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How sad is this?

A Masterpiece!

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

From the start and most of the way through this movie kinda feels like one of those 80's buddy comedy/action flicks, and then thinks it can go back to that after nasty shocking violence. I mean, You've got the boys piggishly chanting "Debbie does Greek!" and a poodle named Boner, right next to some of the worst movie violence ever seen, and I don't think they at all got the balance right-this didn't strike me as a type of movie that should have had any humour in it at all. And the bit when the old lady gets hit with the beer bottle has got to be the cheapest laugh ever committed to celluloid! I felt that the pace was very straightforward and kinda dull, but then it would flare up, if you will, when the violent murders happened, then go back to being average. Accept at the end. After the final murder the film thankfully has an energy that carries it straight to the end. The movie's got a couple of really corny but funny lines, my favourite one is when a gal yells at the boys to "eat her f**k!" What the hell was that?! Awesome! Charlie Sheen. Too cool for school. But that's all he does, try to look cool, spout cheesy-ass lines, and throughout wear a stupid permanent thoughtful frown. And he looked so gay with that stupid Topgun haircut! I can't believe I used to think he looked cute! He looks and acts like the arrogant Hollywood brat I'm sure he was at that point. He had none of the presence that Caulfield did. I think that it would have been a very different and far better movie had someone else played Bo. Someone who wasn't Charlie Sheen. Because I feel that Chuck brought the movie down big time. In fact, for me he almost totally ruins it. The movie would have worked better if Chuckers had done a better job of appearing more shocked and traumatised by the killings. Because at the end, when Bo confronts Roy, it felt very sudden to me. Aside from a few half-arsed mutterings by Sheen, there really is no strong build up to that. Annoying! I don't like it when Bo says at the end that he thinks he's going to go home and move on. Like he has a right to. I lost any sympathy for the character when he joins in the murder of the unfortunate gay guy. It's kinda funny at the end: crazy Charlie Sheen getting dragged downtown by the cops!!! The irony! It's eerie, isn't it? The way it echoes his modern times! There's an impressive intro sequence, with images of serial killers, and parts of speeches from serial killers, but I'm not sure if it's really them. It's kind of misleading, as it gives the impression that the movie is going to be one as shocking as, say, Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer. And although it is indeed shocking and violent, it comes nowhere near the bleak nightmarishness of that great film. To me the most sickening bit in the movie is when the poor hippie chick gets shaken to death for absolutely nothing. Truly horrific. I thought Maxwell Caulfield was brilliant as the deceptively handsome, blue-eyed mass murdering thug Roy. He's really terrifying as a brawny bully stuck in a rut. There's not much you can say about the character really. He's big, he's mean, he's bitter, he's twisted. That's about it. Always scowling, always trying to bring anything bigger than himself down to his level. There's nothing sympathetic about him. There's a creepy scene early on where he is eyeing a couple at a party with this evil cold glint in his eye. Again, all the more frightening because it's coming from a pair of strikingly beautiful blue eyes. There are two little scenes that are supposed to give insight into his bleak world. One is where it shows Roy's home, the other is way later when he tries miserably to read. They both felt a bit quick and stuck in there to me, but they are both really funny though. I believe that when he gets shot down like the mad dog he is, that just maybe, that was what he really wanted...Despite how brutal and foul Roy is, he's the dark heart and soul of this movie. Imagine if someone as bad as Sheen was had played Roy. Not a pretty picture. Very violent to say it was directed by a woman. Not to say women can't make violent movies,(why would they want to?) but I was surprised that a lady directed this one in particular. But reading about some of the things that have happened in the life of the director, I could see where the movie's dark intensity could have come from. Penelope Spheeris herself is shocked by the film, saying that she would never make such a violent picture today. I think they were trying to make a movie with some great social commentary about young killers, but for me when it's over it really feels like it just fails in that way. It's still a very gripping and disturbing thriller. however. Even if, perhaps, the only "great" about it is the violence itself.

