It\u2019s pitched as a comedy of torment, with wild child Aykroyd doing his best to ruin human necktie Belushi\u2019s life. The Twilight Zone<\/i> theme is liberally deployed to sell just how out there<\/i> these titular neighbors are. But there\u2019s also not a laugh to be found. It feels like one of those clickbait editing experiments, where a horror trailer is pulled out of a comedy with a few jarring flashes of white and stringy music, without touching a frame. Despite Columbia Pictures\u2019 best efforts to hide it, nothing about Neighbors<\/i> is conventional and most of it barely qualifies as comedic. It\u2019s an awkward, unnerving descent into the suburban prison of strait-laces and the violently spontaneous anarchy it takes to break out. On both sides of the camera in Neighbors<\/i>, every decision is more bewildering than the last.<\/span><\/p>\n The first came courtesy of director John G. Avildsen (who died June 16 at 81), who wanted Belushi for the mild-mannered part. The actor naturally assumed the director was wooing him for the volatile and brazen bully-next-door, Vic Zeck, but he couldn\u2019t ignore another chance to prove his range and shake off his increasingly toxic reputation as a walking narcotic. Belushi was serious about turning himself around; for his latest movie, the gentle romantic comedy Continental Divide<\/i>, he remained as sober as Sunday Mass. Neighbors, <\/i>a blackly comic adaptation of a Thomas Berger novel that bordered on absurdist existentialism, was one more step in the right direction. Belushi wasn\u2019t Avildsen\u2019s first choice (that\u2019d be Rodney Dangerfield, a whopper of a what-if), but he knew<\/span><\/a> the freshly dry and devoted star could pull it off.<\/span><\/p>\n If only Belushi had stayed that way. The production of Neighbors <\/i>devolved into a coke-dusted war zone. Avildsen had to stall several days\u2019 shooting until Belushi was sober enough to talk. Dan Aykroyd, who joined to play against his own fast-developing type alongside his friend, tried to act as an impartial buffer between the two. That lasted until both stars decided Avildsen couldn\u2019t direct comedy if his life depended on it. Desperate pleas to the studio to have him replaced by Blues Brothers <\/i>director (and close friend) John Landis went unanswered. Larry Gelbart, developer of a short-lived TV show called M*A*S*H<\/i>, wanted his name off the script after Aykroyd and Belushi had their way with it. Early test screenings inspired historically low ratings for Columbia Pictures. Neighbors <\/i>managed to rack up not just one, but two <\/i>rejected soundtracks \u2014 Belushi-forced songs by Fear and an orchestral score by Blues Brothers Band member Tom Scott. <\/span><\/p>\n Yet against all odds, the actual movie is still more interesting than the making. <\/span><\/p>\n Neighbors <\/i>opens on a dead-end street and never leaves. Two middle-class mansions rest under the stick figure shadow of high-voltage power lines. But as we soon find out, those lines leak enough static to light a cigar at 20 paces, and the lazily swaying reeds that lend a rustic touch hide a fog-belching swamp right out of a lesser Wolfman movie. In Neighbors<\/i>, the only difference between Norman Rockwell and Rod Serling is how hard you squint. <\/span><\/p>\n And if you don\u2019t pick up on that, Bill Conti\u2019s score will clue you in before the end of the opening credits. Mandated by the studio when test audiences didn\u2019t understand that Neighbors <\/i>was a comedy, Conti\u2019s score may be the most obvious ever composed; at one point it even wolf-whistles at a naked woman to tell us she\u2019s a naked woman. Whenever Belushi\u2019s on-screen, it\u2019s a jaunty town-and-country jingle perfectly suited for a robed walk to the mailbox. Whenever Aykroyd interrupts, wibbly-wobbly theremin invades like a swarm of tinfoil UFOs. Whenever Belushi\u2019s Native American-obsessed wife (Kathryn Walker) enters a room, so does the incessant beat of war drums. When Aykroyd\u2019s undersexed and predatory wife (Cathy Moriarty) bats her eyelashes through a mail slot, the brass section practically blushes. Critics almost universally loathed the score. While Tom Scott\u2019s rejected efforts follow the Elmer Bernstein Law of Scoring Comedies and play it entirely straight with just a touch of horror, Conti\u2019s music makes Neighbors <\/i>dementedly literal. With Scott, it\u2019s a stage play. With Conti, it\u2019s sitcom.