jokes she has a face for radio and thrice-divorced DJ George Shevtsov feels the same way, despite causing sisters Miranda Otto and Rebecca Frith to fall out in the Outback town of Sunray in Shirley Barrett's romcom, Love Serenade (1996).

Contract killer John Cusack also has feelings for a radio personality, as he returns to his Michigan home for a ten-year school reunion and runs into old flame Minnie Driver in George Armitage's Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Producer Karyn Parsons holds a torch for radio seduction expert Tim Meadows and wonders whether he's doing the right thing when he responds to a letter from an ex-lover promising the high life in Reginald Hudlin's The Ladies Man (2000). Hot 97 DJ Angie Martinez plays matchmaker for bickering hip hop producer Taye Diggs and magazine editor Sanaa Latham in Rick Famuyima's Brown Sugar (2002). And there's more loving and loathing going on between misogynist Hong Kong DJ Aaron Kwok and a no-nonsense journalist Kelly Chen in Chung Man Yee's romcom, And I Hate You So (2002).

Believing she's been abandoned by her husband, Joan Allen finds a drinking partner in Kevin Costner, a baseball player-turned-radio analyst in Mike Binder's The Upside of Anger (2005). Costner objects when Allen's daughter starts dating his shady producer and New York fireman Jeffrey Dean Morgan takes such exception to radio relationship expert Uma Thurman advising his fiancée to dump him in Griffin Dunne's The Accidental Husband (2008) that he hacks into the city records to change her marital status so she can't wed Colin Firth.

In 2 Days in New York (2012) - the sequel to Julie Delpy's sublime romcom, 2 Days in Paris (2007) - single mother Marion (Delpy) finds herself in the Big Apple and having to deal with the prejudices of the family of her new beau, radio host, Mingus (Chris Rock). Another photographer, Colleen Porch, has just been given her first exhibition. So, now is not a good time to discover that her best male friends, businessman David Gail and jazz and soul radio DJ Bradley Cooper, have feelings for her in Morgan Klein and Peter Knight's Bending All the Rules (2022). This hasn't quite made it to disc yet, but you never know....

Shock Jocks

The radio studio might appear to be a safe haven, but film-makers have found numerous ways over the last five decades of exposing DJs to outside perils. It all started when Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter) takes being the number one fan of KRML night owl Dave Garver to extremes in Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty For Me (1971). The title track was composed by Errol Garner in 1954 and jazz fan Eastwood persuaded his local radio station in Carmel to let him shoot there.

Quick to follow suit was Daryl Duke's teleplay, A Cry for Help (1975), in which Robert Culp's sardonic talk show host comes to regret dismissing a teenage girl who calls to threaten suicide. Hong Kong host Diana Pang becomes a bomber's next target when the cops ignore his on-air warnings about hospital and kindergarten blasts in Raymond Wong's Midnight Caller (1995). Equally determined to get radio therapist Shanna Reid's attention is babysitter killer Tracy Nelson in Robert Malenfant's The Night Caller (1998),

Filipina DJ Rufa Mae Quinto wishes she'd not mocked an unhinged caller in Yam Laranas's thriller, Radyo (2001), while Mel Gibson's night slot at KLAT in Los Angeles becomes more interesting than usual when a caller claims to have taken his family hostage in Romuald Boulanger's On the Line (2022), which should be available on disc in the UK. But, even though Quentin Tarantino is a fan, it's safe to assume that John Clayton's Redneck Miller (1976) won't be coming any time soon, as Country-and-Western DJ Geoffrey Land's clash with the Black Mafia drug gang is very much a product of its time.

James Herbert's The Fog has its disturbing moments, as Antonio Bay radio presenter Adrienne Barbeau can testify in John Carpenter's 1980 adaptation. The role passed to Selma Blair in Rupert Wainright's 2005 remake, but Cinema Paradiso users can see Barbeau behind the microphone again in the wraparound segments of the 2015 horror anthology, Tales of Halloween. For now, however, we can't bring you Jag Mundhra's Open House (1987), in which Barbeau plays the estate agent girlfriend of Joseph Bottoms, the KDRX psycologist being menaced by a sinister caller after a teenage girl kills herself on air.

Despite having handed cop Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) a recording of Leatherface's attack on two on-air callers. staying in a nice safe studio isn't an option for Vanita 'Stretch' Brock (Caroline Williams) in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), not when there's a Chili Cookoff to cover. A last recording by late lamented rocker Sammi Curr (Tony Fields) spices up a teenage metalhead's evening when he's presented with an acetate of Songs in the Key of Death by DJ Nuke (Gene Simmons of Kiss fame), who plans to play the album in its entirety on his Halloween show in Charles Martin Smith's Trick or Treat (1986).

The jolts are markedly less schlocky in Gene Wilder's Haunted Honeymoon (1989), as Larry Abbott (Wilder) and Vickie Pearle (Gilda Radner) get fired from the radio horror show, Manhattan Mystery Theater, and head to the home of his eccentric family for their wedding. Panned at the time of its release, with Dom DeLuise's Aunt Kate receiving a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress, this old dark house chiller has since built up a cult following. As has Mick Garris's Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), which sees Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) use the name 'Ed' to call a radio discussion on matricide and tell his story to presenter Fran Ambrose (CCH Pounder).

