"The 'burbs"

With the recent October Challenge now over, it's time to undertake a much more daunting challenge. With much trepidation I am now going to attempt the near impossible: I will do my best to convince a doubting and resistant public that the 1989 movie "The 'burbs" is a great film. If I could get even just one non-believer to change his/her ways and become a fan of the movie I'd consider this challenge a success. Scoff if you will, but please at least continue reading and give me a chance before you totally close your minds to the possibility.

"The 'burbs" stars Tom Hanks, at the height of his first career as a movie funny man--not too long before he abandoned comedy and became "Tom Hanks: Serious Actor and Oscar Nominee/Multiple Winner". Sure, he has dabbled in funny material occasionally over the past twenty years (most notably by voicing Woody in the "Toy Story" movies), but there really is a clear line (marked by his first Oscar turn in "Philadelphia" in 1993) between his two acting careers. I know it was a long time ago, but perhaps you remember the old Tom Hanks. He first gained a certain amount of fame by starring in the early 1980s sitcom "Bosom Buddies". He quickly turned his comedic timing and knack for physical comedy to the movies, starring in such seminal 1980s comedies as "Splash" (1984), "Bachelor Party" (1984), "Volunteers" (1985), "The Money Pit" (1986), "Dragnet" (1987) and "Big" (1988). After "The 'burbs" he continued in that same comedic vein with "Turner and Hooch" (1989) and then started off the 1990s with "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990) (another underrated "odd" comedy like "The 'burbs"), "A League of Their Own" (1992) and "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993). I guess he showed enough "serious" acting chops in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990) to convince himself that this was the direction he wanted to go in. Winning the Best Actor Oscar for "Philadelphia" couldn't have hurt either.

Back to the movie. Co-starring with Tom in "The 'burbs" was an odd assortment of actors, some well-known and some unknown, who really came together to make a great cast: Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman, Henry Gibson, Gale Gordon and...Brother Theodore! Dick Miller even makes a great cameo appearance as a garbageman in one funny scene. "The 'burbs" was directed by Joe Dante, who had started his career working for uber-independent filmmaker Roger Corman. He is best known for such quirky horror and comedy movies as "The Howling" (1981), "Gremlins" (1984), "Explorers (1985), "Innerspace" (1987), "Gremlins 2: The Next Batch" (1990) and "Matinee" (1993). The music was done by Jerry Goldsmith, the composer of MANY great movie soundtracks, including: "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "Patton" (1970), "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1970), "Chinatown" (1974), "Logan's Run" (1976), "Alien" (1979), as well as most of Joe Dante's movies, and many of the Star Trek movies and television shows. In "The 'burbs" he used a great combination of creepy, atmospheric horror-movie stuff intercut with some absolutely silly sounding comedy-movie music that fits the film perfectly.

For whatever reason, "The 'burbs" is such a quirky combination of comedy and horror elements that it wasn't able to find an audience when it was released (at least that's what I'm blaming). Even now, it doesn't really seem to even qualify as a "cult" movie--which would at least give it enough fans to be considered a success on some level. It seems like it simply appeared, disappeared and was forgotten about. Because of this everyone seems to think that it's a bad movie. I don't feel this is justified. There seem to be two camps that side up against "The 'burbs": those who have never seen it (or even heard of it for that matter) who have no interest in watching it now, and those who saw it when it came out and hated it (or at least disliked it). Either way, trying to convince someone to see the movie today seems to be tougher than trying to convince someone to join the Osama bin Laden fan club.

Believe it or not, I actually fall into the saw-it-when-it-came-out-and-didn't-like-it category. I was in the U.S. Army when it came out in 1989, stationed at Fort Knox, KY. There were two movie theaters on the post and, being a movie fan who didn't have much of a social life in his downtime (or a license for that matter), I tended to visit those theaters pretty often after the workday ended. Two theaters which offered one movie per week each didn't exactly offer a lot of variety. I remember walking the two miles or so to one if the theaters one day and seeing that "The 'burbs" was playing. My unit had just gotten back from spending the better part of a month training in the desert in Texas (Fort Bliss). I wasn't really up on the current movies and had not heard anything about "The 'burbs" (surprise, surprise). I did like Tom Hanks though and enjoyed seeing "Big" not too long before at the very same theater. Since I'd have to walk all the way back to the barracks with nothing to show for it if I didn't see the movie I was a captive audience. Whether I would have chosen to see "The 'burbs" at a megaplex which offerred all the rest of the movies out at that time I don't know. Not having much choice I paid for my ticket and saw it. I walked out of the theater after the movie thinking "What the hell was that?". Nearly everyone I know who saw the movie when it came out had the same reaction and never thought much about it again. I probably would have fallen into this category as well, except...like I said, I didn't have much of a social life.

