Martin Mull Movies
Martin Mull intended to become a painter when he enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, but his Scaramouche-like sense of the ridiculous led to a career as a nightclub comedian. The deceptively conservative-looking Mull is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished satirists in show business. Even before he gained TV fame, Mull's barbed comedy albums had earned him a following on the college campus circuit. His first major TV assignment was Mary Hartman Mary Hartman (1976-77), where he was seen as Garth Gimble, an ill-tempered wife beater who ended up being impaled by a Christmas tree. When Mary Hartman Mary Hartman producer Norman Lear developed the spin-off series Fernwood Tonight in 1977, Mull was brought back as glad-handing emcee Barth Gimble, Garth's twin brother. In films since 1978, Mull is often called upon to portray an underhanded or vacillating CEO (vide Mister Mom). His well-groomed mustache and tweedy appearance served him well as Colonel Mustard in the 1985 movie version of the venerable board game Clue. Back on television, Mull has etched such indelible comic characterizations as Leon Carp, Roseanne Connor's gay boss, on Roseanne (1988- ), and the leading roles of Martin Crane in Domestic Life (1984) and Dr. Doug Lambert in His & Hers (1990). In collaboration with Allan Rucker, Martin Mull was the creator/writer of a devastating series of lampoonish "cultural studies" books and TV specials, under the blanket title The History of White People in America. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1988
Portrait of a White Marriage is an outgrowth of Martin Mull's wickedly satirical The History of White People in America, with a bit of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman tossed in. Mull plays a self-involved TV talk host who journeys to Hawkins Falls, Ohio, to reactivate his flagging career. While glad-handing the locals, he enters into an affair with bouffanted housewife Mary Kay Place. Also appearing are such frequent Mull colleagues as Fred Willard, Michael McKean and Jack Riley. Made for cable, Portrait of a White Marriage was directed by humorist Harry Shearer, who'd also helmed the History of White People installments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1988
Fans of the syndicated 1980s TV series An Evening at the Improv will get a kick out of this commemorative TV special. Budd Friedman, overseer of the Improv comedy club in Los Angeles, takes a back seat to host Robert Klein this time out. Offering their considerable talents to the occasion are such Improv habitues as Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Paul Rodriguez, Martin Mull and Robin Williams. This 60-minute video is unrated, but the language gets hilariously salty at times. All-Star Toast to the Improv debuted on the HBO cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1988
- R
A pair of naive documentarians find themselves in over their heads when they agree to finish an "art film" for the head of a local public television station in exchange for a chance to direct a documentary on Indian farming techniques. Comical situations ensue when they discover that "Halloween in the Bunker," is really a porno film detailing the sexual practices of the Nazis. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Mull, Dick Shawn, (more)
- 1987
- PG13
In this farce from director Rex Bromfield, septagenerian twins Martin (Eric Christmas) and Art (Ted Stidder) come to the rescue when their 103-year-old billionaire father (Joe Austin) is abducted by a roller-derby queen (Valri Bromfield) who is after his fortune. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1987
- R
Never released in the theaters, this film consists of a series of short skits and parodies of television and the movies, and stars Richard Belzer, Martin Mull, and Harry Shearer. The film's 1981 production date explains the presence of Joan Hackett, who died in 1983. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pamela Sue Martin, Joan Hackett, (more)
- 1986
- R
Daniel Stern plays an up-and-coming stockbroker; Christopher Plummer is his boss; and Arielle Dombasle is the boss' wife. As a sort of litmus test for future executives, Plummer invites Stern and coworker Martin Mull for a weekend in the country. The sexy Dombasle takes a liking to Stern, who wonders if cohabiting with the boss' wife will improve his chances at promotion. This is but one element of writer/director Ziggy Steinberg's Felliniesque script, which throws in all sort of eccentrics and bizarre situations to pad out what is essentially a one-joke situation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Stern, Arielle Dombasle, (more)
This entertaining version of Pecos Bill is from the Tall Tales and Legends series by Shelley Duvall and features more adventures from the wild man who was raised by coyotes. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1985
- R
In this exploitation drama, an octet of teens survive a plane crash and end up stranded on a lonely island inhabited only by a ruthless gang of drug smugglers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Hewitt, Betsy Russell, (more)
In this spoof of McCarthy-era paranoia and 1950s wholesomeness, the characters and plot are drawn from the popular Parker Brothers board game of the same name. On a dark and stormy night in 1954, six individuals with ties to Washington are assembled for a dinner party at the swanky mansion of one Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving). Boddy's butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry), assigns each guest a colorful name: Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Col. Mustard (Martin Mull), Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren), and Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn). Two additional servants, the Cook (Kellye Nakahara) and Yvette, the maid (Colleen Camp), assist Wadsworth as he informs the guests that they have been gathered to meet the man who has been blackmailing them: Mr. Boddy. When Boddy turns up dead, however, the guests must try to figure out who killed him so they can protect their own reputations and keep the body count from growing. Three separate endings were filmed for Clue and shown in different theaters; all three are collected for the video edition. Although the film is set in the 1950s, the original Clue game was actually devised by Anthony Pratt, a clerk in Leeds, England, to pass the time during World War II air-raid drills. First released in 1946 under the name Cluedo by British manufacturer Waddington's, Clue was renamed and released in the U.S. in 1949. Today, Clue/Cluedo is marketed in 70 countries around the world and has been adapted into a British game show and an off-Broadway musical. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, (more)
