Joe Dante is exactly the right director for this kind of parody about suburban paranoia. His ability to put a humorous slant on dark and twisted stories is put to good effect in The 'Burbs, a light-hearted tale of sinister goings-on in small-town America. While the story itself is thin and inconsequential, the clever playing by the cast of oddball character actors is a joy to watch and compensates for a lot. It's particularly interesting to see pre-superstardom Tom Hanks in another of the roles that nudged him up the star ladder, plus Carrie Fisher doing something other than Princess Leia, and of course Bruce Dern as an intimidating ex-soldier struggling to adapt to a quiet life in the suburbs.
Mayfield Place is a small cul-de-sac in an unspecified town in America. It resembles any one of a million streets all over the country. Pretty much the most normal residents on the street are the Petersons - Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks), his wife Carol (Carries Fisher), and their young son (Cory Danziger). They are surrounded by wackos and oddballs such as paranoid Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun), ex-military man Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) and his flirtatious young wife Bonnie (Wendy Schaal), dumb teenager Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman) and unsociable old timer Walter (Gale Gordon). But the oddest family of all lives next door to the Petersons. The Klopeks are reclusive Eastern Europeans who live in a run-down house that comes straight from the world of nightmares. No-one ever sees them out and about, but strange noises come from their basement in the middle of the night and they have a strange habit of digging holes in their back yard under the cover of darkness. During a week off work, Ray gradually convinces himself with a little help from his OTT neighbours that the Klopeks are mass murderers. When old Walter mysteriously vanishes, Ray is sure that he's the latest victims of the Klopek killing spree so he hatches a plan to break into their house and find the corpse ..
Dante creates a very believable atmosphere of paranoia, where the resident's prejudice against the Klopeks seems intentionally absurd, yet at the same time suspenseful. We laugh at these nosy neighbours because their actions against the Klopek family are outrageous, but at the same time the Klopeks appear so wonderfully weird and creepy that we find ourselves believing that they might be mass murderers. Hanks plays the normal family man caught up in what might be a non-existent adventure with fabulous skill, upstaged only by Dern, who is hilarious as the demented army freak. Dern manages to make even the straightest of lines amusing with his acerbic delivery at one point he tells an interfering teenage neighbour to "shut up and paint your goddamn house!" and succeeds in making this simplest of lines hysterically funny. The film is deceptively simple, with much less going on than actually seems to be the case, but generally-speaking it works very well. If you've ever had suspicions that your neighbours are up to no good, it's definitely a film that will plant some outrageous thoughts in your head!
Mayfield Place is a small cul-de-sac in an unspecified town in America. It resembles any one of a million streets all over the country. Pretty much the most normal residents on the street are the Petersons - Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks), his wife Carol (Carries Fisher), and their young son (Cory Danziger). They are surrounded by wackos and oddballs such as paranoid Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun), ex-military man Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) and his flirtatious young wife Bonnie (Wendy Schaal), dumb teenager Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman) and unsociable old timer Walter (Gale Gordon). But the oddest family of all lives next door to the Petersons. The Klopeks are reclusive Eastern Europeans who live in a run-down house that comes straight from the world of nightmares. No-one ever sees them out and about, but strange noises come from their basement in the middle of the night and they have a strange habit of digging holes in their back yard under the cover of darkness. During a week off work, Ray gradually convinces himself with a little help from his OTT neighbours that the Klopeks are mass murderers. When old Walter mysteriously vanishes, Ray is sure that he's the latest victims of the Klopek killing spree so he hatches a plan to break into their house and find the corpse ..
Dante creates a very believable atmosphere of paranoia, where the resident's prejudice against the Klopeks seems intentionally absurd, yet at the same time suspenseful. We laugh at these nosy neighbours because their actions against the Klopek family are outrageous, but at the same time the Klopeks appear so wonderfully weird and creepy that we find ourselves believing that they might be mass murderers. Hanks plays the normal family man caught up in what might be a non-existent adventure with fabulous skill, upstaged only by Dern, who is hilarious as the demented army freak. Dern manages to make even the straightest of lines amusing with his acerbic delivery at one point he tells an interfering teenage neighbour to "shut up and paint your goddamn house!" and succeeds in making this simplest of lines hysterically funny. The film is deceptively simple, with much less going on than actually seems to be the case, but generally-speaking it works very well. If you've ever had suspicions that your neighbours are up to no good, it's definitely a film that will plant some outrageous thoughts in your head!