NEIGHBORS (1981)
Label Mill Creek Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: John G. Avildsen
Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Cathy Moriarty, Kathryn Walker, Tim Kazurinsky, Lauren-Marie Taylor
I have always loved this offbeat black comedy starring John Belushi (Animal House), who is seemingly cast against type as the straight-man this time around. He plays an pudgy bore of a man named Earl, who lives in a quiet little neighborhood cul-de-sac with his long-suffering and sardonic wife Enid (Kathryn Walker, D.A.R.Y.L.). Their lives seemingly consist of a steady diet of TV and boring conversation around frozen waffle dinners, but when a new couple move into the house next door things take a turn towards the odd real fast.
Earl first encounters the new neighbors by way of the wife, the sultry Ramona (Cathy Moriarty, White of the Eye) who shows up on his doorstep, immediately flirting with him in such a weirdly intense way that it both turns him on and makes him squirm in his seat. Not long after her introduction the lunatic husband Vic (Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters) arrives at the house and
introduces himself, with Aykroyd also playing against type as the demented husband, a flamboyant machismo type with a peroxide-blond coiffure, reeking of insanity and bad decisions.
The couples sit down over a spaghetti dinner "ordered" by Vic and paid for by Earl, the newcomer having somehow schmoozed Earl into not only fronting him $35 bucks for dinner, but also into letting him borrow the car to pick up the food! Vic easily charms Earl's desperate-for-fun wife, with her siding with him against her husband on most everything, causing the increasingly irritated Earl to slowly lose his shit, becoming more and more unhinged, resulting in him acting out in strange ways, like when accidentally parks the Vic's truck at the bottom of the nearby swamp.
The film sort of plays out like one of those episodes of The Twilight Zone that take place on an oddball cul-de-sac, or perhaps a parallel story happening on the next block down from Joe Dante's suburban dark comedy The 'Burbs. It has a palpable sense of oddity and strangeness about it, with a creepy dark vibe that at times feels like it might veer into a straight-up horror film, but wrapping up in a way the feels like it could have all been a fever dream in the mind of Earl.
The films is such a weird slice of suburban (or cul-de-sac surrealness with fun performances from a talented comedy cast, Belushi and Aykroyd are magic together, at times their performances coming off a bit like an oddball SNL sketch, and Moriarty and Walker both add charm to the madcap nightmare! Sure, it might not reach the heights of a broader comedy but it absolutely plumbs the depths of dark comedy, and in the end is a fantastically strange watch, that only ripens more sweetly with each passing year, for me at least.
Audio/Video: Neighbors was previously issued by Sony Screen Classics By Request as an limited edition MOD Blu-ray presented on a burned disc, but Mill Creek Entertainment have brought the film to Blu-ray on a legit pressed disc, presenting the film in 1080p HD 1.85:1 widescreen. The film look okay, the transfer is not stunning by any means, black levels and shadow detail are problematic at times, there's some compression artifacts throughout, and grain is a bit chunky, but the muted colors look generally good, with skin tones looking natural. Sadly, we only get a lossy English Dolby Digital 2.0 presentation, but it's clean and well-balanced, but lacks depth and fidelity. Notably the Blu-ray slip and wrap both advertise a DTS-HD MA, so the lack of a lossless audio track might be a fuck-up. The score from Bill Conti (For Your Eyes Only) is one of those comedy scores that's a bit too on-the-nose for it's own good, pretty hammy stuff, leading the audience by the ears to get the point across - this is a comedy.
The single disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork featuring an original movie poster design for the film. This is one of Mill Creek Entertainment's Retro-VHS editions and it comes with a slipcover. The slip itself features a different original movie poster design, with the cool-looking retro-VHS design that looks like a VHS tape sliding out of a VHS box, covered in rental store stickers, the disc itself features an excerpt of the slipcover artwork.
Years of forcing this film on friends has taught me that Neighbors (1981) is not a dark comedy that will have broad appeal to a comedy audience, but I saw it an impressionable age in the 80s and loved it, I watched it today and I still loved it, but it's a strange, off-kilter comedy for sure. There's just something about the demented lunacy happening here that has always appealed to me, glad to see it get a Blu-ray release, this would make a great double-feature with The 'Burbs the "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" episode of The Twilight Zone. It's not for everybody, but if you're weird like me you I bet you're pretty excited to have this on Blu-ray!