The following week I found myself taking the long walk to the movie theater once again, having no idea what would be playing, but feeling in the mood to watch a movie. Wouldn't you know, they didn't get a new movie in the week since I had last visited. Yes, I stood in front of the theater staring at the marquee which said the the movie playing that evening would be "The 'burbs"! My first thought was to go back to the barracks and watch TV, but I was there and I would have had to walk all the way back with nothing to show for a wasted night. So...I bought another ticket and walked back in for what I was sure would be a boring re-watching of a bad movie. Then something strange happened: I loved it! It seems that the subject matter of "The 'burbs" is just kooky enough to require more than one viewing to really "get it". I believe that I even went back to the theater again later that same week to watch it for a third time.

Four or five months later I left the Army and returned home. One of the first things I did when I got back and was visiting with friends was to ask them if they had seen the movie "The 'burbs". Most of my friends had seen it (and didn't regard it too highly of course). When I asked them there must have been an excitement in my voice that indicated I loved the movie, because everyone seemed to cautiously indicate that they felt the movie was "okay". It didn't take much brainpower to realize that they were trying to shield me from the fact that they actually felt it was a total piece of crap. Luckily, they were willing to cave in to my pestering and watch the movie again on video. After a lot of pointing out just what I thought made it so funny they saw the light and were converted into believers! One friend who had not seen it watched it with me and (despite my constant pointing out of all the little details) loved it as well. You might be thinking that these people merely felt sorry for me and were just humoring me, but we've watched the movie together a number of times over the years and still quote it endlessly to this day, more than twenty years later.

I think the biggest problem with trying to show the movie to someone who's never seen it today is the simple fact that it's now over twenty years old. It's no longer a recent release ans does have an undeniable late-80s look and feel to it. However, I still think that the humor and spirit of the movie continue to shine through.

Here's the trailer for the movie:

The entire film takes place in a little suburban cul-de-sac called Mayfield Place. The main characters are all neighbors on this street. A new family, the Klopeks, has recently moved in, and no one can figure out what they're all about. They seem to have no interest in taking care of their lawn (a suburban no-no) and strange noises come from their dilapidated house at all hours. Tom Hanks plays Ray Peterson, who lives next door to the mysterious newcomers. Rick Ducommun and Bruce Dern play neighbors Art Weingartner and Mark Rumsfield. These three eventually come to the conclusion that the Klopeks are up to no good. Ray at first tries his best to be reasonable and deny that anything untoward is going on, but eventually the evidence piles up and there seems to be no other possibility. One of their other neighbors seems to have disappeared and the trio believe that he has been kidnapped (perhaps even murdered) by the Klopeks. They decide to break into the Klopek's house to find evidence while the family is gone for the day. Much action, drama and hilarity ensue as they try to prove that the foreigners are up to no good..

While I've loved "The 'burbs" for a long time, I do have to say that living in a small neighborhood myself has added to the fun of the movie. Whenever you find yourself talking about the eccentricities of your neighbors you are reminded of the comic situations of the movie. While it's definitely a comedy, there does seem to be a kernel of a caution story in it as well. You experience the strangeness of the new neighbors right along with the main characters. You can see the dangers of judging someone who's different from yourself. The clues build up and the accusations snowball until it gets to a point where something that would have seemed almost unfathomable at the beginning seems to be the only possible answer. Despite all the comedy, at the end almost everything is explained and the Klopeks seem to be innocent victims of a bunch of paranoid neighbors whose imaginations get the better of them. Ray finally sees the error of his actions and lashes out against Art with a speech about how wrong they were to jump to conclusions about the Klopeks:

"So they're different. So they keep to themselves. Can you blame them? They live next door to people who break into their house...and burn it down while they're gone for the day! Remember what you were saying about people in the 'burbs? People like Skip? People who mow their lawn for the 800th time and then snap? Well, that's us! It's not them. That's us. We're the ones who are vaulting over fences and peeking in through people's windows. We're the ones who are throwing garbage in the street and lighting fires! We're the ones who are acting suspicious and paranoid, Art. We're the lunatics! Us! It's not them! It's us."

The ending is actually a bit of a surprise. Are the Klopeks innocent victims or guilty monsters? You'll have to watch the movie to find out, but it makes for a fun ride if you're willing to go along with an open mind.

Here's one of the funniest scenes of the movie:

Once you "get" the humor of "The 'burbs" it starts to seem like a true masterpiece. Nearly every line in the movie is quotable. I find myself struggling to not speak practically every line aloud while watching it (people seem to find that annoying for whatever reason). Every character seems to have his or her place in the proceedings. Even someone as annoying as Corey Feldman is watchable in this movie (his character, Ricky Butler is supposed to be kind of annoying). It's tough for me to pick the best parts of the movie, but there are many hilarious scenes: when Ray, Art and Mark first spy on the Klopeks and see some odd behavior, when Ray and Mark drop in on the Klopeks for a visit with their wives, When the neighbors break into the missing man's house to see if they can find clues about what happened to him, when Art and Ray discover what they believe to be the femur bone of their missing neighbor in the Klopek's yard, when they undertake the mission to enter the Klopek's house to gather evidence against them... The fun all starts right away with the brilliant opening scene. The Universal logo that opens the movie turns into a tracking shot which zooms in from a view of the earth in outer space right down to the cul-de-sac and to a street-level view of the Klopek's house at night. From that moment on everything is all about the neighborhood vs. the Klopeks.

