IHR induction #34: "The 'Burbs" (1989, Joe Dante)

This one takes me right back to my youth. When it comes to horror-comedy, few movies I've seen can top "The 'Burbs" when it comes to both star-power and laugh generation. Whoa, what? Let's rephrase that - "The 'Burbs" is a horror-comedy that does its job at both of the genres that it takes on very well. One of my favorite movies as a kid, as well as yet more testament to the awesomeness of Joe Dante.

Dante, was a protege of legendary schlock director Roger Corman, learning the tools of the low-budget trade from the guy who once said that he could make a movie about the fall of the roman empire with two shrubs and a loincloth. It's hard to argue with a pedigree like that, but amazingly enough Dante not only surpassed his mentor but became uber-successful. He has shown a knack over the years for taking on projects that are hard to pidgeonhole into any specific category; "Piranha" is probably his closest thing to an out-and-out horror film, while the mammoth '80s hit "Gremlins" is a kind of surreal family scary flick.

"The 'Burbs," on the other hand, is much more character-driven, in that we're given a lot of wholly awesome characters which also happen to be perfectly cast. With that...

THE MOVIE!

The entire film takes place in the fictional suburb of Hinckley Hills, Iowa. Our central character is Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks), family man and all-around good guy. As played by Hanks, he's instantly likable, which isn't the biggest stretch considering that we're dealing with the most digsustingly wholesome actor in movie history. I kid. I'm a big fan of Hanks, and as usual, he's aces in this role and dives into it wholeheartedly. He's also good friends with two of the neighbors on Mayfield Place - overzealous Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun), who in one of the movie's highlights attempts to shoot flying crows with a .22 rifle (as anyone with even rudimentary gun knowledge will tell you, this is damn near impossible), and reactionary former military man Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern). The three characters and actors complement each other extremely well; Dern, in particular, is really awesome as crazy Rumsfield who treats every life event like a military drill.

But the times are a-changin' on Mayfield Place, as some decidedly non-normal neighbors - the Klopeck family (Henry Gibson, Courtney Gains and Brother Theodore) - have just moved in next to Ray. They are very rarely seen outside the house, and when they are, strange things transpire. One of the flick's priceless early scenes has the three snooping friends spying on the Klopecks as the youngest member of the family (played by Gains, of "Children of the Corn" fame) runs a very large garbage bag out to the trash and beats the holy hell out of it with a stick.

Eventually, Ray takes on a more than passing interst in the Klopecks. Creepy things begin to take place. He sees them outside in the middle of the night (in the pouring rain, no less) digging holes in their backyard, and before long Art finds a discarded Femur bone that the Peterson family dog has dug up. Since one of their neighbors mysteriously disappeared earlier in the film, the paranoid suburbanites piece together the mystery and decide that their oddball new neighbors are serial murderers, thus setting the wheels of the story's third act into motion. With Ray's family on vacation and the Klopecks heading out of the house for a day, the three central male characters take it upon themselves to take the frightening journey into the creepy house and discover once and for all if their suspicions are correct.

As a story, "The 'Burbs" is pretty fascinating stuff. I actually prefer it to Barry Sonnenfeld's "Addams Family" movies when it comes to bizarre, macabre comedy; it's way, way funnier than those movies, particularly the love-hate relationship that Dern's character has with the neighborhood cool kid. I should also state that said neighborhood cool kid is played by Corey freakin' Feldman, who as usual is eleven kinds of awesome. Feldman's character, in all of his '80s dudiness, is the most normal resident of Mayfield Place, taking all of the surrounding chaos in like a movie to the point where he invites friends over just to watch the maelstrom.

That, in essence, is the appeal of this movie - a looking glass into a strange, transmorphed version of Suburbia where the crazies have invaded the landscape. It has a lot of nostalgic value for yours truly; I first saw this movie during the Halloween season of 1991, and ever since, it has remained one of my all-time favorite October films due to its peaceful suburban fall-ish setting, its stylistic look augmented by the superb direction of Dante, and its way-out-there instances of black comedy peeking through the slightly out-there horror elements. Plus, you gotta love any movie where one of the characters, in the closing moments of the film, says the words "Don't mess with suburbanites."