Boys Next Door
Director - Penelope Spheeris
Cast-Maxwell Caufield, Charlie Sheen, Hank Garrett
Country of Origin - US
Distributor - Severin Films
Number of Discs - 1
Reviewed by - Bobby Morgan
Date- 12/18/2019
Despite being handsome local bad boys always looking for a good time, Roy Alston (Maxwell Caufield) and Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen) are social outcasts among their high school peers. Now they’re graduates facing a hopeless, uncertain future of working factory jobs until the day they die in their sleep or keel over from heart failure on the job. Before they report for the first day of the rest of their young lives, Roy and Bo decide to take the $200 Bo received as a graduation gift from his grandparents and head to Los Angeles for one last weekend of debauchery. They won’t be coming home.
That’s the basic set-up for The Boys Next Door, a harrowing and surprisingly impactful crime drama from filmmaker Penelope Spheeris and future X-Files scribes/Final Destination franchise creators Glen Morgan and James Wong that was barely given a theatrical release from distributor New World Pictures before being permanently consigned to video store shelves and cable television for decades to come. Having developed a healthy cult following over the years, the film makes its Blu-ray debut from Severin Films in a terrific edition that features a new high-definition transfer and plenty of bonus features.
Originally titled Blind Rage, The Boys Next Door puts the viewer in the passenger seat alongside a pair of alpha male knuckleheads who end up committing acts of robbery, assault, and violence in their quest for kicks. The film stars off with an opening credits sequence added in post-production at the insistence of producer Sandy Howard (Vice Squad, the Man Called Horse series). Through a series of voiceovers with unidentified experts and a list of the most notorious and vicious serial killers in U.S. history, we’re being primed for a sordid story about American psychos-in-training.
Spheeris’ film has more in common with Truman Capote’s true crime masterpiece In Cold Blood and the films it inspired than with any real-life tale of charismatic spree killers, but by the final moments it’s not illogical to suggest that an open-ended conclusion would have seen our protagonists Roy and Bo becoming the next Starkweather and Fugate.
Rejected by the ladies, dejected at a society that is determined to quietly sweep them under the rug in order for the moneyed elite to prosper, Roy and Bo openly question why the country doesn’t establish “Caveman Day” so guys like them to do whatever the hell they want to whomever they please without the threat of legal repercussion. By the time they have this conversation, they have already assaulted a Middle Eastern gas station attendant (Joseph Michael Cala), accidentally bonked an elderly woman (Helen Brown) on the head with an empty beer bottle, and driven crazily around a boardwalk parking lot with an angry, bikini-clad onlooker clinging for her life to the hood.
One hour in the City of Angels and Roy and Bo are already more hated than Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo were after an entire weekend in Las Vegas, but the true horror is only just beginning. Before the day is done, four innocent people will be dead, and our Dynamic Duo of Depravity will be on the run from the police in that most 1980’s of settings – the mall.
Spheeris directs The Boys Next Door will style and sophistication, refusing to turn this chilling tale into a bloody exploitation flick. The Morgan/Wong script supplies wit and strong characterizations for Roy and Bo that Caufield and Sheen successfully make flesh with their compelling performances. Sheen appears to be channeling his brother Emilio Estevez’s classic performance as Otto in Alex Cox’s Repo Man at times, but he also locates the beating heart that dwells deep in this greasy-haired Neanderthal who just wants the love of a good woman he never really deserves. The simmering violence and repressed rage that explodes in the second act is dutifully embodied by a never-better Caufield, channeling his own anger at getting dropped by Paramount Pictures after the box office failure of Grease 2 into a daredevil feat of acting that perfectly demonstrates what the young man was capable of accomplishing before Hollywood turned its collective back on him.
Hank Garrett (Serpico) and Christopher McDonald (Requiem for a Dream) are well cast as the two investigating detectives hot on Roy and Bo’s trail and each actor gets a moment to shine memorably, particularly when Garrett’s grizzled but empathetic Detective Hanley angrily dresses down a homophobic colleague. Paul C. Dancer and Patti D’Arbanville are granted enough screen time to craft characters who come across as real people and not just nameless cannon fodder in the boys’ crime spree. Spheeris’s eye for casting actors who add texture and personality to the proceedings is highly evident here as the supporting cast is peppered with brief yet noteworthy turns from Moon Unit Zappa (who previously worked with Sheen’s brother on the horror anthology Nightmares), Vance Colvig Jr. (UHF), Carmine Filpi (later to be cast by the director as Old Man Withers in Wayne’s World), actor/director/future George Clooney creative collaborator Grant Heslov (True Lies), and Blackie Dammett (father of Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis) as a bartender.
