Director John G. Avildsen leads us into a surreally obvious metaphorical situation, as Earl Keese drives his Pinto wagon up to his house, a fake looking colonial next to a fake looking ramshackle house on a clearly fake residential street. I guess you could say this obvious artifice is a nod to the artificiality of suburban life. As Keese flops down in his easy chair to watch TV, awash in a kitschy floral sea, he notices some weird people moving in next door. Uh-oh, it's wild cards Ramona (Cathy Moriarty) and Vic (Aykroyd). Will Earl and wife Enid's (Kathryn Walker) lives ever be the same? It's probably not a spoiler to say that the answer is defiantly no.

Neighbors doesn't pack in the amount of weirdness modern audiences come to expect from their dark comedies, but what's there is that kind of weird which makes you feel really uncomfortable. Some of it is discomfiting because it's subtle enough to make you question whether it's supposed to be funny at all. Much of it is squirm inducing simply due to Aykroyd's bizarre presence. While seemingly cast in a 180-degree switch, (who wouldn't expect Belushi to play the weird, out-of-control neighbor?) the movie actually thrives on Belushi's struggle to be normal, and veritably feasts on Aykroyd's creepy insanity. Turn Aykroyd's "wild and crazy guy" into a Detroit scumbag (for example) who drives an El Camino, give him a creepy bleach-blonde pompadour and demonic blue contact lenses, and make his motivations completely unknowable, and you've got the stuff of suburban nightmares.

Throw in Moriarty's over-sexed manipulator (not a redundancy, I assure you) and you've got all kinds of tension, ripe for an ever-increasing series of outrageous events. Except they aren't all that outrageous: Belushi is turned on by Moriarty, his wife is turned on by Aykroyd, and a small, weird series of events occurs over one misbegotten evening. That grounding in reality makes Neighbors both less than we expect, and probably better than it should be. We relate to the goings on because they're keyed-up only a notch from reality, we identify with Belushi and Walker because their characters are written to be almost exactly like a couple well into their second decade together. We shrink in fear from Aykroyd with a shotgun, dressed in a skimpy scuba-diving outfit.

Though the movie is statically shot, is that bland façade an intentional reflection of the roles we play in real life? If so, how do you explain that the houses are designed to look like faces leering at each other? More grating is the soundtrack, full of telegraphing cues of the most boneheaded and cliché variety: plodding tubas, silly pizzicato strings, anything telling you what you're supposed to feel during a particular scene - or shot, as comic motifs will shift wildly back and forth to fit the action. This awful soundtrack nearly sinks the movie - though you won't notice it after too long. (The possibility exists that the soundtrack, too, is being used ironically, though this is a hard argument to make.)

A few faults (accidental or just unsuccessful traits) don't really hurt this strange '80s relic. Belushi and Aykroyd are truly a duo for the ages, and obviously it's too bad Belushi isn't still around. At least there are these few odd gems to be rediscovered. Neighbors messes with the dark comedy motif by playing things a little too close to the vest for slacker audiences: jokes don't involve sexual humiliation, rather fake Italian dinners. Aykroyd and Belushi perform an implausible yet realistic slow burn into arrested adolescent anarchy, and for lovers of outré, challenging cinema, this movie is Recommended.

The DVD

Video:
Neighbors comes Manufactured on Demand in a newly remastered, widescreen, 1.85:1 ratio, according to IMDB the original aspect ratio is 1.37:1, so there may be information missing from the top and bottom of the picture. Otherwise, it looks quite nice. Film grain is present but OK, since it reminds us that the movie was shot on film! Colors look natural, and the transfer is free of major defects.

Sound:
Stereo Audio is acceptable, but not problem-free. First there is the matter of Bill Conti's grating score. Obviously the score is what was OK'd, so they had something in mind, and for all that, it sounds nice and is mixed in appropriately. Dialog is generally OK, too, but approaches overdrive at times, with a tiny bit of distortion indicating either mastering or recording problems. It's not enough to ruin your enjoyment, but those with good ears will notice it.

Extras:
No extras are included.

Final Thoughts:
Neighbors uses Belushi and Aykroyd to push the dark comedy motif into strange corners. The famously troubled production produced a film that was critically reviled, yet even with all that (constant fighting amongst all involved, a last minute role switch between the stars, and more) Belushi's last film manages to be uncomfortably funny and bizarre. The movie is wrong-headed on nearly all counts, but at 30 years remove it looks like that wrongness is right. For fans of weird cinema, and especially Belushi/Aykroyd fans, Neighbors is a lost oddity that's Recommended.

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