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Joe Dante directs this late 1980s comedy horror starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Dern. Life is pleasant, if dull, in the suburb of Hinckley Hills until the weird Klopeks move in next door to Ray Peterson (Hanks). When Ray decides to spend his week's vacation relaxing at home, he soon allows himself to be persuaded by his other neighbours that the Klopeks are in fact marauding killers, and joins in the suburbanites' investigation. The film also stars Carrie Fisher and Corey Feldman. From .co.uk ----------- Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks ( /gp/search?search-alias=dvd&field-keywords=Tom%20Hanks+-ntsc )) would like nothing better than to spend a quiet week's vacation in his suburban home, drinking and watching TV. But, spurred on by his two friends' spinning of boyish paranoid fantasies about their reclusive neighbours, the Klopeks, the usually down-to-earth Ray begins to suspect his idyllic neighbourhood has been invaded by an evil force, to the point where he and his friends become psychotically nosey. You see where this is going, and you see it from a mile off. Only the general surface-thin plot is somewhat offset by director Joe Dante's fine sense of the absurd, and a host of engagingly played neighbor-types, namely Rick Ducommun as Ray's best friend who's always proposing bad ideas, and Bruce Dern as a sometimes wild-eyed ex-vet who'd love some action. Dante and crew seem to have a knack for keeping these broad characterisations light enough that you don't mind their superficiality. But the best jokes in this unprepossessing film come from composer Jerry Goldsmith's score; Bruce Dern's presence, for instance, is announced by the theme from Patton, and the boys' first approach to the Klopeks' for a meet-and-greet is buttressed by classic strains from Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns. Kudos to the Klopeks, for their evil ways are ably embodied by Henry Gibson, Courtney Gains, and Brother Theodore. In particular, any suburb that finds it's inhabited by the likes of Brother Theodore is in dire need of new zoning laws. But Carrie Fisher's role as Ray's amiably long-suffering wife is thankless, and she deserves better. --Jim Gay