There are white picket fences.
The neighbours are out, tending to their gardens beneath a pristine blue sky.
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Worst of all, theres Rays reclusive and ominous neighbours, the Klopeks.
Their house is a troubling smear in an otherwise perfect landscape, and Ray doesnt like it.
In them particularlyThe Howling,hisTwilight Zonesegment,GremlinsandThe Burbs Dante expertly fused horror with comedy.
Dante was by no means the only filmmaker to do this, of course.
Modern horror wasnt in the dusty castles of old, but within Americas own back yard.
From there, Lynchs odyssey into violence and perversion merely grows more strange.
Compared to Lynch, Joe Dantes films are a light relief.
But their view of suburbia is equally distinct, and full of mischief.
Naturally, Rays convinced theyre up to no good (Klopeks?
Ray asks, when he learns the neighbours surname.
Is that Slavic or something?).
One day, Rays wig-wearing neighbour Walter (Gale Gordon, from The Lucy Show) goes missing.
What follows is a mix of Hitchcockian thriller, slapstick comedy and light horror.
Secretly, theyre even terrified of each other.
Who knows who might be the next to break?
The Klopeks are cut from the same cloth.
Paint your house the wrong shade of pink.
Buy the wrong kind of car.
Make one or two human sacrifices.
Then when you walk down the street, everybody says, Oh, there goes the weirdo!'
For the quiet, and the privacy.
The convenient shopping with ample free parking.
But everywhere I met only suspicion and distrust.
Its true, Hans chips in, providing the scenes punchline: In LA, nobody ever said anything.
To live in such places is enough to bring on madness through sheer boredom.
A special edition ofThe Burbsis out on Blu-ray on the 15th September from Arrow Films.
