Ed O'Neill Movies

In this drama, a divorced dad fights for visitation rights with his daughter after she and her mother are relocated to an unknown locale as part of the Federal Witness Protection program. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This 1990 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Ed O'Neill and features musical guests Harry Connick Jr. ~ Skyler Miller, All Movie Guide

Carl Reiner directed this situation comedy about a neglected wife who, in frustration, has her first affair, with humiliating consequences. Kirstie Alley plays Marjorie, the ignored housewife of Harry Turner (Scott Bakula), an obnoxious member of a family of physicians. Marjorie's sister Jeanine (Jami Gertz), sensing her frustration, suggests she have an affair. Marjorie meets a ramrod-handsome man (Sam Elliott) in the check-out line at the local super market. They look into each other's eyes and soon they're having an afternoon of passionate lovemaking. Actually a bit too passionate -- after round five, Marjorie's lover dies from a heart attack. A kind-hearted salesman named Nicholas Meany (Bill Pullman) quickly comes to Marjorie's aid, trying to make the death look like a suicide. Complications compound as Marjorie tries to hide the incident from Harry and his family, but instead she keeps sinking deeper and deeper into a hole of deceit. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

James Belushi stars in this cop actioner about a loner narcotics officer who has to break in a new partner. The twist here is that the new partner is barely housebroken, but he's still sharp and keeps his nose close to the ground. Dooley (Belushi), who works on the San Diego narc squad, is an eccentric guy who has pizzas delivered to his car and likes a good steak. He is working on a stakeout of a local drug dealer when he barely escapes with his life as a helicopter blows up his car. When he asks the department for a new car, they give him a new partner instead --a police dog called Jerry Lee (Jerry Lee the Dog). Jerry's good at sniffing out the criminals but Dooley doesn't really hit it off with his new partner until the pooch saves his life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The third season of Married...With Children might not have happened if a certain Michigan housewife had had her way. Outraged by the excessive sex talk and overall lack of good taste on the series, the woman from Michigan launched a letter-writing campaign to get Married... banned from the Fox network. This didn't happen for three reasons: Most viewers accepted the series as a broad satire of '80s TV raunchiness, the series was enjoying its best-ever ratings, and the show was a cash cow for Fox, accruing more advertising revenue than the rest of its programs combined. As they say, money talks, and something else walks. Anyway, season three offers even more outrageous behavior from the Bundy family of Chicago, much to the dismay of their strait-laced neighbors, the Rhoadeses. To cite on example among many, we submit for approval the episode in which, thanks to Peg Bundy's (Katey Sagal) lousy sense of directions, Steve Rhodes (David Garrison) and wife Marcy (Amanda Bearse) come home to find that their house has been demolished and their lot replaced by a gaping hole! The season's best-known episode, "The Camping Show," was originally titled "A Period Pierce" because it deals with the discomfort of Peg and Marcy whose "time of the month" occurs during a camping trip; the Fox network decided to change the title rather than offend its audience (as if the audience for this show could ever be offended). Another episode, "I'll See You in Court," was not aired in the U.S. until it was cablecast by the FX channel in 2002. The plot? Well, it seems that both the Bundys and the Rhoadeses are videotaped while having sex at a cheap hotel...say no more, say no more, wink wink, nudge nudge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Fox network's very first sitcom launches its very first season, as Married...With Children invades the sanctity of the American home. We waste no time introducing the Bundys of Chicago, headed by cloddish, chauvinistic shoe salesman Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) and his lazy, oversexed wife Peg (Katey Sagal). And of course, there are the Bundy brats: Daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate), who has managed to garner the worst reputation in her school at the tender age of 15, and eleven-year-old son Bud (David Faustino), a J.D.-in-training. The Bundys spend most of the series' first season outraging and disgusting their wide-eyed newlywed neighbors, young accountants Steve and Marcy Rhoades (David Garrison, Amanda Bearse). Whatever illusions Steve and Marcy may have had about the sweetness of matrimony and family life are destroyed by the boorish Bundys and their repulsive children on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Highlights (or is it lowlights?) of the series' inaugural season include Peg's efforts to go on a diet, Al's accidental "execution" of the neighbors' dog, Al and Steve bonding over the matter of a '65 Mustang (and simultaneously alienating their wives all the more), the family's depletion of their already tenuous credit rating, a "second honeymoon" at a no-tell motel, Peg going to work in order to buy a VCR, and innocent Marcy's outrageous sexual fantasies. . .about Al. Closing the season as Fox's highest-rated program, Married...With Children also established the fledgling network's mandate: Shock 'em, gross 'em out, make 'em laugh, and count the change as the advertising revenue rolls in. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