If anyone is willing to take a chance on this movie for the first (or second) time, it's available on DVD and can be watched in a number of places online. I'm willing to lend out my DVD to anyone interested, and am always happy to arrange a screening for friends. I promise to try my best to keep the live running commentary track to a minimum!

Who is Monster Dad?

Who is Monster Dad, and why does he want us to read his thoughts? Good questions, and I hope to answer them with my first blog here.

"Monster Kid" is a term for kids who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s watching and enjoying horror and science-fiction movies. This was an era filled with these kinds of films--many of them tending to be of less than high quality (B-movies). While these films were being cranked out at an alarming rate to be screened at local theaters and drive-ins, there was also another phenomenon taking place that further influenced these children. Kids were being exposed to older monster movies--like the classic Universal films "Dracula" (1931), "Frankenstein" (1931), and "The Wolf Man" (1941), as well as their many sequels--on TV through late-night shows like Chiller Theatre. The combination of watching new movies at the theater and seeing older ones on late-night TV left a strong impression on many of these impressionable children. Sure, not all kids watched this kind of stuff, and not all of those that did were greatly affected by them--but many were. Before you simply dismiss these kids as future geeks, consider that writers like Steven King and directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were Monster Kids back then. They may be geeks, but they're very successful geeks!

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s was a different experience. The relative innocence of horror movies like "Attack of the Crab Monsters" (1957) and "Invasion of the Saucer Men" (1957) was replaced by the blood and gore of slasher movies like "Friday the 13th" (1980) and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). I suppose that the counter-culture of the late 1960s/early 1970s may have had something to do with this change in the idea of what horror was, but saying that to explain it would be too simple. There are many factors involved with the evolution of horror/Sci-Fi cinema that I don't even know, and trying to list and consider them all would easily fill up a blog of their own. So let's keep with the subject at hand.

I have frequently found myself wishing that I had grown up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and being somewhat jealous of those Monster Kids who did. I love many of the movies of the period and it would have been so cool to have been able to see and experience them when they were brand new. Even as a kid it always seemed like I was missing out on something while growing up two decades too late. It wasn't until later that I realized how lucky I actually was to have grown up when and where I did. As it turns out, there were a lot of horror/sci-fi shows on TV at the time that featured those very same (though now old) monster movies from the 1950s and 1960s.

I grew up in the small town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts. The 1970s/early 1980s was a time before cable came to town, and our television could barely pick up the signals from the Boston TV stations. Among these stations were great independent UHF channels like WSBK TV38 and WLVI Channel 56. Starting in the mid-1970s Channel 56 began regularly running a show called Creature Double Feature on Saturday afternoons. [Look for a blog on Creature Double Feature in the future.] Two horror/Sci-Fi movies would be shown at 1:00 and 2:30 PM every week. Through this great show (as well as the programming of many other Boston-area channels) I was able to experience many of the great (bad) movies that I felt I had missed out on by not being able to watch them at a theater when they were new. Without even realizing it I had become a Monster Kid myself! I suppose you could call people like me "Monster Kids: The Next Generation". Most likely a lot of the people responsible for what was put on the independent TV channels back then were folks who had grown up watching these same movies when they were kids. Throwing a couple public domain horror movies on was a cheap and effective way to fill up a few hours of programming. Nowadays it's much more cost effective to fill that time with paid programming (informercials). If the kids of today only knew what they were missing out on! Of course, many of the movies shown on Creature Double Feature weren't really that old at the time. I mean, a classic movie made in the 1950s, like "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954), would have been barely twenty years old in the 1970s and a more recent film like the Bigfoot-themed movie "Creature from Black Lake" (1976) would have only been a few years old when aired in the early 1980s. A show similar to Creature Double Feature today would most likely be showing stuff from the 1990s and early 2000s.

Of course kids today also have many more entertainment options than we had in the 1970s. Not only is cable television pretty much standard now, but we also have DVD and BluRay players (having already seen the era of the VCR come and go), DVRs, TiVo and video game systems that are light years better than the primitive Pong games of the 1970s and the Atari, Coleco and Nintendo systems of the 1980s. Add to this the virtually unlimited entertainment power of the internet and the fact that cell phones are ubiquitous and can do pretty much everything but make phone calls (oh yeah, they still do that--though it seems like it's the least popular feature on them in this age of texting, taking photos, downloading music and surfing the web on phones).

