Movie Reminiscence: Part 1
And now for the first entry in my multi-part series,
~NATHAN'S GAY RETROSPECTIVE OF VARIOUS MOVIES HE SAW AS A KID~
Today...
I can't remember exactly how old I was when first I saw this, but I must have been pretty young, and I've probably seen it about 200 times altogether. As is the case with most of the movies I like and remember best from my childhood, my mother felt that I probably was too young to see it at the time. All things considered it's pretty tame, really, but some of the stuff in this movie was SERIOUS BUSINESS for a little kid who ate up anything smacking of darkness and perversity that slipped through the parental filter.
The 'Burbs (1989) is about a street in a stereotypical upper-middle-class suburb somewhere in America where some new people have just moved in. These new people, the Klopeks, never leave their house or speak to anyone, and their lawn is dead, and their coming seems to have coincided with the first appearance of crows in the neighborhood, and at night all kinds of weird sounds and bright lights emanate from their basement. Right next door to them lives Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks, back when he was funny), a man who has just begun a vacation from work and intends to spend it loafing around the house doing nothing rather than going to "the lake" with his wife (Carrie Fisher!) and son, where all there is to do is laugh at a drunken hydrocephalic guy falling down the stairs. Instead of relaxing, however, he finds himself dragged into a plot by his other neighbors to spy on the shadowy Klopeks and prove that they are BABY-EATING DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS!!! The chief instigators of this theory are a fat guy with an annoying voice named Art (Rick Ducommun, who played a fat, annoying-voiced evil guard in Spaceballs) and an unhinged 'Nam vet named... RUMSFIELD (Bruce Dern, truly the best man for the job). Also present is some stupid teenager named Ricky, who is played by omni-80's-teenager Corey Feldman in one of his relatively non-sucking roles. Their suspicions begin to gain ground when an annoying, yard-loving, toupee-wearing, poodle-owning old fart mysteriously disappears.
The really, really, really obvious moral of the film is that it's bad to be all paranoid towards weird people because it causes you to blow things up with fire. However the movie obviously went through a variety of different endings because the ending seen in the final version seems artificially tacked-on. It does involve a large pile of human bones, though, so I can't complain too much.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE FILM:
> The immortal line, recited in a rhythmic monotone to simulate an evil chant, "I want to kill everyone, Satan is good, Satan is our pal."
> A bunch of other references to "OMG Satanic ritual abuse!!"-type stuff. Unfortunately, however, the book The Theory and Practice of Demonology depicted in the film either does not actually exist or is so rare as to not be listed on Amazon.
> In one scene, someone serves some guests sardines and pretzels. Good combination! Mmm, sardines.
> The fact that one of the characters is named RUMSFIELD. And sits on his roof in full combat gear while dunking animal crackers into a yellow plastic cup of milk.
> The ridiculously overblown, cheesy, and melodramatic soundtrack (including a sampling of this one really cool Ennio Morricone piece from some spaghetti western).
> A scene involving an anecdote about people using pine-scent air-fresheners to cope with the smell of decomposing corpses.
> This is probably Tom Hanks' best performance ever. Screw his various Oscars for other stupid movies, the parts in which he expresses his feelings by crushing beer cans at random, and his expression and mannerisms while descending some steps covered in third-degree burns FTW.
OBLIGATORY YEWTUBE CLIP:
(Also some guy posted the entire movie beginning at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2Z4dn4BD4&feature=PlayList&p=30E712C00B2AB3F4&index=0. However, Part 3 of the 12 was removed. The other 11 are still there though, so you can see most of the film here if you're interested.)
And:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096734/
~NATHAN'S GAY RETROSPECTIVE OF VARIOUS MOVIES HE SAW AS A KID~
Today...
I can't remember exactly how old I was when first I saw this, but I must have been pretty young, and I've probably seen it about 200 times altogether. As is the case with most of the movies I like and remember best from my childhood, my mother felt that I probably was too young to see it at the time. All things considered it's pretty tame, really, but some of the stuff in this movie was SERIOUS BUSINESS for a little kid who ate up anything smacking of darkness and perversity that slipped through the parental filter.
The 'Burbs (1989) is about a street in a stereotypical upper-middle-class suburb somewhere in America where some new people have just moved in. These new people, the Klopeks, never leave their house or speak to anyone, and their lawn is dead, and their coming seems to have coincided with the first appearance of crows in the neighborhood, and at night all kinds of weird sounds and bright lights emanate from their basement. Right next door to them lives Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks, back when he was funny), a man who has just begun a vacation from work and intends to spend it loafing around the house doing nothing rather than going to "the lake" with his wife (Carrie Fisher!) and son, where all there is to do is laugh at a drunken hydrocephalic guy falling down the stairs. Instead of relaxing, however, he finds himself dragged into a plot by his other neighbors to spy on the shadowy Klopeks and prove that they are BABY-EATING DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS!!! The chief instigators of this theory are a fat guy with an annoying voice named Art (Rick Ducommun, who played a fat, annoying-voiced evil guard in Spaceballs) and an unhinged 'Nam vet named... RUMSFIELD (Bruce Dern, truly the best man for the job). Also present is some stupid teenager named Ricky, who is played by omni-80's-teenager Corey Feldman in one of his relatively non-sucking roles. Their suspicions begin to gain ground when an annoying, yard-loving, toupee-wearing, poodle-owning old fart mysteriously disappears.
The really, really, really obvious moral of the film is that it's bad to be all paranoid towards weird people because it causes you to blow things up with fire. However the movie obviously went through a variety of different endings because the ending seen in the final version seems artificially tacked-on. It does involve a large pile of human bones, though, so I can't complain too much.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE FILM:
> The immortal line, recited in a rhythmic monotone to simulate an evil chant, "I want to kill everyone, Satan is good, Satan is our pal."
> A bunch of other references to "OMG Satanic ritual abuse!!"-type stuff. Unfortunately, however, the book The Theory and Practice of Demonology depicted in the film either does not actually exist or is so rare as to not be listed on Amazon.
> In one scene, someone serves some guests sardines and pretzels. Good combination! Mmm, sardines.
> The fact that one of the characters is named RUMSFIELD. And sits on his roof in full combat gear while dunking animal crackers into a yellow plastic cup of milk.
> The ridiculously overblown, cheesy, and melodramatic soundtrack (including a sampling of this one really cool Ennio Morricone piece from some spaghetti western).
> A scene involving an anecdote about people using pine-scent air-fresheners to cope with the smell of decomposing corpses.
> This is probably Tom Hanks' best performance ever. Screw his various Oscars for other stupid movies, the parts in which he expresses his feelings by crushing beer cans at random, and his expression and mannerisms while descending some steps covered in third-degree burns FTW.
OBLIGATORY YEWTUBE CLIP:
Click to view(Also some guy posted the entire movie beginning at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2Z4dn4BD4&feature=PlayList&p=30E712C00B2AB3F4&index=0. However, Part 3 of the 12 was removed. The other 11 are still there though, so you can see most of the film here if you're interested.)
And:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096734/