The 'Burbs

Year: 1989

Country: USA

Tagline: A comedy about one nice guy who gets pushed too far.  »

Plot: The film starts on a small cul-de-sac suburban neighborhood somewhere in the USA Midwest. Late one evening, Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) is unable to sleep, and a strange noise from the house next door causes him to go outside. However, Ray just stares at the rather unkempt house as a mysterious wind blows dead leaves around his feet, and several more unexplained noises are heard.The next day, Ray's wife Carol (Carrie Fisher) is non-plussed that Ray has chosen to spend his week's vacation just sitting around the house doing nothing. She attempts to convince Ray to take her and their 10-year-old son Dave (Cory Danziger) up to a nearby lake for a fishing retreat, but Ray refuses to do so. Suddenly, the sound of gunshots are heard in the backyard, and Ray sees his overweight and immature neighbor Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun) shooting at some crows with a shotgun.Art then invites himself into the Peterson's home for breakfast, and explains that his wife (who is away for a few weeks visiting her parents) wants the crows taken care of. The crows seem have just shown up recently. Talk soon switches to the neighboring house to the right of the Peterson's. The previous neighbors, an elderly couple known as "The Knapps," have supposedly sold their property to a family going by the name of Klopek. Art eerily explains how the realtor who sold the Klopeks their new home, said their last house burnt to the ground. Art also claims that so far, the Klopeks have not seemed at all neighborly, given that no one has seen them since they moved in several weeks ago. Dave then explains that he saw three of them with his telescope... digging in their back yard one night.After breakfast, Ray opens up the garage, and Art notes that one of the Klopeks, a scruffy red-headed young man, (Courtney Gaines) is standing on the porch. Both egg the other on to say "Hi," but the unnamed stranger quickly goes back inside the house. Next, the two decide to go over and ring the doorbell. This causes a chain reaction that causes a lamp to be knocked aside, revealing a hidden beehive that chases off Ray and Art.Later that evening, Ray goes over to Art's place where he also encounters Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman), a teenager on the block whose parents are away. As strange noises begin to eminate from the Klopek's house, Art tells the story of a Soda Fountain owner long ago known as Skip. One day, a strange odor began eminating from Skip's house, and eventually, a fire broke out. When the firemen went inside, they found that the local Soda Fountain owner had murdered his family with an ice pick, and stored them in the basement. Art eerily explains that: "almost every town has some strange mystery like that... some of which may be happening right under your nose."Ray soon tires of Art's antics and goes back inside to watch television. But soon after, Art gets Ray to come back out, where they meet up with Lt. Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern), a militarist Vietnam veteran who lives across the street from the Klopek's. Rumsfield has given the men use of an infrared night scope, and they take up position behind Rumsfield's garbage cans. As they watch the house, a strange noise is head, and bright lights flash from under the house's porch, before a rank odor permeates the air.Ray is about to go across the street and figure out what's going on, when suddenly, the garage door on the Klopek's house opens up, and the three men see a car pull out, and the scruffy man they saw before emerges. He then pulls out several trash bags, and attempts to stuff them into the already full garbage cans, using a stick. Once the car pulls back into the garage, a rain storm hits, and Rumsfield says they'll investigate what is in the cans further once "first light" comes around. Later that evening, Ray looks out his bedroom window, and sees three hooded figures in the Klopek's backyard, digging large holes.The next day, Rumsfield and Art stop the garbage men (Dick Miller and Robert Picardo) from taking the Klopek's trash and dump the trash into the street, but they find nothing in the black plastic bags. Ray then explains what he saw through the rain-streaked window last night. Art then claims that the supposed bodies that were in the trash bags were taken out in the rain, and buried in the backyard when the guy who drove the car saw them.Soon after, Rumsfield's young blonde floozy wife Bonnie (Wendy Schaal) finds Queenie, a little dog belonging to an elderly and grouchy neighbor named Walter Seznick (Gale Gordon). The group goes over to Walter's house, but when he doesn't answer the door, Rumsfield uses a glass-cutter to enter, and they find the television still on, and a chair turned over. Further investigation leads the group to the kitchen, where Walter's toupee is found on a counter. Rumsfield immediately suspects foul play, but Ray demands everyone leave the house. Ray keeps Queenie at his place, and leaves a little note for Walter, which simply reads: "Walter, I have your dog." As he slides the note under Walter's door, Ray glances towards the Klopek's house, and sees an old man (Brother Theodore) watching him from the Klopek's second floor window. When Ray says a greeting, the old man quickly shuts the window.That evening, Ray and Art meet in the basement of Ray's house, where Art has found a book on demon worship and Satanic sacrifices. Art insists that the Klopeks are Satanists, but Ray refuses to believe this. The conversation soon leads Ray to have a nightmare in which he is served up as a sacrifice.The next morning, Art and Rumsfield slide a note under the Klopek's door and ring the bell, before running off. When Art tells Ray about this, Ray panics, thinking that the Klopek's now suspect that he slid the note under the door, given the old Klopek man saw him do it to Walter's house the previous day. The conversation soon stops when Ray's dog returns with a bone, that