<\/span><\/p>\n But Jerry, George, and the gang would eventually get their comeuppance for poking at such inconsequential annoyances. Neighbors<\/i> never gives Earl a break. When he confronts Vic about the fraudulent Italian food, the boorishly charming neighbor manages to win over everyone else at the dinner table, make Earl look like a petty snoop, and sidestep any mention of the $32 entirely. It\u2019s never mentioned again. There are few laugh-out-loud moments in Neighbors<\/i> because there aren\u2019t supposed to be; the humor is in the squirming. <\/span><\/p>\n More so than Continental Divide <\/i>and anything Aykroyd would do until his Academy Award-nominated turn to character acting in the \u201890s, Neighbors<\/i> shows off the fascinating, uncomfortable range of its dynamic duo. For all his drug-fueled demands, Belushi plays Earl Keese almost perversely straight. When he catches Vic reading his checkbook, Earl gets heated, but never hot; that wouldn\u2019t be polite. When faced with the prospect of his first hot date in 20 years, Earl puts in his Visine to the motivational tune of \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive.<\/i>\u201d His preferred term for male genitalia is \u201cunit.\u201d It\u2019s all too easy to forget Belushi\u2019s behind those JFK <\/i>glasses. <\/span><\/p>\n Aykroyd, on the other hand, cuts loose. Vic Zeck is an Aryan nightmare from his neon-blond hair to his permanently dilated blue eyes, and Neighbors <\/i>doesn\u2019t pull that punch. While inspecting Earl\u2019s house, the only book Vic touches has a prominent swastika on the spine. He speaks fluent German to his dog. He violently invades a peaceful neighbor\u2019s land to ultimately take it out from under him. Aykroyd plays Russian roulette with the audience, underlining every scene with cringe-inducing tension, but you\u2019re never sure if the gun\u2019s really loaded, even after he almost kills Earl Keese with real bullets. His unhinged performance foreshadows the coming of Jim Carrey (one laugh in particular is dead-on), but Aykroyd pushes that abrasive zaniness to its most disturbing edges.<\/span><\/p>\n Neighbors <\/i>sounds like any number of interchangeable \u201880s comedies \u2014 Family Man competes with Cool Man for the unconditional love of his family. <\/i>But with Avildsen shooting most of it like a horror movie and the impossibly bankable leads doing everything they can to not be themselves, Neighbors <\/i>is almost the anti-\u201880s comedy. When Columbia finally released it, they shoved<\/span><\/a> it into as many theaters as possible on its opening weekend to counter the inevitably destructive word-of-mouth. It would be Belushi\u2019s final performance; he overdosed two-and-a-half months later. Critics didn\u2019t know what to make of it and neither did audiences. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not an unheralded classic \u2014 not all the weird works, the (studio-mandated) ending\u2019s either confusing or dissatisfying depending on how you watch it \u2014 but it\u2019s a fascinating curio that deserves more attention. Despite the director and stars fighting to make different movies, Neighbors <\/i>emerges as a singular piece of off-key black comedy, where the stress fractures only provide more texture. In a career diverse enough to include Rocky, Lean on Me, <\/i>and a Van Damme movie, Neighbors <\/i>remains one of John G. Avildsen\u2019s strangest works, his most forgotten and most unforgettable.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/crookedscoreboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/la-et-mn-john-g-avildsen-appreciation-20170617.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a>Neighbors <\/i>fits that bill well enough; it\u2019s The Odd Couple<\/i> on a cul-de-sac. But in the crowded world of sitcoms, everyone speaks exclusively in set-ups and punchlines. In Neighbors<\/i>, there are no punchlines, just hanging gasps and lingering bile. Its closest comedic relative might even be Seinfeld<\/i>. Almost every single act in the first half of the movie would work as an episode. Vic borrows $32 from Earl to buy everyone some Italian take-out, but Earl catches him making the food at home. Vic\u2019s wife, Ramona, exposes herself to Earl within a half hour of meeting him and he doesn\u2019t know how to respond to it. Earl\u2019s wife, Enid, mentions spying a great recipe for chicken in the newspaper. When he checks on her in the kitchen, she\u2019s reheating some waffles for the guests and scolds him for assuming she\u2019d be making the chicken. <\/span><\/p>\n
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