Cinematographer Arthur Albert (The Principal) captures the sun-scorched life and luxury of mid-80’s L.A. with the same neon-drenched menace he brought to Night of the Comet, finding the quiet despair in the city’s summer darkness in the process. Albert would go on to work mostly in big screen comedies throughout the 90’s like Happy Gilmore (reuniting him with Christopher McDonald) and Beverly Hills Ninja before finding steady work in television the following decade with extensive credits on hit series such as ER, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Blacklist. The original score, a lo-fi gem of brooding intensity, was one of the earliest notable credits of composer George S. Clinton, who went on to score the Mortal Kombat and Austin Powers movies at New Line Cinema.
Audio/Video:
Looking its best ever on home video, The Boys Next Door comes to Blu-ray with a fresh AVC-encoded, 1080p high-definition transfer sourced from a 4K scan of the 35mm camera negative and is presented in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Boasting consistent image stability and grain structure, healthy back and foreground details, and authentically vibrant color timing, the picture quality is nothing short of terrific. The upgrade in resolution also breathes new life into the texture, giving presence and clarity to clothing, cars, and the Los Angeles locations. The film’s original mono sound mix is faithfully recreated in the form of the English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, spreading the basic but effective mix across both channels with balanced volume, renewed depth, and not a trace of distortion or overlap. English subtitles have also been provided.
Extra features kick off with an audio commentary pairing up Spheeris and Caufield that was ported over from Anchor Bay’s 2001 Region 1 DVD. The tone of the track is immediately established as warm and friendly as the director and star recall the making of The Boys Next Door with a combination of clarity and candor.
The new extras produced for this release begin with “Blind Rage” (25 minutes), an interview with Nightmare U.S.A. author Stephen Thrower in which he discusses the origins of The Boys Next Door, backgrounds of its major players, the homoerotic subtext and positive portrayal of gay men, the film’s social commentary, and more. In “Both Sides of the Law” (20 minutes), Caufield and co-star Christopher McDonald talk about how they first met on Grease 2, getting cast in The Boys after the musical sequel nearly derailed their acting ambitions, working with Charlie Sheen, and other aspects of the production. The highpoint might be when Caufield recounts the time he was arrested while walking his dog on Venice Beach.
“Give Us Your Money” (6 minutes) spends some time talking with musicians Texacala Jones and Tequila Mockingbird, who were recruited to play street performers in the film, on their history in the punk music scene and how that first connected them with Spheeris, getting work as background actors in various film and television productions that required punk rocker types, and writing the music they perform in The Boys. Spheeris and Caufield rehash many of the subjects covered in their audio commentary in compact form in “Caveman Day” (21 minutes), an interview filmed for a November 2015 presentation of the film by Cinemaniacs in Melbourne, Australia.
Kenneth Cortland, who played the small supporting role of Dwayne, is interviewed for “Tales from the End Zone” (12 minutes). The actor offers his impressions of the filming of The Boys, working with Sheen and Caufield, and how his scene with the detectives mirrors many tense encounters between gay men and the police. “The Psychotronic Tourist – The Boys Next Door” (14 minutes) finds film author (House of Psychotic Women) and programmer Kier-La Janisse revisiting several of the most famous locations used in the making of The Boys Next Door and shares information on other films that were shot there.
The extras conclude with a short silent alternate opening title sequence bearing the original Blind Rage name and two extended scenes (with blue-tinted inserts showing what was cut from them in the first place) and the theatrical trailer (2 minutes).
The Boys Next Door is a riveting thriller with moments that will freeze your blood and fantastic lead performances from Maxwell Caufield and Charlie Sheen, and it’s all masterfully directed by the great Penelope Spheeris. Underrated and underseen for far too long, Severin Films’ Blu-ray is bound to expand the film’s fanbase with an excellent new HD transfer and informative supplements that further highlight what a labor of love The Boys was for its makers and how its fans continue to appreciate it to this day. Highly recommended.