DJ Dangerous Dan O'Dare (Paul Hipp) gets some unexpected visitors at KDUL in Ted Nicolaou's Bad Channels (1992), as aliens Cosmo and Lump try to take over the station and abduct reporter Lisa Cummings (Martha Quinn). Sarah Jessica Parker would know exactly how they feel, as she has an interview interrupted by an invasion warning in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996). These sci-fi spoofs are perfect for late-night chuckles, but imperilled DJs Kate Vernon and Jason Gedrick will have to wait for another time, as neither Lou Diamond Phillips's directorial debut, Dangerous Touch (1994), nor Jaime Hellman's Power 98 (1996) is currently available, in spite of the fact that Eric Roberts is on scene-stealing form in the latter as a fiendish shock jock.

Pendleton University presenter Tara Reid comes to a sticky end, when she leaves a party to present a late-night show and her screams go out live across campus in Jamie Blanks's Urban Legend (1998). The radio station housed in a trailer in the town of Prosperity, Arizona is the last sanctuary for those under attack from mutant spiders in Ellory Elkayem's Eight Legged Freaks (2002). But even these hardy souls would think twice about venturing into Studio Six, which was the scene of an on-air suicide in Yoshihiro Nakamura's decidedly creepy offering, The Booth (2005).

Much more visceral is Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (2008), which is set in a town in Ontario that descends into chaos when a zombie plague strikes. Helicopter reporter Ken Loney (Rick Roberts) keeps DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) informed right up until his grisly end, by which time the studio is being besieged and Mazzy and producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) are under threat from colleague Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly). McDonald and McHattie would team up again for Dreamland (2019), in which the latter plays the dual role of a hitman and a jazz musician hired to play at a vampire's wedding.

Radios are among the gadgets that pick up a transmission that transforms people into savage killers in David Brückner's The Signal (2007), which is told from three perspectives. More mayhem occurs in Corbin Bernsen's Dead Air (2009), when terrorists unleash a toxic viral gas that turns people into maniacs and controversial DJ Logan Burnhardt (Bill Moseley) is stuck in a studio unable to protect his family. A female Korean presenter also discovers that her loved ones are in danger when she receives a message ordering her to follow instructions at the start of her last late-night show in Kim Sang-Man's Midnight FM (2010).

Recovering addict Heidi LaRoc (Sheri Moon Zombie) fronts a show in Salem, Massachusetts in Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem (2012) and starts having visions of witches after playing an album by the eponymous band. Another investigation commences when DJ Dallas Roberts and Center For Diseases agent Alison Eastwood suspect an outbreak of the Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome that had caused chaos in the 1970s in Matthew Arnold's Shadow People (2013).

DJ Amos Satan guides viewers through the ghoulish delights on show in Henrique Couto's Scarewaves (2014). But he's upstaged in another horror anthology, A Christmas Horror Story (2015), as Dangerous Dan, the alcoholic late-night host at the Bailey Downs radio station is played by none other than the great William Shatner, who is decidedly uneasy about news coming through of a disturbance in the mall.

A Japanese high school student wanders into an abandoned radio station in a seaside town and starts pretending to be a DJ in Naoyuki Ito's Your Voice -KIMIKOE- (2017). However, her words are picked up by the 'kotodama' word spirits her late grandmother had told her about. Veteran horror show host Aubrey Judd (Simon Callow) finds new producer Tara (Anjii Mohindra) a little too PC for his liking. But, as he settles in to read the tale she has selected for him, he starts hearing noises inside the studio in Mark Gatiss's The Dead Room (2018), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on the spooky BBC collection, Ghost Stories.

Caroline Williams's last graveyard shift turns into a night to remember in Erik Blomquist's Ten Minutes to Midnight (2020), as she's bitten by a rabid bat before coming on air and finds herself trapped in the radio station by a violent storm as lecherous boss William Youmans and smug younger presented Nicole Kang make plans for her succession. A DJ gets his comeuppance for taunting Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) when he seizes Michael Myers's hockey mask in the sewers and goes on a killing spree in David Gordon Green's Halloween Ends (2022).

While these two are waiting for you to click on the Cinema Paradiso website, we'll have to bide our time for Carlos Goitia's Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker, which sees Paula Brasca menaced by an over-zealous fan, and Cameron and Colin Cairnes's Late Night With the Devil, a found footage chiller set on Halloween in 1977 that reveals what happens when late-night presenter David Dastmalchian seeks to boost ratings by interviewing parapsychologist Laura Gordon and teenager Ingrid Torelli, who was the sole survivor of a Satanic church's mass suicide.

Major Harlan Dean (Joe Bob Briggs) hosts The Truth Serum on late-night radio, but a discussion of cryptozoology results in callers phoning in with increasingly wild stories in the multi-directored portmanteau, Cryptids (2023). The film poster features a radio mast, which gives us the perfect excuse to close with Scott Mann's Fall (2022), which leaves climbers Grace Fulton and Virginia Gardner stranded at the top of a 2000ft radio tower in the middle of the desert. Not one for vertigo sufferers, even if you are strapped into your seat.