The ‘Burbs
(1989)
(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs
is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you
masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch,
or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins.
Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences
by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and
the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely
nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its
foothold in the Dante pantheon.
It came out at a time when there had been a
good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and
it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy (Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away;
you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say
that some, as with say The Big Lebowski,
“got it” on first viewing but it’s also undoubtedly the case that its lasting
appeal lies in repeat visits, thanks to (unlike the script-as-bible Lebowski) oft-improvised dialogue that delivers
barely a duff line or beat. For many of the cast, this is the best thing
they’ve done. And for Dante it’s almost subversive of his own niche; it’s the
one that might most easily be mistaken for a mainstream movie at first glance,
but reveals its anarchic core even when its struggling to a toe a nominal line
of moral or message.
Where do you begin singing the praises of The ‘Burbs? This will be fairly
effusive, but it might be best to begin at the end. One thing I remember
clearly even at the time was the discussion of the ending. The picture's finale wasn’t divisive in the way say, Explorers
took a left turn when the kids reached space, from which many viewers felt it
never recovered (if anything puncture’s the cutesy E.T. bubble, it’s that movie). Rather, it was regarded as a slight
betrayal, fudging the courage of its convictions, a screenplay (from Dana Olsen,
who originally wrote it for a TV series and went on to Memoirs of an Invisible Man and some fairly inauspicious 90s
material) that set out its store commenting on the lazy, suspicious, gossipy
and bigoted suburbanites as the real culprits, rather than anyone who doesn’t fit
in, who isn’t sufficiently homogenous and is thus bullied and harassed from
town, but then backtracks by having the weirdos turn out to be weird and truly
undesirable after all.
In tandem with this criticism, there was mention of the
picture’s actual ending, and for a long time I assumed this fulfilled the
picture’s loftier goals of pointing the finger unequivocally at the interfering,
petty-minded neighbours rather than shaming the Klopeks. It didn’t, and its difficult
to argue the workprint ending has much merit when compared to the one in the
released film (other shot endings, remaining unseen on the recent UK Blu-ray
release, had the garbage men and cheerleaders in the Klopeks’ trunk). I’d
assumed Dante preferred the original shot ending (or any but the one in the
finished picture), but he actually seems rather tepid about all of them;
they’re okay, but they never really got what he wanted. The original written
ending had the Ray Peterson character killed off, which changed when Hanks was
cast. But it’s difficult to believe Universal would ultimately have gone for that
at all, whoever got the lead.
Dante said it was for this reason they had to explain the
Klopeks’ behaviour, since it was intended Ray would be abducted in the
ambulance and their motives would remain a mystery. I tend to see both the
released ending and the backtracking on the moral lesson as superior to
anything else on offer. To be fair to him, Olsen admits there’s a double-edged
reading to be taken from the picture; that the characters’ whose methods are
reprehensible turn out to be justified in their behaviour. Yet it seems to me
this kind of anarchic “have cake and eat it” approach is fundamentally the kind
of thing you want from a Dante picture.
Even the alternate ending, where Dr
Werner Klopek (Henry Gibson) explains why they moved to the suburbs (“I came as you did for the quiet and the
privacy, convenience and shopping or the good life”) is rather lacking
(aside from Hans comment that they never had any trouble before (“It’s true. In L.A. nobody ever said anything”).
To follow through with the neighbours as being completely wrong in their
suspicions and persecution of the Klopeks would be noble and commendable but
rather boring. Yes, it “lets the audience off the hook”, but part of the fun
here is that the characters don’t learn anything either. Dante gets his “message”
across in the finished film and has
fun with it.
For starters, the boot full of skulls is so absurdly over
the top, it’s irresistible, revelling in the lack of strong motivation for the
Klopeks and emphasising the exaggerated, cartoonish quality of Dante’s entire oeuvre.
Far from justifying the fear of the other, the xenophobia of the characters is allowed
to proceed unchecked. It’s not dissimilar to the tack Dante takes at the end of
Small Soldiers, where the tech
company buys off the characters (the parents, who should be setting an
example!) and no doubt continues to perpetrate more carnage; characters in
Dante’s pictures are allowed to carry on living their blithely irresponsible version
of the American Dream long after the credits have rolled.
Art: Do not mess with suburbanites, because
frankly we’re just not going to take it any more.
So Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun) espouses his hopeless
“I’ve learnt nothing from this” lesson to the TV crews, while Lieutenant Mark
Rumsfeld (Bruce Dern) is justified in his casual racism (his first comment on
seeing Courtney Gains’ Hans is “Hey, one
of the Huns came out of the cave”). Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman) is the TV-fed
MTV Generation observer of events, so his response is the more pervasive one of
seeing real life as mere entertainment without the cathode ray tube.
Ray: As soon as that car leaves in the morning,
I’m going over the fence. And I’m not coming back until I find dead body… Nobody
knocks off an old man in my neighbourhood and gets away with it.
Even Ray, who is shown full of regret and delivering the core
point about “People who mow their lawn
for the 800th time and snap. That’s us, It’s not them”) appears
to have the blinkers pulled back down when he makes Ricky his deputy in the
last scene; he tells Ricky he is going away for a while and asks him to keep an
eye on the neighbourhood while he’s gone. Dante is mocking the swagger of a
character who actually sees himself as the local sheriff now he has lucked in
with his behaviour.
So yeah, viewers might take away the idea that this is an
endorsement for irresponsible and anti-social behaviour but they’d probably be
the ones who think Big and Turner and Hooch are Hanks’ best movies.
Even an apparently innocuous act has repercussions (“That poor old man claims he’s got a ransom note that says you kidnapped
his dog”) let alone the “neighbours from hell” litany of offences that
greets Ray when he staggers from the shell of the Klopek residence (“Destruction of private property, destruction
of public property, three counts of criminal trespassing, harassment, assault,
vandalism”).
Affectionate mockery is part and parcel of the Dane
approach; even his villains are likeably villainous. On paper the themes of The ‘Burbs aren’t anything particularly special; it’s what Dante
does with them that stands out and makes the setting feel fresh (compare last
year’s lousy Rogen-fest (Bad) Neighbours
to see how easy it is to render this kind of premise sophomoric). The
underbelly of the white picket fence Americana was particularly in vogue during
the ‘80s, be it contrasting ‘50s nostalgia with reality (Back to the Future, Peggy Sue
Got Married) or transposing the veneer to an antic contemporary setting (Blue Velvet).
That was doubtless due in
part to baby boomers being of age and up and coming filmmakers, but also
reflective of the regressive Reaganist values taking hold. The ‘Burbs particularly “gets” that, with the gung-ho revisionist
‘Nam veteran who was previously turned into a cartoon with First Blood Part II and then appropriated and invoked by Reagan
himself. It’s no wonder Dante was disturbed enough to reference it both here
(the flag-raising Rumsfeld takes the name of the Secretary of Defence from the
previous decade, at that point back in the private sector) and in Gremlins 2 (although, it felt a little
passé by the time Gizmo became addicted to him).
Carol: Sorry boys, my husband’s not feeling well.
He has to stay in his room.
Rumsfeld: Please Carol, let him out.
While that’s there, the kernel of the picture is something
more universal, as Olsen was inspired by “that weird house on every street you
knew when you were a kid”. Part of the genius of The ‘Burbs is not having
a bunch of kids find the neighbours are up to no good, Hardy Boys style, but giving the role to a trio of overgrown ones.
This is referenced overtly in both sight gags (Rumsfeld sitting in his camouflage
gear on the roof, biting the heads off animal crackers) and the stern tone of
Ray’s wife Carol (Carrie Fisher). The sight of Dern pleading like a seven-year-old
for Carol to let his friend out to play, and Art kicking the ground in
disappointment is perfection. Then there’s Ray and Art daring each other to
knock on the Klopek’s door and Rumsfeld quizzing Ray, “What are you, a fraidy cat?”
Olsen’s screenplay was originally titled Bay Window, a riff on Rear Window, and there is something of
the Hitchock parody here (Disturbia plays more like a straight
version of The ‘Burbs than a youth
version of Rear Window). Others have
emphasised the picture’s horror-comedy credentials of the picture, although I
must say that, while I recognise the markers, I’ve never really thought of it as
part of that sub genre, not in a genuine way. Dante throws in an abundance of
references and signatures (crows, harbingers of death appear from the first), but
the horror element is in much more diluted form than even Gremlins.
The scenes suggestive of horror (Ray digging in the
basement when we know the Klopeks are returning) are closer to your classic
Hitchcock suspense sequence (Raymond Burr showing up when we know but Jimmy
Stewart or Grace Kelly doesn’t) than horror. There’s always the possibility of
warped domestic incidents, but Dante relegates these references to the overtly
visual (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist both possess a highly skewed
vision of home life) or verbal (Michael Winner’s
Dinners Winner’s The Sentinel).
Accordingly, the urban legend/tale of the neighbourhood
nutter that has fuelled a thousand teen slashers comes into conversation, but
purely via Art scaring Ray with a tall tale (obviously from his childhood,
where Skip murdered his family with an ice pick during a hot summer) or a Looney Tunes meets Spellbound dream sequence (the chainsaw comes through the wall, Art
dressed as Skip and Ray sacrificed to Satan on his giant-sized barbecue).
Ray: I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen
anybody drive their garbage down to the street and then bang the hell out of it
with a shovel. I’ve never seen that.
Dante has fun with the mild horror references throughout,
though. His pictures tend to be at their best when the frames are stuffed with
little gems; it pays dividends to revisit his pictures for this reason alone, as
there are always more to pick up. The first scene has Ray witnessing the Klopeks’
noisy basement at night; their property distinguishes itself with its grey,
dead ground where the rest of the street is classically primary coloured. Wind
gusts at him on cue when he sets foot over the boundary.
Their house number 669
swings down to 666 when Ray and Art knock on the door; in a classic of
escalating panic, Art puts his foot through the porch and a swarm of bees
chases them away. This climaxes with Rumsfeld attempting to spray them down but
pitching into a slapstick pratfall when the hose proves not too short. Then
there’s Hans driving the Klopek car to the bottom of the drive to put a sack in
a rubbish bin as lightning lights up the sky, or the Klopeks digging en masse
in their back garden on a rain-lashed night.
Ray: Walter’s dog just took a dump on Rumsfeld’s
lawn again.
Carol: Good, honey.
The Klopeks have been in the neighbourhood for only a month
when the picture begins, but that’s more than enough time to condemn them. I
think it benefits the picture not burdening Ray with the backstory of having
lost his job (referenced in the workprint with an appearance by Kevin McCarthy
as his boss in the dream sequence and Ray’s confession to Carol in the last
scene) as it fosters a focus on the listless, petty lives of Ray, Art and
Rumsfeld. The reasonable suggestion “Well
maybe these people just want to keep to themselves” won’t wash, not just
because they don’t conform to neighbourhood norms, but because the lives of this
trio of amateur investigators are so empty they have to create distractions.
When they don’t have the artificial filler of meaningless jobs or humdrum
lives, they naturally revert to a pre-adult mind-set. Ray is off work for a
week, Rumsfeld is (presumably) retired, and Art’s wife is away (who can blame
her).
Dave: Ricky Butler says they’re nocturnal feeders.
Art is the instigator; he needs to know what the Klopeks are
up to do, but rumour and confabulation inform his knowledge of them. He’s the
one insisting to “grounded” Ray that
he has maniacs living next door, whose last house burnt to the ground in a “hideous raging inferno”. He finds
suspicion through absence (“No one goes
in no one goes out”, there are no visitors no deliveries, “What do you think they’re eating over there?”).
It’s left to Rumsfeld to fan the flames (or stir the shit), while Ray’s
resistance is gradually worn down as his own suspicions increase (“Walter was a human sacrifice!” insists
Art, who has put a note in the Klopeks’ letter box claiming “I know what you’ve done”). When it comes
down to it, though, they’re pretty much as bad as each other.
Dante had a run of underperformers – or simple non-performers
– following the surprise success of Gremlins.
He has commented it put him on a commercially viable pedestal he never
expected, but we should be grateful for it as in the near-decade that followed gave
us a run of consistently warped and infectiously lunatic studio pictures. Explorers was roundly ignored and as a
result might be the most cult-worthy of his pictures today. Innerspace mystifyingly did antiseptic
business despite Spielberg’s name. Then came The ‘Burbs, the performance of which was reasonable given its price
tag but no doubt disappointed suits expecting it to cash in on Hanks’ breakout
success in Big nine months earlier.
Although I’m sure few think of it in those terms, it’s his
only movie besides Matinee without a
true science fiction or fantasy element. In some respects this makes the
heightened comic and visual sensibility even more pronounced, as there’s no
unreal premise to bed it in (in a good way; the “real” world of The ‘Burbs is larger than life – outside
of the movie-centric element, Matinee is
a fairly straight coming-of-age tale in content). As noted, there are cineaste
homages and gags littering the picture, from Race with the Devil (the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre clip was cut from the UK version of the picture until the
film’s ban was repealed) to a book called The
Theory and Practice of Demonology by Julian Karswell (of Night of the Demon) to the painting Rumsfeld
can’t make head nor tail of (from Rod
Serling’s Night Gallery).
Art: (Holding a
bone Vince has brought) Do you know what this
is?
Ray: It’s a bone.
Art: It’s a femur.
Ray: It’s a femur – bone.
Art: A femur just happens to be a human
thighbone, Ray.
Ray: Wait, how do you know that?
Art: Biology 101. I mean, look at the size of
this thing. Do you think this came off a chicken or something? Where the hell
did Vince get this?
Ray (he and Art
look over towards the Klopek property): He
dug it up from underneath the fence.
Art (they
approach the fence): Ray, Ray, there’s no
doubt any more. This is real. Your neighbours are murdering people. They’re
chopping them up. They’re burying them in their back yard. Ray, this is Walter!
(Ray and Art scream “AHHHHNOOOOOOOO!”
as the camera crash zooms in and out.)
But it’s the Looney
Tunes approach to live action that continually makes The ‘Burbs a joy to behold. Sometimes it’s just one shot; the
two-shot of Art and Dave staring at each other, eating in unison as they
contemplate the misdeeds of the Klopeks. Or Ricky barging open a door and
knocking Art’s food-laden plate from his hands (plundered from Walter’s fridge)
in a wonderfully silly gag on movie scares (take 87 was used). One of the best,
and most famous (it’s in the trailer) is the zoom in and out on Ray and Art
screaming in response to the human thighbone Vince, Ray’s dog, has been playing
fetch with (one of those scenes that pays dividends on repeat viewing). Topping
even that is Art’s derisory “Do you think
this came off a chicken or something?” moments before.
The Leone parody, complete with Morricone excerpt from Once Upon a Time in the West (Jerry
Goldsmith was unable to do an effective imitation) is similarly attention
grabbing. Hans stands on his porch and all eyes in the close are on him; Dante offers
us extreme close ups on the eyes of Ricky, Bonnie Rumsfeld (Wendy Schaal),
Rumsfeld himself, Walter (Gale Gordon)… and Walter’s dog Queenie. It highlights
what a great comic sensibility the director has, but also the sheer paucity of
inventiveness in comedy movies generally. The camera is very rarely used as an
integral aspect of the design of gags; it’s mostly there just to record them in
the most basic of fashions.
Other moments include the Art-shaped hole in the shed roof,
left there after he topples from a telegraph pole (a gag that would be repeated
as a Batman reference in Gremlins 2 the following year), the
aforementioned puzzlement of Rumsfeld as moves Dr Klopek’s painting round and
round, unable to figure it’s focus, and the slapstick genius of Rumsfeld
distracted, slipping and falling off the roof with his sniper rifle, which misfires
and shatters a car window (“Awesome!”
comes the reply from Ricky’s friends, followed by applause and “That was very cool, man”).
With his affinity for cartoons. Dante is never far away from
breaking the fourth wall, although (I think) this is the first time he goes
there directly; in the last scene Ricky, having been delegated responsibility,
announces to the camera “God, I love this
street”. He’s been the de facto chorus anyway, but this embrace of the
artifice of the movie form is fundamental to appreciating Dante’s movies.
The picture’s best, most well sustained scene relies on
timing and blocking rather than overt gags, however. Carole leads Ray, Rumsfeld
and Bonnie on a mission to meet the Klopeks. It’s a scene pregnant with
discomfort ("Sure was damp today") as Carol and Bonnie observe etiquette while
Ray attempts to be polite and consume a sardine (Hank’s comic timing is
delirious here).
It’s Dern who steals the show, however, observing no decorum
whatsoever as he distractedly tears wallpaper off the wall, mocks Hans and
interrogates Reuben (Brother Theodore). Which culminates in Ray making for the
basement only to be confronted by the Klopeks’ Great Dane Landru (“You keep a horse in the basement?”) It’s
a scene of delightful ensemble acting, and as, Callum Waddell notes on the
Blu-ray commentary track, Pinteresque pauses and off-kilter interaction.
The ‘Burbs was
shot during the summer of 1988 amid a writer’s strike (Dante, a pro-writer guy,
cast Olsen in a small role to ensure he was onset). As a result, even though
the script was locked when production began, there was much improvisation
during the course of filming. That should probably be no surprise coming from a
filmmaker whose fingerprints are very evident in all his work, no matter who
penned it. Dante also shot in sequence to ensure such adlibbing was germane to
the tone and content (and on the Universal backlot, so emphasising the
exaggerated milieu and enabling greater control of the elements).
As is customary for him, the cast is a mixture of his
“repertory company” and stars. So Hanks, Fisher and Dern (who would go on to
work with the director again on Small
Soldiers and The Hole; Dern
became cool again long before Tarantino “rediscovered” him) represent the name
players, accompanied by Feldman (something of a young star in his own right at
that point, but had earlier worked with Dante on Gremlins), Schaal (first working with Dante on Innerspace, and later Small
Soldiers), Gibson (Innerspace, Gremlins 2), and cameos from evergreen
players Robert Picardo and Dick Miller. In this one, the blend feels
particularly seamless.
Ray: That’s what I want to do. I just want to lay
around. Be lazy, listen to the ball game, drink a couple of hundred beers, and
maybe smoke an occasional cigar. This is what I need, Carol. And at the end of
the week I’ll be a brand new human being.
Carol: It’s your vacation.
I recall reading somewhere that Hanks doesn’t hold the
picture in particular esteem. That might be partly down to Dante’s eccentric
sensibility, partly down to the friction he had with Ducommun (Dante has
commented it was absolutely perfect for the antagonism between Ray and Art) or
simply the transition he was making to the hallowed territory of “serious”
actor. He dipped his toe in Punchline
the previous year. Following Turner and
Hooch, the same year as The ‘Burbs,
the closest he got to “straight” comedy again was 1990’s Joe versus the Volcano; Bonfire
of the Vanities was a failed satire, and by 1993 he transitioned to serious
or resonant character fare. Like Bruce Willis, more’s the shame, as Hanks’
greatest flair is as a comedy actor, rather than a rather constipated
representative of sincere and well-meaning America.
Ray: I’m only trying to take a nap. I’m only
laying here, with my eyes closed, trying to get some goddam sleep. (Ray crushes
cans in his hands)
Which isn’t to say he isn’t good enough at that, but it is to note that The ‘Burbs might be his best comic performance. Big gets all the raves, but the
overgrown child thing isn’t nearly as engaging as the frustrated
man-child. It’s interesting to see young Hanks (so young at 32, he didn’t want
Ray to have a kid as he thought it would affect his bankability) as the already
all-but middle-aged aimless suburban slacker dad who talks about the game and
the tools his father-in-law gave him, and the way he holds the picture together
in an entirely generous way.
He’s funny, grouchy, exasperated. His comic timing
is exquisite, from crushing beer cans to flinching when Art shoots out his
porch lantern, to failing to break into the Klopeks with a credit card (‘Ah, it’s a shit store anyway”, consoles
Art), to instructing Dave, mid yelling match with Carole “Your mum and I are having a conversation” and carrying his
stretcher into a waiting ambulance and flopping down on it.
Perhaps the most fun comes from his fantastic chemistry with
Fisher, though. She’s the indulgent parent to his wayward kid on one level, but
you don’t doubt for a minute that they are perfectly matched couple. His
reluctance to go up to the lake, citing that “the neighbour with the enormous has to get drunk and fall down the
stairs” sees Carol reprove him because the neighbour is “hydrocephalic”. When his wife returns
and all is disarray, she suprisingly doesn’t give him hell, while he observes, “You’ve cut your hair. I like it”, adding
later “I really do like your hair, honey”.
Carol: Honey, I’ll just find out what hospital
they’re taking you to, and I’ll follow right along.
This might also be Fisher’s finest comic hour. Dante
directed her in a “social disease” public information film in the patchy (his
segments tend to be the best) sketch movie Amazon
Women on the Moon, but generally her roles have tended towards the cameo or
supporting turn in a way that surely would not have happened today (the Leia association
wouldn’t have been an impediment). It’s nice to see a married couple on screen
with tolerance and understanding, and that’s mostly about Fisher moderating
Carol’s “Let him do what he has to do”, knowing better without reproving him,
as she knows it would be a waste of effort.
She’s particularly on form taking
Art to task (“Art, you’re not invited”
she instructs as she leads the diplomatic mission to the Klopek house – an
American diplomatic mission passing under the flag, so inevitably it flounders)
and insulting him in such splendidly quotable fashion that it appeared on an
early Empire magazine spine quote (“Whoa, whoa, whoa? Who started it, tuna neck?”)
Art: I say we start in the kitchen. They’ve
probably got some cold beer in there.
Ducommon, a relatively unknown stand-up comedian whose
subsequent movie career wasn’t, for whatever reason, especially prolific (a
Mogwai bites his nose in Gremlins 2,
his swimming pool ends up full of villain’s car in Last Boy Scout) but Dante singles his improv skills out for
special praise on The ‘Burbs. He
definitely imbues Art with just the right edge of annoying, gnawing antagonism
and his running gags involving emptying neighbours fridges of food are
particularly choice (most of the scenes in the workprint are “take them or
leave them”, but it’s disappointing not to get the pay off of Art in the
kitchen at the Klopeks; when Ray asks what’s wrong, he replies “There’s no beer”).
His presence ensures
bits of lines are gems (“If I’d been on
the plane, it would have crashed”, he asserts regarding a “premonition”).
He informs Ray “My cousin Jerry’s a
priest. He can get you a deal” (on holy water) and his active imagination
provokes the suggestion that the Klopeks will “Tear their livers out and make some kind of satanic pate” (food
again) and that Ray’s repetition of “I’m
not listening to you” is a demonic chant (“I want to kill, every one, Satan is good, Satan is our pal”).
Rumsfeld: Art!
Bonnie: Your wife’s home!
Rumsfeld: And your house is on fire!
Art: My wife is home?
The pay off that the guy who seems to be his own boss (“Who listens to their wife?” he asks
rhetorically at one point) is scared silly when he discovers his wife has
returned is particularly choice, as is his unflinching sarcasm towards the
police (“Yeah, the old guy who’s sitting here is buried in that house”).
It’s Dern who really waltzes off with The ‘Burbs, though, his entitled glee and shameless disdain for
others carried along in a ball of wiry energy. Dern hadn’t really been on the
map for a decade when Dante made the picture, his last pictures of note being
(a Vietnam vet in) the adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Black Sunday, (a Vietnam vet in) Oscar winning Coming Home and the detective pursuing Ryan O’Neal in Walter Hill’s
The Driver (he would make a couple
more pictures with Hill during the ‘90s). Subsequently he would make Midnight Sting (aka Diggstown), proving he could play nasty with such flair he could
make James Wood look like the good guy.
Rumsfeld: Rumsfield’s the name. I don’t think I caught
yours, sonny.
Hans: Hans.
Rumsfeld: Hans. Oh-ho-ho. A fine Christian name. Hans
Christian Anderson? What are you, a catholic?
Rumsfeld may not be as renowned a comedy veteran as John
Goodman’s Walter Kochek in The Big
Lebowski, but he should be. Dante noted that Dern, Fisher and Hanks were
particularly great in scenes together, but Dern just opening his mouth gets a
laugh 90% of the time. Rumsfeld’s casual xenophobia is especially amusing (“Is that a Slavic name?” he muses
regarding the Klopeks); his entire interaction with his new neighbours during
the peace visit is hilarious, especially with Brother Theodore (“What kind of doctor is this brother of
yours, Rube?”) He’s shamelessly upfront and transparent (“Got somebody tied up in the old cellar have
you, Rube?... What have you got in
the cellar, Herr Klopek?”), and almost agreeable in his incorrigible mockery
(“It came with the frame?”)
Rumsfeld: Klopek. What is that, Slavik?
Ruben Klopek: No!
Rumsfeld: Oh-ho. ‘Bout a nine on the tension scale,
Rube.
We don’t know what Rumsfeld does now (we don’t know what any
of them do; part of the appeal is that their jobs are inevitably boring so they
don’t even mention them) but we assume he’s retired with his young trophy wife.
His contempt for Rick and his friends (“That
kid’s a meatball”) is accompanied by a bravado of one assuming they are
always in the right (“You’ve got a
lawsuit on you hands, man”) even when the opposite is the case.
Then there’s his veteran status, very much caricaturing the
John Wayne military mind rather than the post-Deer Hunter, post-Oliver Stone fucked-upness. He observes, “In South East Asia we’d call this type of
thing ‘bad karma’” and instructs Hans “Don’t
make a move, sonny. I was 18 months in the bush and I could snap your neck in a
heartbeat”. He takes glee in his military manoeuvres (his radio that can “raise all the police channels and the power
company channels”, his commanding the mission; “Red Rover, Red Rover, let Ray go over”) and best of all (well,
second to the horse comment) his response to Ray revealing Walter’s concealed
wig (“You’ve had that thing in your
trousers all day?”)
Ricky: Green sky at morning, neighbour take warning.
Ray: Green sky at night…
Ricky: Neighbour take flight?
Since working with Dante on Gremlins five years earlier, Feldman’s career rise had been fairly
meteoric, starring in hits The Goonies,
Stand By Me and (most lastingly
perhaps) The Lost Boys. There was
also License to Drive with fellow
Corey and Lost Boys co-star Corey
Haim. By all accounts he was indulging fame too much by the time of The ‘Burbs (Bubbles was banned from the
set for shitting everywhere) and the lame-o friends of Ricky were Feldman’s own
lame-o friends. It’s a shame, but The ‘Burbs
is the last time Feldman’s really a mainstream star, particularly as he’s a
natural comedy performer with great comic timing.
He may not have known his
niche place as an actor when he made the movie, but he essays a typically
difficult role with aplomb (the guy who tells the audience when something is
funny shouldn’t work, but Ricky is so likeable that it absolutely does; witness
his response to Bruce Dern and the hose). Choice moments include the iconic
improvised (“Pizza dude!”), his
attempt to distract the cops (people, “In
my parents’ house, and they’re eating all their food!”) and trying to get
Reuben on side (“Chill out with us. We’ve
got the pizza dude coming!”)
Dr Klopek: Another neighbour?
Ruben Klopek: A fat one.
Ruben Klopek: A fat one.
The Klopeks are typically great Dante villains (although
there are surprisingly few in his pictures, which is a shame, as when he does
them, they always commendably enjoy being villains). There’s Gibson with his
cool gentility (“I thought the candles
would be romantic for the ladies”; there are about 20 chunky ones smoking
away on a coffee table), Brother Theodore snarling (“Okay, hepcats. Get off the car”) and a very funny ginger
chin-bearded Courtney Gains as the unfortunate Hans, complete with flies
buzzing around him and flinching at the Bonnie’s touch . They’re likeably and
distinctly oddball and quirky.
Rumsfeld: Well, you’re going to pick the mess because
you are a garbage man.
Completing the cast are Schaal (since gainfully employed on American Dad, so I guess Seth McFarlane
has something in his favour due to being a fan of The ‘Burbs), the always entertaining Picardo (“This seminar could change your life, Vic”) and the invariably
cantankerous Miller (“I hate cul-de-sacs”)
Even the cops get memorable lines (“You
don’t get to the beach much, do you?”, one asks Hans).
I’m not a universal fan of Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtracks,
but his scores with Dante are universally excellent; playful, lively with a
touch of electronica. The Klopek organ has just the right air of horror-mocking
grandiosity, while military anthem for Rumsfeld suitably undercuts him. Robert
M Stevens replaced John Hora as cinematographer (he worked with Dante on Amazing Stories) and does a fine job,
working in his director’s desire to gradual darken the palette as the picture
became more intense, and dropping the camera to lower angles as the menace rose
(there’s also quirky employment of Dutch angles).
Everyone here completely gets
how to make a lively comedy, one that doesn’t rest on its laurels in any department
as a result of relying on the performers to do the heavy lifting. Even the
trailer brings out the best in the makers (The
‘Burbs title zooms in and out in imitation of the femur shot). Oh, and that
opening effects shot from the Universal logo and down to the street (and
reversed for the end of the picture). It would barely pass comment now, of
course, but was much celebrated at the time.
It’s been said The ‘Burbs
didn’t get great reviews (the aforementioned Empire proudly noted recently that they gave it four stars, and I
remember Starburst’s Alan Jones – who
slated Gremlins 2 – giving it 8/10,
so perhaps Dante’s only remembering the bad). I think it’s true to say that the
picture didn’t stand out as a comedy classic straight away, even to Dante
aficionados. I’ll readily admit Dante’s stranger and more tangible delights of Innerspace, Gremlins and its sequel ranked as my favourites (and still do, The ‘Burbs aside) during the period of
their release. But as I said above, even The
Big Lebowski took a while to work its magic, and the Coens were playing to
a captive audience by the time that picture arrived. That’s part of the appeal
with cult movies; they take time to ferment and for their true lustre to leak
through. The ‘Burbs is now revealed
as a career pinnacle not only for Dante, but also Hanks, Fisher, Dern, and
Feldman. It’s inconceivable that you’d watch it and not love this street.