Just time and circumstances and possibly the unavailability of weapons prevented Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield from becoming a pair of Columbine style massacre makers in The Boys Next Door. Although the treatment of them is rather sensationalistic and exploitive the film does raise some issues. First and foremost is just how do you recognize a serial killer in your midst.There's nothing wrong with Caulfield and Sheen as actors, but they are terribly miscast. Quite frankly these two guys are way too good looking to be believable as social misfits. Try as a may, I couldn't turn over the fact in my mind that these two couldn't get any dates.Part of it is economics, these two are from the wrong side of the tracks in their small western town. But that sure doesn't explain it, some noted serial killers came from the upper strata.Right after graduation these two decide to go to the big city of Los Angeles where their penchant for violence, especially Caulfield's escalate until they've killed four people in one twisted night. As miscast as they are the two deliver good performances. Honorable mention should also go to Patti D'Arbanville as the bar girl they pick up, Paul Dancer as the gay man who becomes their first victim, and Dancer's boyfriend Kenneth Cortland.The Boys Next Door is not a bad film, but the subject has been covered better in the cinema.

The Boys Next Door is an ugly, but generally gripping film about two losers who decide on a whim to spend the weekend in Los Angeles after graduating from high school. Charlie Sheen (Bo) and Maxwell Caulfield (Roy) play these two punks pretty convincingly, and this low-budget film lets them flex their muscles while terrorizing anyone unlucky enough to get in their path.The film begins by showing us pictures of seemingly normal-looking serial killers while at the same time using audio commentary to detail the number of victims they had. The actions of the two in this film really don't seem to be patterned after any particular killer, but this early footage is just trying to tell us that virtually anyone we see might have violent tendencies.We see a little of their last day of school. Bo strikes out with a hot chick. Nobody wants them to come to a big party later that night. The boys crash it anyway. Roy pisses in the pool, and the boys steal the family dog and take it with them out to L.A.. Once the guys get to L.A., pure mayhem ensues. First of all, they beat an Iranian clerk at a gas station senseless, nearly killing him. Then, they go to the beach and hit an old lady in the head with a beer bottle. Later on that evening, these two hoodlums graduate to murder. They pick up a gay man at a gay bar and kill him at his place in West Hollywood. Then they murder a young couple just because they're jealous that they can't get a hot chick like the young woman. Things are capped off by the senseless killing of a new-age hippie woman while she's getting it on with Bo. Roy seems to get jealous, then he violently shakes her to death after dissing her new-age values. By then, the cops are hot on their trail, and they corner the two punks at a shopping mall. The conclusion may or may not surprise you.The acting is very good. Sheen is decent enough, but Caulfield is the guy you will remember. This in not the same Maxwell Caulfield we were rooting for in Grease 2. This guy is one seriously screwed-up individual who takes to murder like a fish to water. Penelope Spheeris does a very good job with the limited budget in one of her earliest efforts. When watching this film now, you can't help but be reminded of the Columbine tragedy of 1999. The kids that caused that bloodbath were probably a lot like Bo and Roy. For some reason, they just couldn't conform, and they saw no other alternative but to take out their frustration on society. There also seems to be a bit of social commentary with the final ten minutes of the film taking place in the mall. I think the film is trying to say that kids of the 1980s were a bankrupt generation who had nowhere else to turn from their problems except shopping malls or other consumer venues. Arcades, too, for that matter.Overall, this is an ugly film that will make you think about it for quite a while after it's over.7 of 10 stars.The Hound.

The fawning over this lesser Spheeris effort is incredible. The only reason for it is that this melodrama hits the spot for knee-jerk self-proclaimed progressive minds, this being that terrible angst is created in aimless young men by a mindless uncaring society, fomenting into no particularly understood (by them) rage against anyone stepping in the way. What a moronic, simplistic view. Everything here is boiled down to pop psychology and endless unrealistic stereotypes. Even to the point of stereotyping those with whom we are supposed to feel empathy. Along with this is the hinted latent homosexuality from where it appears much of one of the boy's anger stems, yet it's never confronted nor really developed as it should be. We are supposed to just guess then accept that homosexual tendencies are repressed and then erupt into violence, a LOAD OF BUNK and on par with the stupidity of the gay-baiting cop the film supposedly refutes. From the very beginning, where the supposed "normalcy" of various serial killers is trumpeted (point of fact: the killer Kemper was nowhere near normal), to give credence to the jingoistic "boys next door" title, onward to the undeniable effort to show these "boys next door" as nothing like normal in the eyes of their peers, this is nothing more than an immature 90 minute student film. The simplistic and ignorant moments are so many that it's way too difficult to list them all, but if this isn't the worst thing Spheeris has done, then I have yet to see her worst. Better to watch Charlie Sheen and a buffed-up Chris MacDonald in TERMINAL VELOCITY instead of this pile of crap.