4B - Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

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'THE BOYS NEXT DOOR' (1985)

'Boys' gone wild

By BRANDON CONRADIS
Senior Arts Editor
Roy (Maxwell Caulfield,
"Empire Records") and Bo (Charlie
Sheen, "Platoon") seem like ordi-
nary boys. They go to high school,
drink booze, play pranks on their
teachers and dread the burden
of post-graduation life, including
having to work in the local fac-
tory. But beneath their wholesome
facades are two deeply disturbed
sociopaths waiting to cut loose.
Roy is an unhinged maniac con-
stantly on the verge of boiling over
into violent rage. Bo is his unques-
tioning follower.
"The Boys Next Door" is essen-
tially a day in the life of these two
young loose cannons, who take a
road trip to Los Angeles one night
and soon find themselves the tar-
gets of a city-wide manhunt when
their joyride turns into a murder
spree.
It's a difficult film to watch at
times. In the wake of recent school
shootings like the 2007 spree at
Virginia Tech, it's hard to imag-
ine a film like this being received
with open arms by contemporary
mainstream critics. Even for a
film made in 1985, it's remarkably
subversive. While most moviego-
ers in 1985 were being spoon-fed
patriotic fluff like "Red Dawn" and
"Rambo: First Blood Part II," "The
Boys Next Door" dared to show
the angrier side of Reagan-era
America.
Admittedly, the film is recom-
mended more as a curiosity than
it is as a genuine diamond in the
rough. Though much of the film

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wrenching, the problem concern.
y that some of the scenes, The highlights of the film are
illy early on, would feel undoubtedly the performances
t home in a John Hughes from Caulfield and Sheen. Caul-
. For most of its running field is especially impressive: a
rhe Boys Next Door". does British pretty boy whose career
ward balancing act between was already on the path toward
ained drive-in-style fun and soap opera hell after his debut in
serious character study of the infamous "Grease 2" (1982),
enated loners. It's like "Bad- he's truly unforgettable here. As
for the "Facts of Life" set. Bo, Sheen has less to do but plays
yet, while the film is flawed, off Caulfield marvelously. Togeth-
sanages to be a powerful - er, they convincingly make for the
morably vicious - look at scariest kind of monster: the kind
bling phenomenon. What you could mistakenly take home to
your mother.
"The Boys Next Door" was
directed by Penelope Spheeris,
gruesome a minor director who found her
niche makingfilms about troubled
n of innocent youth in America in the early '80s,
beginning with her most notable
)uths turned film, the punk documentary "The
Decline of Western Civilization"
murderers. (1981). She followed that film with
"Suburbia" (1984), and, along with
"The Boys," these films make for
a startlingly savage attack on the
it so effective is that it nei- sort of conservative sentiment
'monizes nor idealizes its and phony sitcom wholesomeness
nists. It merely records that pervaded much of American
drawing viewers into its filmmaking at that time.
ith a deceptively innocu- At its best, "The Boys Next
t act before smashing their Door" is a gritty and disturb-
ceptions to pieces with ing eye-opener that rips apart
t after moment of cold, the veneer of seemingly inno-
brutality. There are scenes cent and normal youths. At its
at are enough to leave mod- worst, it's a cheesy, occasionally
iences rattled, even though even insensitive take on a seri-
no gore. And all the while ous topic. Whatever the case, it
lence on display is punctu- remains an essential precursor to
the disturbingly noncha- more renowned films like "River's
pressions of the two boys, Edge" (1986) - films that dare to
act to the escalating car- explore the brutality of everyday
with an unsettling lack of American life.

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