Uptight suburbanite Earl Keese (John Belushi) is paranoid about his new neighbors, Vic (Dan Aykroyd) and Ramona (Cathy Moriarty). Ramona continually tries to seduce Earl (and everyone else) while Vic is loud and obnoxious, always telling off-color jokes and insinuating that Earl is less of a man than he is. Earl thinks that there’s something mentally wrong with Vic but Earl’s wife and daughter (played respectively by Kathryn Walker and Lauren-Marie Taylor) love both Vic and Ramona. Over the course of one very long night and morning, Earl grows more and more suspicious even as he starts to feel truly alive for the first time in several years.
Based on a novel by Thomas Berger, Neighbors is an unfortunate attempt at dark comedy that also turned out to be the final film appearance of John Belushi. It’s appropriate that Belushi’s final film featured him with his comedic partner and best friend, Dan Aykroyd, though I think most of their fans would rather remember them for The Blues Brothers than Neighbors. Originally, Aykroyd was cast as Earl while Belushi was meant to play Vic but the two actors decided to switch roles at the last minute. It takes a while to get used to seeing Belushi as an uptight character who worries about the neighbor’s dog digging up his flower garden but Belushi actually does give a good performance as Earl, revealing that he had more range as an actor that most suspected. Aykroyd and Moriarty also give good performances, though Aykroyd’s performance is not as much a departure as Belushi’s. Earl is an amiable eccentric with several out-there beliefs, which also sounds like a good description of Dan Aykroyd.
Why, despite the talented cast, does Neighbors fail? Director John G. Avildsen was the wrong choice to direct the film. From the first shot of Earl and Vic’s two houses sitting on a hill and looking like left-over sets from The Addams Family, Avildsen directs in a cartoonish manner that is not appropriate for a comedy-of-manners. The book’s humor comes from Earl becoming progressively more and more unstable but, in the movie, Earl seems to be unhinged from the start. Bill Conti’s musical score drives him every point with a thudding obviousness. Conti’s style was perfect for the soaring anthems of Rocky but not for a comedy like Neighbors.
Unfortunately, this would be Belushi’s final film. Neighbors was released in December of 1981. John Belushi died four months later.
Everyone had to start somewhere and, long before he became one of the leading political provocateurs of American cinema, Oliver Stone was just another struggling film school grad who was looking for a chance to make a name for himself. Like many aspiring filmmakers, Stone made his directorial debut with a low-budget horror film.
Through the Shattered Lens 