The 'Burbs

Suburban homeowner Ray Peterson is home on a week-long vacation. Late one night, he hears strange noises coming from the basement of his new and reclusive neighbors, the Klopeks. Ray and his other neighbors—nosy Art Weingartner, Vietnam War veteran Mark Rumsfield and teenager Ricky Butler—gradually suspect the Klopeks may be ritualistic murderers. On another night, they observe the youngest Klopek drive an oversized garbage bag to their curbside garbage can and aggressively mash it down. Later that night, during a rainstorm, Ray sees the Klopeks digging in their backyard. In the morning, Ray, Mark and Art search the garbage truck for human remains after the Klopeks' trash is collected but find nothing. Mark's wife, Bonnie, finds their neighbor Walter's dog, Queenie, running loose. Worried about the elderly man, Ray, Art, Ricky and the Rumsfields enter Walter's house and find overturned chairs and Walter's toupée, but no Walter. Ray collects Queenie, leaves a note for Walter, slips the toupée back in through the mail slot and sees one of the Klopeks watching him from their house. Ray and Art theorize that the Klopeks may have used Walter as a human sacrifice, becoming further convinced when Ray's dog Vince digs up a human femur from along the Klopeks' fence line. Ray's wife, Carol, tired of the men's behavior, organizes a welcome visit to the Klopeks. While the Petersons and Rumsfields meet Hans, Reuben and Dr. Werner Klopek, Art snoops around the Klopeks' backyard and is chased out by their large dog, Landrue. Afterward, Ray reveals to Art and Mark that he found Walter's mail and toupée at the Klopeks', proving they had been in Walter's house. The next day, Ray sends Carol and their son, Dave, to visit Carol's sister. When the Klopeks leave, Art and Ray enter their backyard to search for Walter's corpse while Mark acts as lookout. Finding nothing in the yard, Art and Ray break into the Klopeks' basement, discover what appears to be a crematorium and dig deep into the floor in search of human remains. The Klopeks return, accompanied by a policeman after having seen their basement lights on. Ray strikes a gas line with his pickaxe; Art escapes before the house explodes and Ray emerges from the inferno scorched and dishevelled just as Carol returns home. Walter arrives home during the commotion, having spent a few days in the hospital due to heart palpitations. He had asked the Klopeks to collect his mail for him and they had mistakenly gathered up his toupée as well. When Art intends to continue looking for evidence against the Klopeks, Ray snaps and goes on a tirade, declaring that he and the others were wrong and have been the ones acting like lunatics all along, before climbing into an ambulance. Werner enters and accuses Ray of having seen a human skull in the basement furnace, revealing that the Klopeks murdered the previous homeowners, the Knapps, so they could live in their house, realizing that he and the others were right about the Klopeks all along. Werner attempts to lethally inject Ray as Hans drives the ambulance away. Their struggle causes the ambulance to crash into Art's house, ejecting Werner and Ray, who then makes a citizen's arrest. Ricky uncovers human skeletal remains in the Klopeks' car trunk. The Klopeks are arrested and charges against Ray are dropped. Ray states that he and his family are going away for a while and asks Ricky to watch over the neighborhood. ==Cast==

Additional minor roles were played by Dick Miller and Robert Picardo as garbagemen Vic and Joe; Franklyn Ajaye and Rance Howard as detectives; Bill Stevenson, Gary Hays and Carey Scott as Ricky's friends; and Kevin Gage and Dana Olsen as policemen. ==Production==

Writing Screenwriter Dana Olsen based the script on experiences from his own childhood: "I had an ultranormal middle-class upbringing, but our town had its share of psychos. There was a legendary hatchet murder in the thirties, and every once in a while, you'd pick up the local paper and read something like 'LIBRARIAN KILLS FAMILY, SELF.' As a kid, it was fascinating to think that Mr. Flanagan down the street could turn out to be Jack the Ripper. And where there's fear, there's comedy. So I approached ''The 'Burbs as Ozzie and Harriet'' meet Charles Manson." Olsen's script attracted producer Larry Brezner, who brought it to Imagine Films. It was greeted with a warm reception from Imagine co-founder Brian Grazer: "I liked the concept of a regular guy taking a vacation in his own neighborhood, plus it was funny and well written. It suddenly dawned on me that Joe Dante would be fantastic [as a director] because it's a mixture of comedy, horror, and reality." Casting Dante, Brezner, and Finnell agreed that Tom Hanks would be the most suitable actor to portray the married Ray Peterson, a conservative man who tries to introduce excitement into his life by investigating the activities of his strange neighbors. Dante referred to Hanks as "the reigning everyman, a guy that everybody can identify with", "I can't think of many pictures since Lifeboat that all take place in the same area," Dante said as production got under way. "There was a lot of temptation to broaden it and go outside the neighborhood, but it seemed to violate the spirit of the piece. It's almost the kind of thing that could be a stage play except that you could never do on-stage what we've done in this movie." At the time ''The 'Burbs began production, it was being used as the location for The New Leave It to Beaver television series. To ensure the set would fit the tone of his film, Dante said, "I asked [production designer] James Spencer, a veteran of Poltergeist and Gremlins'', if he thought he could turn that street into the neighborhood we needed in that period of time." Spencer rose to the challenge, and within a few days they began work on sketching out the proposed designs for the sets. Spencer observed, "We had to be on the spot. Due to the lack of time, it would have been ludicrous to do our drawing elsewhere." The orchestral soundtrack for the film was composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Dante recalled "we shot, in fact, three endings for the picture. None of them, I think, really worked. But also, because of the writers’ strike, we had to sort of make it up as we were going along." Dante says the preview audience did not like the original ending which was more critical of the lead characters, so he changed it. ==Release==

Box office The film opened at number 1 with $11,101,197 in its opening weekend (February 17–20, 1989). Overall, in the US, the film made $36,601,993 and $49,101,993 worldwide. Critical reaction Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it two out of four stars, writing "''The 'Burbs tries to position itself somewhere between Beetlejuice and The Twilight Zone, but it lacks the dementia of the first and the wicked intelligence of the second and turns instead into a long shaggy dog story." Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave The 'Burbs'' a negative review, calling it "as empty as something can be without creating a vacuum". On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 58% based on 45 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "''The 'Burbs'' has an engaging premise, likable cast and Joe Dante at the helm – so the mixed-up genre exercise they produce can't help but feel like a disappointment." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale. Home media In 2014, Arrow Video released ''The 'Burbs on Blu-ray in the UK with a new 2K scan of the inter-positive. The edition included a commentary by screenwriter Dana Olsen, a newly commissioned feature-length documentary titled There Goes the Neighborhood: The Making of The Burbs''. In the United States, the film was first given a Blu-ray release in 2016 by Universal Studios. This release was criticized for poor quality and being a bare bones release. In 2018, Shout! Factory re-released the film on Blu-ray with the transfer and majority of the special features from the 2014 Arrow release from the UK. In 2018, the soundtrack album received a release on LP record on the Waxwork Records label, as an expanded double-LP package. Additional music used in the film but not included on the soundtrack albums includes "Machine" by Circus of Power; "Se Sei Qualcuno è Colpa Mia" by Ennio Morricone; "Questa o Quella" by Enrico Caruso; and "Locked in a Cage", "Make Some Noise" and "Bloodstone" by Jetboy. ==TV series adaptation==

In September 2024, Peacock ordered a series adaptation of the film from Universal Content Productions. Keke Palmer headlined the series, with Brian Grazer and Seth MacFarlane producing via Imagine Entertainment and Fuzzy Door Productions, respectively. The series premiered on February 8, 2026, on Peacock. ==References==