Neighbors (1981 film)

Low-key, ineffectual, middle-class suburbanite Earl Keese's peaceful, dreary life changes when a younger couple, Vic and Ramona Zeck, move in next door. Upon arrival, the Zecks immediately impose themselves on the Keese household, with Earl infuriated with the loud, gung-ho Vic, and flustered by the sly and seductive Ramona who tries to seduce Earl numerous times. Earl is frustratingly unable to handle them, and can never produce any proof that the couple are deliberately doing anything wrong. Earl's wife Enid and teenage daughter Elaine are unhelpful, and that very night, the antagonism between Earl and the Zecks escalates into full-scale suburban warfare. Earl tries to hide Vic's truck as a joke, only for it to get stuck in a swamp pond beside his house. Vic retaliates by vandalizing Earl's car. When Earl calls for a tow truck to remove Vic's truck from the swamp, Vic locks him in the basement of his own house.

In the morning, after Vic's truck is towed out of the swamp, he retrieves a remote controlled toy model airplane from his truck which he accidentally crashes and burns his house down. Earl offers Vic his own house to stay in, suspecting that Vic set fire to his new house to collect an insurance payment. But the film's climatic twist comes when Vic and Ramona Zeck reveal to Earl that they not only have no money and no insurance, but they are not legally married and that they do not own the house. The Zecks are actually escaped mental patients who took the house from their elderly nurse at the hospital (where they had been residing for several years) who just died two days prior. With their house now gone and the authorities apparently looking for them, Vic and Ramona decide to move on and live on the road.

Initially questioning his own and his ungrateful family's sanity after Elaine returns to boarding school and Enid leaves on a studies class of Native American culture, Earl soon realizes that the Zecks have provided him with the most excitement he has had in the last 24 hours then in all the years of his mundane suburban life. Vic and Ramona offer Earl a promising future, apart from suburbia and away from his family of being their "third wheel" on the road. In the film's closing scene, Earl joins the couple in his car and drives away with them, abandoning his family and setting fire to his own house, burning it to the ground.

• John Belushi as Earl Keese
• Dan Aykroyd as Victor "Vic" Zeck
• Cathy Moriarty as Ramona Zeck
• Kathryn Walker as Enid Keese
• Igors Gavon as Chic
• Dru-Ann Chuckran as Chic's Wife
• Tim Kazurinsky as Pa Greavy
• Tino Insana as Perry Greavy
• P. L. Brown as Police Officer #1
• Henry Judd Baker as Police Officer #2
• Lauren-Marie Taylor as Elaine Keese
• Sherman G. Lloyd as Fireman #1
• Bert Kittel as Fireman #2
• J. B. Friend as Additional Fireman
• Bernie Friedman as Additional Fireman

Thomas Berger's best-selling novel, Neighbors, was published in 1980. Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to film the novel and assembled a high-profile cast and crew: Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown had produced Jaws (1975); John G. Avildsen had won an Academy Award for directing Rocky (1976); veteran comedy writer Larry Gelbart had developed the hit TV series M*A*S*H (1972-1983); and John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd had been stars of TV's Saturday Night Live (on which they appeared from 1975-1979) and the film The Blues Brothers (1980). The film's female leads were played by Cathy Moriarty, who had made her film debut in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), and Kathryn Walker, who had been the girlfriend of Belushi's National Lampoon colleague Douglas Kenney (1946-1980).

The production of Neighbors was troubled. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd switched their roles in pre-production, acting against type (usual-wild man Belushi played the meek Earl and usual-straight-arrow Aykroyd played the obnoxious Vic). Belushi and Aykroyd also argued constantly with director John G. Avildsen (as they believed that he had no understanding of comedy), and lobbied to have him removed from the picture. Belushi wanted either Aykroyd, himself or John Landis to direct the film. Avildsen also argued with producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, and screenwriter Larry Gelbart objected to the changes made to his screenplay by Dan Aykroyd. John Belushi's drug problems also impaired the film's production, and Neighbors proved to be Belushi's final film before he died of a drug overdose.

Tom Scott was originally assigned to compose the score for Neighbors but was replaced by Avildsen's frequent collaborator Bill Conti. John Belushi unsuccessfully tried to have the film finish with a song written and performed by the punk rock group Fear (Belushi had discovered the band and brought them to Cherokee Studios to record songs for the film). Music producing partners Steve Cropper and Bruce Robb remember recording the band's music, but nobody knows exactly what happened with the final soundtrack which was ultimately replaced in the film by Conti's more traditional movie score. "How can I describe what it was like recording in the early days of punk?" said music producer and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb. "We had decided to track the song selection in order, and were on track 4 before the band realized they were all using different set lists. The irony is we couldn't tell." Upset with Belushi's antics and believing that Fear's music was inappropriate for Neighbors, the movie studio eventually forced the band off the soundtrack project. To make up for it, Belushi got them a guest spot on Saturday Night Live.

A comprehensive look at the troubled production of Neighbors can be found in the books Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward (1984) and Belushi: A Biography by Judith Belushi Pisano and Tanner Colby (2005).

In December 2007, Varèse Sarabande released the Neighbors soundtrack on CD. The CD contains the score by Bill Conti as heard in the film (tracks 1-30), as well as the unused score by Tom Scott (tracks 31-49).

While the film features the songs "Hello, I Love You" by The Doors, "Holiday In Cambodia" by Dead Kennedys, and "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees, none of the songs are included on the soundtrack album.

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• Neighbors at IMDb
• Neighbors at AllMovie