Stream This: Watch Carrie Fisher Bring Her Force to 'The 'Burbs'
It’s nice to imagine that, in an alternate universe, Joe Dante’s cult 1989 comedy, The ‘Burbs, became a multi-film franchise to rival Star Wars. Certainly, the suburban galaxy created by Dante and the movie’s writer, Dana Olsen, is as richly imagined as George Lucas’s Jedi-filled cosmos, consisting of foreboding houses, possible murder victims, and one very nosy neighbor played by Tom Hanks in his ‘80s comedic prime. (The film is available to stream on Amazon Prime and iTunes.)
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Dante grew up obsessed with the same B-movie ephemera that directly inspired blockbuster franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones — no real surprise for a contemporary of Lucas and a frequent collaborator with Steven Spielberg. In fact, Dante’s first major success as a director, the Roger Corman-backed 1978 creature feature, Piranha, owed something to both Spielberg and Lucas. Not only is it a hilarious homage to Jaws, but Dante tapped Star Wars creature designer, Phil Tippett (who helped create the famous Chewie vs. R2 chess match aboard the Millennium Falcon) to design the titular monster fish.
When it came time to make The ‘Burbs, Dante brought another Star Wars talisman into the fold: Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, as Carol, the more sensible wife of suburbanite Ray Peterson (Hanks). As the director recalled to L.A. Weekly in a just-published interview, he and Fisher initially worked together on a segment Dante directed for the 1987 omnibus comedy, Amazon Women on the Moon. “We became pretty close…and having gotten to know her I felt her personality was a great fit for The ‘Burbs role.”
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Of course, playing a suburban wife and mother is a less revolutionary role than a three-movie stint as a galactic rebel. And the ever-candid Fisher was typically honest in her assessment of The ‘Burbs in an online Q&A with Washington Post readers in 2008: “It wasn’t a really good movie, but I had a really good time with Tom Hanks.” Whatever private qualms she may have had about the film or her part, though, the actress brought the full…um, force of her wry personality to bear as Carol, ensuring she wouldn’t be mere window dressing in the movie’s Hitchcock-meets-The Twilight Zone narrative.
Thus, while Ray and his neighbors, Mark (Bruce Dern) and Art (Rick Ducommun), slink about trying to deduce whether the neighborhood’s newest residents, the Klopeks, are serial killers, Carol favors the direct approach. Leading a four-person welcoming committee armed with big smiles and baked goods, she confidently knocks on the door of the dilapidated house and keeps the conversation going through a supremely awkward “getting to know you” visit.
Her status as the only adult in this cul-de-sac is reinforced in another scene when Mark and Art beg Ray to join them in another juvenile escapade, only to have Carol send them away with their heads drooping. “Sorry, boys, my husband’s not feeling well — he has to stay in his room,” she says, adding with exquisitely tart-tongued comic timing, “He can’t come out until he resembles the man that I married.”
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A modest success upon its initial release, The ‘Burbs enjoys a more exalted status today as one of Dante’s best studio movies and the forerunner of subsequent stylized suburban satires such as My Blue Heaven and Edward Scissorhands, both of which arrived the following year. But the movie’s darkly daffy vision of suburbia benefits greatly from the dose of reality that Fisher imbues in every scene she’s part of. You might say she’s the one who brings balance to The ‘Burbs.
Director’s Reel: Joe Dante Shares Stories About ‘The ‘Burbs,’ ‘Gremlins,’ and More:
