All hail the Steve Martin-Carl Reiner comedy collaborations

Steve Martin in The Jerk

One of the most underrated comedy collaborations of all time is the four-film partnership of the legendary Carl Reiner and Steve Martin.

From 1979 to 1984, they made some truly inspired and incredibly silly movies, some of which stand out as some the best work of Martin's beloved career as a film actor.

Martin has always been one of my personal favorite comedic actors and a major inspiration to me when I started performed improv myself.

Like most people my age, I first became aware of him through his movie roles in cult classics like Three Amigos, but that helped me discover his stand-up albums, which I adore.

Despite several great, hit movies -- Steve Martin, in my opinion, has never topped his first, the Carl Reiner-directed The Jerk. The movie, which was reportedly a huge favorite of Stanley Kubrick's, is a madcap melding of some infamous bits from Martin's stand-up ("I was born a poor black child") and Reiner's classic comedy gag sensibility.

This unity of old school comedy (Reiner made his name as a writer for 1950s television variety shows) and what was new (Steve Martin's brand of sly satire of that same traditional material) created an irresistible mix. The Jerk is brimming with ideas -- some ridiculously silly, others wonderfully subversive. It remains one of my favorite comedies of all time because it's Martin's most unbridled performance and the movie is politically incorrect and proud of it.

Reiner and Martin followed up The Jerk with their inventive gag movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, this goofy 1982 confection can probably best be enjoyed only by film noir buffs, since the movie employs a bevy of archival footage from old cinematic treasures for comedic effect. Martin gets to play off the likes of Bogart and Cagney, and he has a ball.

In 1983, Reiner and Martin collaborated on the loving spoof of B-movie horror films with The Man With Two Brains, which serves as sort of precursor to Her. Martin plays the absurdly named Dr. Hfuhrhufurr who falls in love with an inanimate object, a human brain (voiced by Sissy Spacek). Martin plays brilliantly off a deadpan Kathleen Turner and shows off his incredible gift for physical comedy.

Their final film together was 1984's critical acclaimed All of Me, which had Martin playing an attorney possessed by the ghost of an out-of-touch heiress (played by the great Lily Tomlin). This film, which won Martin the best reviews of his career at the time, was his first commercial hit following The Jerk and it sparked a terrific run of successes that stretched into the 1990s.

While All of Me isn't as well-known as say, Father of the Bride, it's a better film because it lacks the later film's sentimental streak, something that diminished much of Steve Martin's late career work. He found himself stuck in the same "family movie" ghetto that more or less destroyed the comedy chops of his peers, like Eddie Murphy and Chevy Chase. In fact, of that era's comedy stars, only Bill Murray has managed to remain "hip" because he didn't sully himself with the sickly cute stuff.

Still, I remain an enormous Steve Martin fan, and I always will be, but I personally prefer his earlier work because it possesses an anarchic spirit that is largely missing from today's mainstream comedies.