According to legend, the working title for Married...With Children was "NOT the Cosby Show," and that said it all. This raunchy, ribald eleven-year saga of a boorish, dysfunctional family living in the outskirts of Chicago was about as far removed from The Cosby Show as Mercury is from Pluto -- which was just fine so far as its creators, Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye, were concerned. Harboring a lifelong hatred for the "typical, wholesome" American TV family, Leavitt and Moyes chose instead to develop a series which revelled -- nay, wallowed -- in questionable taste, endless insults, and juicy sexual badinage. The newly formed Fox network, anxious to offer programming that would immediately separate itself from the "norm" as dictated by the ABC, CBS, and NBC, was receptive to the concept, and on April 5, 1987, Married...With Children debuted as Fox's first-ever sitcom -- not to mention its first-ever prime-time series. The Bundy family might well have been described as "trailer trash," only they didn't live in a trailer but instead in a large, untidy suburban Chicago house. Patriarch Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) worked for minimum wages as a clerk at Gary's Shoe Store. Being an unregenerate male chauvinist pig, unkempt, and reeking of body odor, Al would sooner hang out at the local nudie bar with his fellow members of "NO MA'AM" (the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood) than come home to the wretched meals prepared by his lazy, viper-tongued wife, Peggy (Katey Sagal). Hating housework almost as much as cooking and forever dressed in tight, garish outfits that displayed her ripe figure to anyone who was interested (Al certainly wasn't), Peg was also distinguished by her layers of facial makeup and her towering teased hair. The Bundy's dimwitted, slatternly daughter, Kelly (Christina Applegate), was so proud of her reputation as the high school's "easiest" girl that she sometimes gave annotated lectures on the subject; in later episodes, Kelly worked at such intellectual pursuits as waitressing and as commercial spokesperson for an off-brand beer. Kelly's kid brother Bud (David Faustino), eleven years old when the series began, was a combination juvenile delinquent and con artist, who, once he reached maturity (?), held down jobs as a clerk at the Motor Vehicle Bureau and as a one-person talent agency (with Kelly as his sole client). The Bundy family was a great source of irritation and embarrassment for their strait-laced newlywed neighbors, Steve and Marcy Rhoades (David Garrison and Amanda Bearse), who were respectably employed as accountants. The bad influence of the Bundys eventually seeped over into the Rhoades household, with Steve losing his job, divorcing his wife, and ending up working as a forest ranger, and Marcy taking as her second husband the terminally lazy Jefferson D'Arcy (Ted McGinley), whom she met during a drunken binge at a banker's convention. During the series' seventh season, Shane Sweet became a regular as Seven Bundy, son of one of Peg's many cousins; but the character never caught on and was summarily dropped without explanation. Two other series regulars never appeared on camera. Kevin Curran provided the voice of the Bundys' unhousebroken, oversexed dog, Buck, and later voiced a cute cocker spaniel puppy named Lucky -- who turned out to possess the reincarnated soul of the late and very reluctant Buck. And during the series' tenth season, Kathleen Freeman was heard but not seen as Peg's harridan hillbilly mother, Mrs. Wanker, who moved into Bud's room after walking out on her husband (played in some episodes by Tim Conway).

