A married couple struggle with the realities of their imperfect marriage as they fight to save and rehabilitate their teenage daughter from a life of drug addiction and ultimate committal to a mental ward.
Eli Wallach Julie Harris Deborah Winters Cloris Leachman Hal Holbrook Nehemiah Persoff Mike Kellin Stephen McHattie Don Scardino Rue McClanahan Sandy Alexander Bruce Scott Matthew Cowles Janet Sarno Paul Ganapoler Marilyn Chris Ben Yaffee Joseph Leon John Batiste Ron Panvini Bobby Sandler Robert Gass Jim Hodder Lassie Sachs John Sheldon Kenny Westland-Haag Rutanya Alda Anthony D. Call Jane Culley Show All…
L'uomo della porta accanto, 危险年华
USAR
USA
What the fuck is going on lmao - me every other scene
Every single cast member is at the top of their fucking game. Shame this is so subpar. Extra points though for having a scene where Julie Harris dances. The light I felt in my heart after seeing that was so pure.
Well-off New York suburbanites Arthur and Gerrie Mason (Eli Wallach & Julie Harris) are square and phoney, according to their hippie teenage children, but their life, and their creaking marriage, is turned upside down when they find out their 16 year old daughter Maxie (Deborah Winters) is into drugs and sex.
Wonderfully detailed 1970 dysfunctional family drama with some great acting (Wallach & Harris) and some odd acting (Stephen McHattie).
But why is it called 'The People Next Door'? I mean there are people next door (Hal Holbrook & Cloris Leachman) and they have their own family issues which impact on the Masons, but this is the Masons' story and a very interesting one at that.
There is also a lot of groovy,…
There is a scene where Hal Holbrook smacks his kid in the face with a briefcase and I never felt more seen in a film. Not that I ever did that. But there sure were times during our oldest kid's adolescence where I sure wanted to.
Honestly, I picked up David Greene's follow up film to I Start Counting from Kino Lorber due to the presence of Holbrook and Rue McClanahan. Unfortunately, both have fairly small roles as the film focuses on Eli Wallach and Julie Harris trying to cope with their teenage daughter who has turned to psychedelic drugs in order to turn on, tune in, and drop out from her suburban existence. McClanahan is only in…
Really fascinating time capsule (the tagline on here really sums it up) that’s way too heavy handed and safe and middle of the road to be great or even good but it’s critiques of suburban white middle class america and the nuclear family and it’s response to the threat of social change or disruption occasionally had its moments.
What an interesting departure from the typical ‘drugs bad!’ dramas from eras previously. The People Next Door sheds a fantastic light on what caused a generation of young people to rebel against their parents. It’s no surprise teenagers in the 60s and 70s wanted to experiment and separate themselves from the oppressive home lives they saw growing up. Who would want to doom themselves to a loveless marriage like their parents had been forced into?
For many young people in that era, submerging themselves into a more free lifestyle, or in their parent’s opinion - a more reckless one, seemed the only way out. What I found notable about this film was the comparisons it makes between the parents and…
Entertaining "our kid is on drugs!" drama that has both effective and campy melodrama with some choice dialogue like "I've tried all the grooves, even HORSE, but acid is MY scene!"
The cast is pretty wildly stacked with Stephen McHattie, Julie Harris, Eli Wallach, Hal Holbrook, Rue McClanahan and more. It ends up dragging on a bit - and the ending uhhhh I dunno y'all - but I enjoyed how this would flip between that stare-at-a-problem kind of vibe and over-the-top after-school-special moments.
Deborah Winters as Maxine though is a stand-out, her tripped-out saucer eyes can pin ya to the back of your seat in a few of these scenes.
Well-acted tale about awful suburban parents raised in the fifties who chug martinis by the pitcher but freak out when their kids drop some lsd, man. Eli Wallach really kills it as the father who is a complete lowlife but thinks he is father of the year.
One of the lesser of the generation gap movies from the period with a good amount of everyone is miserable in the suburb’s material for good measure. Eli Wallach and Julie Harris finds out their teenage daughter is doing LSD and it is one cause and effect scenario after another. It does get better in the back half when it gets dialed down a little and I like the idea that family therapy does nothing to the daughter it does helps the dad. I can't decide if Wallach is atrocious or perfect cast. A young Gordon Willis shot it and it is like watching a TV show with visual quality control, every shot looks like an ideal underlit Willis shot, to bad so little of what is going on in them is worth the effort.
Crazy how weed was so villainized by the puritan culture obsessed with drinking and smoking and cheating on your wife. Gluttony is a sin ya know
latest fav addition to the deteriorating WASP family canon! for a movie trying to show & criticize the clashing differences between the older generation and the young people of the time, i feel like this one really balances those two aspects well; it just isn’t entirely blaming the kids for rejecting real life, and neither is it saying that the parents simply lack understanding.
i kinda love how the whole thing operates on one “shock” (tripping, mental breakdown, square middle-aged adults dancing to rock music) after another, but i suppose that’s how it’s like after summer of ‘69.
julie harris and eli wallach are so very good here!
The People Next Door is a genuinely impressive film. It is well-directed by David Greene (I Start Counting, Gray Lady Down) and has a brilliant cast of character actors. Eli Wallach dominates the film as the father of Deborah Winters, whose drug addiction is the throughline of the plot. Julie Harris plays Wallach's wife, and you get to enjoy Hal Holbrook and Cloris Leachman as the neighbours. The film does mostly what you would expect, in terms of pure plot, but the tone is interesting enough that it never feels stale. It is 93 minutes of torturous and heavyweight drama.
However, all my reservations come from me finding drug addiction movies exceedingly tedious. The fault lies with me. This is a good film, that people will really love. I cannot get beyond how annoying I find addiction narratives.