I'm beginning to digress here. Some of this stuff may become the basis of future blogs. But getting back to this one... Let's flash forward to the 2000s. I never really realized the lasting impact that Creature Double Feature had on me until a friend and I discovered a web site and message board dedicated to the show back in September 2006. It seems that a lot of other people who grew up in the Boston area had fond memories of watching the show too. I suddenly had a great feeling of nostalgia for those old days of black & white TVs, rabbit-ear antennas and snowy reception while watching crappy movies that nevertheless scared the crap out of me. Suddenly, memories of many of these movies returned to me and I had to see them again. It was a strange experience to see just how bad (and not very scary at all) many of these movies actually were. They were thrown together quickly and cheaply to turn a quick buck. The vast majority of them had miniscule budgets--and the terrible monster costumes and special effects reflected that fact. The funny thing was that, regardless of this lack of "quality", I still loved watching these movies even after all those years.

Another thing happened in the mid-2000s that has a lot to do with the Monster Dad moniker of this blog: I became a father for the first time in November of 2005. My poor (or lucky, depending on your point of view) daughter would have to grow up with a former Monster Kid as a dad. By now the reason for "Monster Dad" should be clear: 1.) I was a Monster Kid. 2.) If I have any say in the matter my daughter will also be a Monster Kid (at least to some extent). And 3.) For better or worse, I am now a Monster Dad!

It's a strange, and surprisingly complex, thing to be trying to instill a love of old monster movies into your kid--while making sure you don't turn her into a freak or scar her for life by showing her something that's too scary for her to see at her age. I want my daughter to grow up liking what she likes. I don't want to force any of my favorite movies and shows on her just because I liked them as a kid. At the same time, she's been very receptive to watching stuff that I think is cool. Perhaps she only feels sorry for me and is just humoring me, but I don't think that's the case.

I feel that, for a four-and-a-half year old girl, my daughter's interests are pretty well-rounded. My wife didn't want her to grow up in a world where she was only allowed to be interested in Disney Princesses, Barbies, dolls, ponies and the color pink. She does like all those things, but at the same time she also loves toy cars and trucks, fire engines, "Star Wars", Spiderman and bugs. She doesn't really see the differences between traditionally "boy" or "girl" stuff--she just likes what she likes.

Obviously I'm having some influence on her by exposing her to the stuff that I liked as a kid (and still like). I get excited about the thought of showing her something "new" that I grew up loving when I was young, but have to think about whether she's old enough for it. Like I said, many of those old 1950s and 1960s horror movies are really bad and not particularly scary, but to an imaginative child who's watching them with an open mind they can still be very effective! [My thoughts on the imagination of a child will most definitely be the subject of a future blog.] She is fine with some movies and shows, and others will just be too frightening for her. Trying to find the right balance without inducing nightmares isn't as easy as it seems like it might be.

Well, now you've got an idea of who Monster dad is. You can decide for yourself whether you want to read his thoughts or not. There will most likely be more than a few blogs here about the adventures and mis-adventures of being a Monster Dad, but that's not all you'll find.

I've never been too sure how I feel about blogs in general. As you can tell by my frame of reference I'm a bit older than many hip, young bloggers out there. When blogs first appeared, and were the hot internet thing for a while, I thought they were kind of dumb--just another example of how self-centered the world was becoming (future blog material here?). It seemed so egotistical to think that millions of people would want to read what you were thinking, just because you were thinking it. Obviously some people were better at blogging than others, and some people chose to write (or should I say "blog") about things that others found interesting. Whatever the case, blogging really took off (and I'm sure I don't need to be giving a history of blogs to someone reading a blog).

Political blogs seem to be very popular--though I have to admit that I don't really understand why. Part of the problem I have with blogs is the whole idea of how we, as humans, tend to believe what we read. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but the idea of getting your political news from a blogger (who has no need to be unbiased) seems a bit odd to me (the old codger that I am).

Of course there are blogs about all kinds of subjects--sports, movies, TV shows, parenting, fishing, golfing, celebrities... Pretty much anything that anyone is interested in can be blog fodder. I probably won't be doing much political blogging (though you never know...), but I do hope to write about a variety of topics. You can expect more about my parenting experiences, more about my love of old horror/Sci-Fi movies (probably some random movie reviews too), as well as my other interests (yes, I do have other interests), sports stuff, the horrors of home ownership, random thoughts on life... I guess this won't be a blog with a real focus. Whatever seems worth writing about will be what I write about. Hopefully that's a good enough reason to write a blog. We'll see.

Okay, let's get going...

By the way, I chose the url http://monsterdad69.blogspot.com/ (referencing the year I was born) because http://monsterdad.blogspot.com/ was already taken (by someone who has never even posted a blog on it in the two-plus years it's been up by the way!).