Art soon classifies as a femur, or a human thigh-bone. Art thinks that the bone is Walter. Ray and Art scream until they see a figure behind the fence of the Klopek house (the old man) walking in the Klopek back yard who throws a crumpled up piece of paper into the back yard of Ray's house. Art goes to look at the paper and says that it's the note that he wrote. Ray panics more, thinking that he is now a marked man, while the immature Art still does not comprehend.Soon after, Carol and Bonnie feel that the guys in the neighborhood are acting childish. Carol proposes a simple solution: everyone will go over, knock on the door, and talk to these new neighbors. Due to Art being one of the more off-the-cuff persons, he is not invited.Ray, Carol, Rumsfield and Bonnie go over to the Klopeks where they meet Hans (the scruffy young man Ray first saw on the porch and driving the car). Minutes later Reuben (the old man Ray saw looking at him from the window) whom is Hans' uncle, soon enters. He is very cold and hostile around the guests, especially Ray. Soon after, Werner Klopek (Henry Gibson) enters to meet their guests. Ray is very nervous thinking that the Klopeks will do something to him now that he is in their house.During drinks, Werner is the more friendly and hospitable of the three. He explains that he is a practicing pathologist at a local university and his older brother Reuben (a retired college professor) and nephew Hans (a college dropout) have been traveling with him from place to place for years during his work. Werner explains that they will be driving to the university tomorrow because they will soon be transferring out of the current university he works at, and the family will be moving again. When the extremely wary Ray accidentally spills tea on himself, he runs and accidentally opens the basement door, only to have the Klopek's huge Great Dane dog come barreling out, and into the backyard... where it quickly spots Art, who had tried to sneak in through the back of the house. The dog chases Art off, but not before he sets off a burglar alarm while climbing over the Klopek's backyard fence.The group leaves the Klopeks and go to the Peterson's house. While Art and Rumsfield still see the Klopek's as psychos and they are hiding something, Ray (who is now strangely calm) claims he agrees with Carol and Bonnie that the Klopeks are all right. Ray then ushers the two men into his study, and then reveals something he found at the Klopeks and hid in his shorts: Walter's toupee. Ray explains that he had slipped the toupee back inside Walter's house the previous day, but when the dog came out of the Klopek's basement and everyone was out on the back porch while the dog was chasing Art, Ray found the toupee in the Klopek living room wedged in a stack of mail... which was addressed to Walter. This leads the three to believe that the Klopeks are trying to cover their murderous trail. Ray explains that the Werner had mentioned that they would all be going to the University the next day, and the three plot to investigate the Klopek's house and back yard, intent on finding Walter's corpse.The next day, after Mark Rumsfield watches the Klopeks, along with their dog, drive away, he gets ready by putting on military fatigues and arming himself with an assault rifle. At the same time, Ray sends his wife and son off to visit her sister, claiming that he and Art are going to play golf later on in the day. Carol is clearly suspicious to Ray's sudden change in behavior, but she leaves anyway. Once they are gone, the three men leap into action. They first attempt to disable the Klopek's alarm system by disabling the power to their house which activates the trip-wires around their backyard fence. When Art, dressed as a maintenance man, climbs up a poll to cut the power, he accidentally cuts the main circuit cable for the entire block (and probably the whole neighborhood) and gets electrocuted and falls from the poll, but the power to the Klopek alarms is disabled anyway. While Rumsfield sets up a "command post" on top of the roof of his house to watch for the Klopeks in case they return, Ray and Art scale the back fence of the Klopeks back yard and begin digging all around the yard looking for any dead bodies.Meanwhile, Ricky, seeing the action unfolding before him, calls several of his friends and they come on over to watch the events unfolding as if watching a drive-in movie. Rumsfield is annoyed by the literal party in the front yard of Ricky's house next door.As the day wears into the hot summer afternoon, Ray and Art, after having dug several holes in the Klopek's back yard where Ray supposedly saw them digging, finds nothing. Ray suggests they check inside the house. Finding the back door locked, the frustrated but determined Ray breaks a back window and unlocks the back door. The two of them venture to the basement where they find a large old furnace. When Art turns it on, it creates a blast of flames which makes them realize that the furnace (with a thermostat temperature of 5,000 F degrees) is no ordinary furnace. Ray suspects that after killing Walter, the Klopeks burned his body up in the furnace and buried the bones in a patch of earth ground of the basement. Ray and Art again begin digging the ground of the basement to look for the body. Ray continues digging for a few more hours as he hits ground water and then finds something metal when he hits with his his pick axe.As nightfall comes, Rumsfield, still on the roof of his house, notices a car pulling up in Walter's driveway where a middle aged couple gets out and to his shock, a frail-looking Walter, using a walker, exits the car. Ricky, watching from his front porch and Art, exiting the Klopek house from the front door into the street, also see Walter alive and are all in shock. But none of them notice the three Klopeks returning to their house. Seeing the lights from the basement on when the whole neighborhood is dark, they quietly drive away and return a few minutes later followed by a police car, which they are then spotted. Rumsfield tries to warn Ray on the CB