TMS Retro: Bad Neighbors in Film
(Universal Pictures)
NOTE: This article was originally written for The Durango Herald in 2014
Eight years ago, Nicholas Stoller’s Neighbors (2014) starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron was promoted and hyped as one of the funniest movies of 2014. A week into release it appeared critics and movie audiences agreed, and still do nearly a decade later. In the film, Rogen and Efron play opposites who live next door to each other and grow to resent each other’s inconsiderate antics. For those who are old enough to remember the early years of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” (1975-1980) and John Landis’ The Blue Brothers (1980), comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd also teamed up to lead another comedic suburban flick, John G. Avildsen’s Neighbors (1981), thirty-three years before Stoller’s. Bad living situations has been a successful theme not only in comedies, but also suspense/thrillers. Those who liked the 2014 Neighbors and/or are looking for other similar toned movies, here are a few.
In the same decade as the first Neighbors movie were the Tom Hanks vehicles, Richard Benjamin’s The Money Pit (1986) alongside Shelley Long and Joe Dante’s The ‘burbs (1989) co-starring Carrie Fisher. Both films deal with couples in unfortunate living conditions, the former with Hanks and Long failing to rebuild their house and the latter having Hanks and Fisher living next door to possible cannibals. Similarly, Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore lived right below an elderly lady (Eileen Essell) holding the screen couple back from moving into their dream condo and causing more problems than favors in Danny DeVito’s Duplex (2003).
(Columbia Pictures)
Vacation settings with asinine tag-alongs has also been put to screen effectively with Bill Murray not leaving Richard Dreyfuss alone in Frank Oz’s cult comedy What About Bob? (1991); and Dan Aykroyd played a nuisance in-law to John Candy’s family while camping in Howard Deutch’s The Great Outdoors (1988). For viewers interested in a less comedic route for nightmare neighbors this October, there is Roman Polanski’s classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby (1968); with Mia Farrow as the pregnant housewife who begins to feel strange after meeting an older married couple across the apartment hall. Incompetent tenant Michael Keaton terrorized married landlords Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith in John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights (1990), and prejudiced cop Samuel L. Jackson harassed Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington in Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace (2008).
Probably the most gruesome of home disturbances on screen is both Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) and Rod Lurie’s remake in 2011. The films feature Dustin Hoffman and Susan George in the original, and James Marsden and Kate Bosworth in the remake as newlyweds who move into small towns and aren’t welcomed kindly by the locals. Neither are for the faint at heart, but do seem to have cult followings. Despite how unnerving the situation might be in real life, home dysfunction can make some pretty decent comedy and thrillers for theater and home audiences.