- 1985
A sequel to Martin Mull's spoof about the hardships of white life in middle America. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1985
This episode of Shelley Duvall's American Tall Tales tells the story of Pecos Bill, a naïve but rowdy and immensely strong young man who was raised by wolves and eventually becomes the "King of the Cowboys." Bill (Steve Guttenberg) first appears as a ragamuffin man wearing diapers in prim and proper Petunia City. He later meets and falls in love with Sluefoot Sue (Rebecca DeMornay), the misunderstood tomboy daughter of the mayor (Martin Mull). A lively plot unfolds to include a stagecoach robbery and an escape to Mexico. As in Duvall's other storytelling series, Faerie Tale Theater, worthwhile messages are conveyed in an entertaining way. From the story of Pecos Bill, viewers young and old may learn that change can be a good thing, that looking at things from a different perspective is sometimes helpful, and that kindness should be rewarded. ~ Alice Duncan, All Movie Guide
- 1985
A middle-aged Annette Funicello stars in this made-for-Disney film about a blue-collar family whose lives are forever transformed when they win the lottery. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
In what can only be described as a dramatic change of pace, Robert Altman directed this raunchy teen comedy based on the antics of two characters featured in a series of stories published in the National Lampoon. Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie (Daniel Jenkins), aka O.C., and his buddy Mark Stiggs (Neil Barry), are a pair of misfit teenagers whose greatest joy in life is making those around them miserable. O.C.'s ancient grandfather (Ray Walston) has just had his insurance cancelled, and when he discovers that suburbanite salesman Randall Schwabb (Paul Dooley) is responsible, O.C. and Stiggs swing into a summer-long campaign to get revenge on Schwabb and his family. While it received some of the most brutally negative reviews of Altman's career, O.C. and Stiggs is worth a quick look for its cast, which includes fellow outcast auteurs Dennis Hopper and Melvin Van Peebles, comics Louis Nye and Jane Curtain, the one-time glamour girl of the Clifford Irving scandal Nina Van Pallandt, and Thomas Hal Phillips, reprising his role as Hal Phillip Walker from Nashville. World music superstars King Sunny Ade and his African Beats appear and provide the musical score. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, (more)
- 1985
Big City Comedy originated in 1980 as a syndicated TV series, hosed by John Candy. The chucklesome Candy was aided and abetted by such guest pals as Billy Crystal, Tim Kazurinsky and Martin Mull. Unfortunately, the sketches and routines weren't quite worthy of the talent involved, so assembling a "best of" video must have been a tricky proposition. Candy himself relied too much on funny costumes and makeup to get laughs, a common failing of many Second City veterans who find themselves saddled with mediocre material. Still, Big City Comedy affords a few hearty chuckles within its 58-minute lifespan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Michael Nesmith (famed as the talented one from '60s pop-band The Monkees) directed this melange of music and comedy clips starring Whoopi Goldberg, Garry Shandling, Rosanne Cash, Jay Leno and Jimmy Buffett. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Comedian Martin Mull's seminal mockumentary concerns the mundane trials and banal tribulations of a gaggle of Ohio suburbanites. All the hallmarks of middle-American culture are skewered: religion, excessive use of dairy products, crime, and family bickering. The cast includes Mull, Mary Kay Place, and Fred Willard. Harry Shearer of This Is Spinal Tap directs. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- 1984
Navin Johnson, the consummate idiot, returns in this remake of Steve Martin's popular 1979 film The Jerk. As in the first, Johnson, the lily white adoptee of a black sharecropper sets out across the country in search of true love. This version was designed as a pilot for a TV series that never materialized. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1984
The thin storyline for this film is that three young women hope to gain a foothold in the acting profession, so they perform nude in front of the window of the disk jockey (Mad Man Jack played by Al Music) who is running a contest that would launch their careers. Along with many songs by a wide variety of groups -- from The Police to Blondie -- are crowds of young women cheerleading, doing aerobics, hang gliding, wind-surfing, and performing any number of physical feats. Other than music and nubile women in sporting events, the film has little to say and was never released theatrically. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Al Music, Lantz Douglas, (more)
- 1984
Everyone is a stereotypical extreme in this sometimes mean-spirited black comedy about the vicious staff at an orphanage, the garrulous punk kids who live there, and the pretentious overblown rich couple who adopt one of the orphans -- this is not a happy world. In the Bleeding Heart Orphanage, Sister Serene (Anne De Salvo) applies all the mental and emotional restrictions she can to her wild charges, while Kurtz (Murphy Dunne) applies the electric cattle prod. When one of the children (all around 10 years old, more or less) is adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick (Martin Mull and Karen Black), his cohorts come to rescue him from the terrors of an upper-class Santa Barbara existence -- and subsequent mayhem ensues. With a low-brow, low-budget approach, the premises are obviously meant to key in to the slapstick characterizations, but for some viewers, even the comic moments may not assuage the meaner undertones of the film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Mull, Karen Black, (more)
In this made-for-TV comedy an unemployed stand-up comedian is tossed out by his girl friend and so gets a job driving a limo. He is still determined to win her back, and nothing, not even his inadvertent involvement with two hit men, will stop him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