radio he has, but Ray is still frantically digging and doesn't hear Rumsfield's warning. Art runs back inside the Klopek house to warn Ray, while Ricky tries to stall the Klopeks and the police by literally jumping in front of their cars to get them to stop.In the Klopek basement, when Ray finally tries to clear the ground water away from his find, he hits it again with the pick axe and bubbles start appearing in the groundwater and he realizes that he just hit the underground methane gas line and he warns Art to run when he returns to the basement. Ray struggles to get out of the hole as the gas begins flooding the whole house... while the Klopek furnace is still running. Outside, as Ricky and Rumsfield try to stall the Klopeks and the policeman from entering their house, Art runs outside yelling that they hit a gas pipe when seconds later the entire Klopek house explodes in a huge mass of flames, in which the spire of their roof lands on the policeman's car. Thinking that Ray is dead, Art is revealed when a partly burned Ray emerges from the burning Klopek house.Some hours later, Carol arrives back home to check up on Ray and sees fire trucks, ambulances, and a huge crowd in front of the Klopek house. Carol finds the shaken Ray being treated for his injuries. Nearby, Art talks to a police detective (Franklin Ajay) who tells Art that Walter was at the hospital for the last three days when on Monday night he apparently had a heart attack in which he called his daughter and son-in-law who live a few miles away where they took him to the hospital. The reason why Walter's mail and toupee were in the Klopek house when Ray found them is that Walter's son phoned the Klopeks to ask them to pick up Walter's mail in which the toupee got mixed up with the rest of the magazines and letters when Ray slipped it back through the mail slot of Walter's house.While Art claims that sooner or later the rest of the skeleton to the femur bone will be found eventually, Ray explodes at him claiming that because they never found anything, that the Klopeks really are innocent of any crimes and they have been really immature and over reactive the entire time. When Art still fails to comprehend Ray's explanation, he attacks Art, and has to be retrained. Angry and exhausted, Ray gets into on an ambulance stretcher and demands that they take him to the hospital for further treatment of his injuries.While in the ambulance, Werner Klopek enters, but he is now suddenly cold and suspicious to Ray. Werner tells Ray that he may have fooled Art and the others with his speech about Klopeks, but he cannot fool him. The confused Ray doesn't know what Werner is talking about, and the doctor mentions about Ray investigating his basement and found a skull in the furnace (which Ray didn't prior to Art turning the furnace on). Werner thinks that Ray knows all about the bones and the skull in the furnace and tells Ray that the femur bone that he found indeed belonged to a murder victim whom was Mr. Knapp. Werner tells Ray that they took the house and killed both Mr. and Mrs. Knapp after they refused to sell it to the Klopeks and they apparently cooked the bodies and ate them... implying that the Klopeks are a practicing cannibal cult.Ray makes an attempt to escape, but realizes that Hans is driving the ambulance as Werner attempts to stab Ray with a hypodermic needle to kill him. In the struggle, Ray manages to grab at Hans who loses control of the ambulance and attempting to avoid hitting a pizza delivery van, runs the ambulance into Art's house at the end of the street. The ambulance back doors fling open and the stretcher with Ray and Werner still struggling on it falls out and rolls down the street which ends when they hit the Klopek's car still parked outside the remains of their burned-out house in which the car trunk pops open. Now with witnesses around, Ray claims that the Klopeks are indeed murderers and part of a cannibal cult. Ricky happens by and points out to everyone that the trunk of the Klopeks car is filled with hundreds of human bones and a few dozen human skulls. (It is implied that most of the bones belong to human bodies stolen by the Klopeks from morgues and various college pathology labs for personal consumption) The police arrest Werner and Reuben, but Hans is nowhere to be found. Rumsfield finds Hans attempting to escape, but chases him and captures him.With Ray in the clear and the fire trucks and police leaving the scene, Ray and Carol are glad that he is all right and they agree to leave tomorrow to take the remainder of Ray's vacation at the lake. When Art approaches and tells them about the media circus coming to the neighborhood over the next few days to investigate the 'Klopek Cannibal Cult', Ray and Carol are not interested in staying around. Just then, Mark and Bonnie Rumsefield tell Art that his wife is home early and his house is on fire from the damage caused by the ambulance still lodged in the front door of his house. Art is shocked and devastated... but its mostly about his wife being home.While Art goes to try to explain what is going on to his wife, the fire trucks return to try to put out the fire to Art's house. With another crowd gathering to watch the action, Ray and Carol go to their house unnoticed, except by Ricky in which Ray tells him to "keep an eye on the neighborhood" while he is away for his vacation. Ricky agrees as Ray and Carol enter their house for the night. Ricky, breaking the fourth wall, looks at the viewers and replies" God, I love this street!" He then goes back to talking to his friends as well as the two garbage men as the image backs away from the street, and area to an overhead view from space as to where the movie began.Settling in for some time off in his suburban home, Ray Peterson's vacation becomes a horror when the Klopeks, a suspiciously odd family, move in down the block. After sending his family away on a trip, Ray and two of his neighbors try to prove their paranoid theory that the new family on the block are part of a murderous cult.

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