Bearing absolutely no resemblance to real life and doggedly avoiding sentiment and "very special episodes," Married...With Children was not exactly everyone's cup of treacle; in fact, one Michigan housewife became so incensed by the series' outrages (which were grotesquely exaggerated for full satiric effect) that she organized a letter-writing campaign to force Fox to cancel the series. Though the woman did not succeed, one third-season episode of Married...With Children, in which the Bundys were unwittingly videotaped while having sex at a cheap motel, was never aired by Fox and in fact was not seen in the United States until 2002, some 14 years after it was produced! Though the series had more than its share of detractors, it also enjoyed a huge fan following with most viewers fully aware that Married was actually a spoof of late-'80s/early-'90s TV raunchiness and accepted it as such. The series' "nothing sacred" attitude enabled the writers to sidestep a particularly delicate situation during season six. To accommodate the real-life pregnancy of Katey Sagal, it was decided that Peg Bundy would also have a baby. Unfortunately, Sagal miscarried, leaving audiences to wonder how this personal tragedy would affect the series. As it turned out, the writers managed to transform pathos into hilarity by stating baldly that Peg's pregnancy was merely a bad dream, à la Dallas! (Later in the series, Sagal again became pregnant, fortunately carrying the baby to term; this time around, however, the writers felt it would be best not to say anything whatsoever about babies on the series). Ending its original network run in 1997, Married...With Children has continued to be successfully rebroadcast in syndication and as part of the FX cable network lineup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Partially filmed in New York City, the made-for-TV Popeye Doyle is based on the character introduced in the 1971 Oscar-winner The French Connection--who, in turn, was based on real-life Manhattan police detective Eddie Egan. Ed O'Neill takes over from French Connection star Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle, playing the part along more humorous and less brutal lines than his theatrical-film predecessor. Doyle tackles the cast of a murdered model, which leads to a gang of terrorists. This lead sends Doyle on the trail of yet another cartel of international drug smugglers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This TV pilot film stars Carl Weathers as Harry Braker, an ex-Marine who is his city's only African American police lieutenant. Tough but tender, Braker bends the rules to help the helpless. Braker's team of co-workers is the usual cop-show manifest: The gonzo (Randall "Tex" Cobb), the green newcomer (Joseph Bottoms) and the drop-dead gorgeous babe (Ann Schedeen). Their assignment this time out is to find the killer of a prominent producer and director, both of whom were engaged in the manufacture of porno films. Braker was telecast back to back on April 28, 1985 with another busted pilot, Brothers in Law. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sitcom stalwart Valerie Harper trades jokes for the judiciary in Farrell: For the People. Valerie stars as New York attorney Elizabeth Farrell ("All she wants to be is a DA", declared the TV Guide ad copy, "but her toughest case is being a woman!"), whose case load runs the gamut from rapists to killers. This TV movie borrows a page from current events by fictionalizing the notorious Norman Mailer/Jack Henry Abbott contretemps. Farrell takes on an ex-convict who has become a best-selling author thanks to the intervention of the Manhattan intellectual elite--and whose latest creative achievement is murder. Farrell: for the People was the pilot for a projected TV series, but the central character was too bland and confining for Valerie Harper's talents. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

New York City detective Steve Burns Al Pacino receives orders from Captain Edelson Paul Sorvino to solve a series of brutal murders in the gay community. Steve scours the gay bars that caters to same-sex sadomasochism in a desperate attempt to solve the crime. As he infiltrates the scene, he slowly comes loose from the moorings of his own reality, and an innocent victim is tortured by the cops in an effort to exact a confession. The story is based on actual murders that took place between 1962 and 1979. The film gained considerable publicity because of the controversial subject matter while censor argued between an X and R rating for the feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Adapted from James Dickey's popular novel, John Boorman's 1972 movie recounts the grueling psychological and physical journey taken by four city slickers down a river in the backwoods of Georgia. At the behest of Iron John-esque Lewis (Burt Reynolds), the less adventuresome Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty), and Drew (Ronny Cox) agree to canoe down an uncharted section of the river before a dam project ruins the region. After warnings from the grimy, impoverished locals, and Drew's tuneful yet ominous "Dueling Banjos" encounter with a mute inbred boy, the four men embark on their trip, exulting in the beauty of nature and the initial thrill of the rapids. The next day, however, things begin to take a turn for the worse when Bobby and Ed decide to rest on shore after becoming separated from Lewis and Drew. Two rifle-wielding mountain men (Bill McKinney and Herbert "Cowboy" Coward) emerge from the woods, tying up Ed while one of them rapes Bobby and makes him "squeal like a pig." Lewis and Drew rescue them, but the attack irrevocably changes the tenor of the journey. As the river gets rougher and rougher, the men come to nightmarish grips with what it means to survive outside the safety net of "civilization." ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide