''The 'Burbs'' is a 1989 American
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
film directed by
Joe Dante
Joseph James Dante Jr. (; born November 28, 1946) is an American film director. His films—notably ''Gremlins'' (1984) alongside its sequel, ''Gremlins 2: The New Batch'' (1990)—often mix the 1950s-style B movie genre with Counterculture of th ...
and written by
Dana Olsen. It stars
Tom Hanks,
Bruce Dern,
Carrie Fisher,
Rick Ducommun,
Corey Feldman,
Wendy Schaal,
Henry Gibson, and
Gale Gordon.
The film pokes fun at
suburban
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...
environments and their sometimes eccentric dwellers, featuring a family man who suspects the "eccentric" new neighbors are hiding a dark secret. A modest financial success which earned mixed critical reviews, the film is now regarded as a
cult classic
A cult following is a group of Fan (person), fans who are highly dedicated to a person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some List of art media, medium. The latter is often cal ...
.
Plot
Suburban homeowner Ray Peterson is home on a week-long vacation. Late one night, he hears strange noises coming from the basement of his new and reclusive neighbors, the Klopeks. Ray and his other neighbors—nosy Art Weingartner,
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
veteran Mark Rumsfield and teenager Ricky Butler—gradually suspect the Klopeks may be ritualistic murderers. On another night, they observe the youngest Klopek cart an oversized garbage bag to their curbside garbage can and aggressively mash it down. Later that night, during a rainstorm, Ray sees the Klopeks digging in their backyard. In the morning, Ray, Mark, and Art search the garbage truck for human remains after the Klopeks' trash is collected, but find nothing.
Mark's wife Bonnie finds their neighbor Walter's dog Queenie running loose. Worried about the elderly man, Ray, Art, Ricky, and the Rumsfields enter Walter's house and find overturned chairs and Walter's
toupée, but no Walter. Ray collects Queenie, leaves a note for Walter, slips the toupée back in through the mail slot, and sees one of the Klopeks watching him from their house. Ray and Art theorize that the Klopeks may have used Walter as a human sacrifice, becoming further convinced when Ray's dog Vince digs up a human
femur
The femur (; : femurs or femora ), or thigh bone is the only long bone, bone in the thigh — the region of the lower limb between the hip and the knee. In many quadrupeds, four-legged animals the femur is the upper bone of the hindleg.
The Femo ...
from along the Klopeks' fence line. Ray's wife Carol, tired of the men's behavior, organizes a welcome visit to the Klopeks. While the Petersons and Rumsfields meet Hans, Reuben, and Dr. Werner Klopek, Art snoops around the Klopeks' backyard and is chased out by their large dog Landrue. Afterward, Ray reveals to Art and Mark that he found Walter's mail and toupée at the Klopeks', proving they had been in Walter's house.
The next day, Ray sends Carol and their son Dave to visit Carol's sister. When the Klopeks leave, Art and Ray enter their backyard to search for Walter's corpse while Mark acts as lookout. Finding nothing in the yard, Art and Ray break into the Klopeks' basement, discover what appears to be a
crematorium
A crematorium, crematory or cremation center is a venue for the cremation of the Death, dead. Modern crematoria contain at least one cremator (also known as a crematory, retort or cremation chamber), a purpose-built furnace. In some countries a ...
, and dig deep into the floor in search of human remains. The Klopeks return, accompanied by the police after having seen their basement lights on. Ray strikes a gas line with his pickaxe; Art escapes before the house explodes, and Ray emerges from the flames scorched and disheveled just as Carol returns home.
Walter arrives home during the commotion, having spent a few days in the hospital due to
palpitations
Palpitations occur when a person becomes aware of their heartbeat. The heartbeat may feel hard, fast, or uneven in their chest.
Symptoms include a very fast or irregular heartbeat. Palpitations are a sensory symptom. They are often described as ...
. He had asked the Klopeks to collect his mail for him, and they had mistakenly gathered up his toupée as well. Ray declares that he and the others were wrong about the Klopeks, and climbs into an ambulance. Werner enters and accuses Ray of having seen a human skull in the basement furnace, revealing that the Klopeks murdered the previous homeowners so they could live in their house. Werner attempts to lethally inject Ray as Hans drives the ambulance away. Their struggle causes the ambulance to crash into Art's house, ejecting Werner and Ray, who then makes a
citizen's arrest. Ricky uncovers human skeletal remains in the Klopeks' car trunk. The Klopeks are arrested, and charges against Ray are dropped. Ray states that he and his family are going away for a while, and asks Ricky to watch over the neighborhood.
Cast
Additional minor roles were played by
Dick Miller and
Robert Picardo as garbagemen Vic and Joe;
Franklyn Ajaye and
Rance Howard as detectives; Bill Stevenson, Gary Hays, and
Carey Scott as Ricky's friends; and
Kevin Gage and
Dana Olsen as policemen.
Production
Writing
Screenwriter
Dana Olsen based the script on experiences from his own childhood: "I had an ultranormal middle-class upbringing, but our town had its share of psychos. There was a legendary hatchet murder in the thirties, and every once in a while, you'd pick up the local paper and read something like 'LIBRARIAN KILLS FAMILY, SELF.' As a kid, it was fascinating to think that Mr. Flanagan down the street could turn out to be
Jack the Ripper. And where there's fear, there's comedy. So I approached ''The 'Burbs'' as ''
Ozzie and Harriet'' meet
Charles Manson."
Olsen's script attracted producer
Larry Brezner, who brought it to Imagine Films. It was greeted with a warm reception from Imagine co-founder
Brian Grazer: "I liked the concept of a regular guy taking a vacation in his own neighborhood, plus it was funny and well written. It suddenly dawned on me that
Joe Dante
Joseph James Dante Jr. (; born November 28, 1946) is an American film director. His films—notably ''Gremlins'' (1984) alongside its sequel, ''Gremlins 2: The New Batch'' (1990)—often mix the 1950s-style B movie genre with Counterculture of th ...
would be fantastic
s a directorbecause it's a mixture of comedy, horror, and reality."
Dante, who had directed ''
Gremlins'' and ''
Innerspace'', and his partner,
Michael Finnell, were immediately impressed by the concept of the movie. Dante, who specialized in offbeat subject matter, was intrigued by the blending of real-life situations with elements of the supernatural: "When I tell people about the story, a remarkable number say, 'On my grandmother's block, there were people like that. They never mowed their lawn, and they never came out, and they let their mail stack up, and nobody knew who they were.' And I must confess that in my own neighborhood there's a house like that, falling to wrack and ruin. I think this is perhaps a more common event than most people are aware of."
Dante had been developing ''
Little Man Tate'' (later made by
Jodie Foster) but that project collapsed when offered the script which was then called ''Bay Window''. Dante recalled, "I liked the characters. But the script ended with the hero being killed and driven away in an ambulance by a guy that he’s been persecuting through the movie, the guy who then turns out to really be guilty. And the fact that the guy is guilty turns out to be sort of a ''Twilight Zone'' surprise, an O. Henry twist ending. And I thought, “Well, that’s OK.” But then they decided that we wanted to hire Tom Hanks. And suddenly, it was like, “Well, you know we can’t kill Tom Hanks. What are we going to do? We'll have to change it”."
Casting
Dante, Brezner, and Finnell agreed that
Tom Hanks would be the most suitable actor to portray the married Ray Peterson, a conservative man who tries to introduce excitement into his life by investigating the activities of his strange neighbors. Dante referred to Hanks as "the reigning
everyman, a guy that everybody can identify with",
comparing him to
James Stewart.
Brezner echoed this sentiment, saying "Hanks is an actor capable of acting funny rather than funny acting. He also has no problem with transition from comedy to
Pathos
Pathos appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them. ''Pathos'' is a term most often used in rhetoric (in which it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and ...
, as he showed in ''
Nothing in Common'', and he's now proving himself as one of the country's most versatile actors."
Hanks accepted the role of Ray with enthusiasm, later saying "What's so bizarrely interesting about this black psychocomedy is that the stuff that goes on in real life in a regular neighborhood will make your hair stand up on the back of your neck."
He was also intrigued by his character's distinctive personality traits: "Sometimes there's more of an opportunity to create than others. Here's a guy with a great life – a nice house, a wife, a beautiful tree, a nice neighborhood – and he's happy. Next day, he hates it all. I thought something must've happened to him offstage. And that's the challenge for me of the part: to communicate Ray's offscreen dilemma. One of the reasons Ray doesn't go away on vacation is because it's another extension of the normalcy he's fallen into. So he thinks he'll try a more Bohemian thing, which is to just hang around the house. With a week's worth of free time on his hands, Ray is drawn into the pre-occupations of his neighbors, who always seem to be at home. But what I did is just back-story embellishment that any actor will do. Perhaps from my repertory experience. I don't ask a director for motivation. If he says, 'Go over to the window', I find the reason myself."
Hanks found admiration for Dante's directorial style, saying "Joe has a stylized, visionary way of looking at the entire movie. It's pure film-making – the story is told from the camera's point of view, and that's a type of movie I haven't made." Dante, in turn, praised his star. "The most impressive thing about Tom Hanks as a comic actor is how effortless he makes it seem. He actually is very diligent about his acting, but his comic sense of what is going to work – and what isn't – is really unparalleled."
Dante's laid-back, casual style encouraged improvisation among the actors. He noted, "Tom doesn't like to do scenes the way they're always done. He goes out of his way to put a different spin on everything and his being good as he is and as open as he is encouraged the other actors to do the same. It set a tone for the movie that made it a lot of fun to make."
Filming
''The 'Burbs'' was filmed entirely at
Universal Studios over ten weeks in the summer of 1988, mainly on the
Colonial Street set on the back lot, which served as the Mayfield Place cul-de-sac.
"I can't think of many pictures since ''
Lifeboat'' that all take place in the same area," Dante said as production got under way. "There was a lot of temptation to broaden it and go outside the neighborhood, but it seemed to violate the spirit of the piece. It's almost the kind of thing that could be a stage play except that you could never do on-stage what we've done in this movie."
The Colonial Street set had been used in 1987's ''
Dragnet'', also starring Hanks.
At the time ''The 'Burbs'' began production, it was being used as the location for ''
The New Leave It to Beaver'' television series.
[ To ensure the set would fit the tone of his film, Dante said, "I asked roduction designerJames Spencer, a veteran of '']Poltergeist
In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist ( or ; ; or ) is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of polter ...
'' and '' Gremlins'', if he thought he could turn that street into the neighborhood we needed in that period of time." Spencer rose to the challenge, and within a few days they began work on sketching out the proposed designs for the sets. Spencer observed, "We had to be on the spot. Due to the lack of time, it would have been ludicrous to do our drawing elsewhere." The orchestral soundtrack for the film was composed by Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King Goldsmith (February 10, 1929July 21, 2004) was an American composer, conductor and orchestrator with a career in film and television scoring that spanned nearly 50 years and over 200 productions, between 1954 and 2003. He was consid ...
.
Dante recalled "we shot, in fact, three endings for the picture. None of them, I think, really worked. But also, because of the writers’ strike, we had to sort of make it up as we were going along." Dante says the preview audience did not like the original ending which was more critical of the lead characters, so he changed it.
Release
Box office
The film opened at number 1 with $11,101,197 in its opening weekend (February 17–20, 1989). Overall, in the US, the film made $36,601,993 and $49,101,993 worldwide.
Critical reaction
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
of the ''Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
'' gave it two out of four stars, writing "''The 'Burbs'' tries to position itself somewhere between ''Beetlejuice
''Beetlejuice'' is a 1988 American Gothic film, gothic dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by Michael McDowell (author), Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren based on a story by McDowell and Larry Wilson (sc ...
'' and '' The Twilight Zone'', but it lacks the dementia of the first and the wicked intelligence of the second and turns instead into a long shaggy dog story." Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
of ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' gave ''The 'Burbs'' a negative review, calling it "as empty as something can be without creating a vacuum". On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has an approval rating of 56% based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''The 'Burbs'' has an engaging premise, likable cast, and Joe Dante at the helm – so the mixed-up genre exercise they produce can't help but feel like a disappointment." On Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore
CinemaScore is an American market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts from the data.
Background
Ed Mintz, who ...
gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.
Home media
Arrow Video released ''The 'Burbs'' on Blu-ray in 2014 in the UK with a new 2K scan of the inter-positive. The edition included a commentary by screenwriter Dana Olsen, a newly commissioned feature-length documentary titled ''There Goes the Neighborhood: The Making of The Burbs''. In the United States, the film was first given a Blu-ray release in 2016 by Universal Studios. However, this release was criticized for poor quality and being a bare bones release. In 2018, Shout! Factory re-released the film on Blu-ray with the transfer and majority of the special features from the 2014 Arrow release from the UK.
The soundtrack album received a release on LP record
The LP (from long playing or long play) is an Analog recording, analog sound storage medium, specifically a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of revolutions per minute, rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use ...
in 2018 on the Waxwork Records label, as an expanded double-LP package. Additional music used in the film but not included on the soundtrack albums includes "Machine" by Circus of Power; "Se Sei Qualcuno è Colpa Mia" by Ennio Morricone; "Questa o Quella" by Enrico Caruso; and "Locked in a Cage", "Make Some Noise", and "Bloodstone" by Jetboy.
Future
In September 2024, a series remake is in development at Peacock
Peafowl is a common name for two bird species of the genus '' Pavo'' and one species of the closely related genus '' Afropavo'' within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae (the pheasants and their allies). Male peafowl are referred t ...
from Universal Content Productions. Keke Palmer is headlining the series, with Brian Grazer and Seth MacFarlane producing via Imagine Entertainment and Fuzzy Door Productions respectively.
References
External links
Official Site
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Windows Live Local – Mayfield Place from the air
(slide 14) in the ''New York Daily News
The ''Daily News'' is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson in New York City as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in Tabloid (newspaper format ...
''' "Iconic Movie Homes" feature, June 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burbs
1989 black comedy films
1980s English-language films
1989 films
American black comedy films
Films directed by Joe Dante
Films scored by Jerry Goldsmith
Imagine Entertainment films
Universal Pictures films
1980s American films
1989 in American cinema
English-language black comedy films