Neighbor: Old English
nēahgebūr, from
nēah ‘nigh, near’ + gebūr ‘inhabitant, peasant, farmer’ (compare with boor).
Boor: an unrefined, ill-mannered person.
"at last the big obnoxious boor had been dealt a stunning blow for his uncouth and belligerent manner"
For all the larger-than-life terrors such as Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster, Romero's zombies arguably are the most frightening because they're just plain folks, albeit decomposing ones.
"It's the neighbors, man," Romero said.
"That's the scariest thing in life, the neighbors!"
So if you're not friends with me on Facebook, you're probably not aware of the fact that I have a habit of attracting really bad neighbors. One of my earliest childhood memories is of our upstairs neighbors - a tough young couple who would spend all night at the bars, come home at 2am and immediately start screaming at one another - escalated the argument to include butcher knives. The police were called, the husband was taken away in handcuffs, the wife was slapped across the face by a police officer (she had it coming, take my word for it) and the next day, hubby came home on bail and everything was kissy face honey bunny I wuv ooo makeup sex. But for weeks afterward, us kids would dare each other to go up to their door and touch the puddle of dried blood on the concrete.
I've lived next to gang bangers and drug dealers, neither of whom were at all shy about hiding their activities. For instance, I know that a speedball goes for about $1,000 because that's the price that my neighbor loudly quoted a prospective buyer on the phone one fine day. I recently uploaded footage of a mentally disturbed female three doors down loudly shrieking about the misery that is her life for everyone within a five mile radius to hear. I've lived next to enthusiastic sex-havers, douchecanoe frat boy partiers, violently abusive insult-hurling man-chimps, paranoid conspiracy theorists, church organ players, and one memorable white trash couple whose baby boy mysteriously died one night. I knew he was dead because the mother, drowning in a blue and red sea of swirling squad car lights parked in our lot, was screaming "He's dead, the baby's dead!" at 2am.
And now, meet my new neighbor. He moved in overhead a mere two months ago. He's not the worst neighbor I've ever had, but he's definitely the most sleep-deprived. Seriously, this guy...just, what the fuck is he doing? All I hear, all day long, for hours and hours and
hours, is: roll, thud, smack, draaaaaag, scrape, thump, draaaaaaaag, clatter, slam, crash, boom, draaaaaaaag, boom! I've tried to figure out what the fuck he's doing up there all goddamned day, and judging by the sounds, I think he's building wine casks whilst roller skating over ball bearings, and he keeps knocking over his massive collection of bowling balls and antique juggling pins in the process. And it's not just during the day. This fucker has woken me up at 2am, dropping rebar and bricks and unexploded German mines on the floor. And I hesitate to go up there and ask him what the fuck he's doing and if he couldn't perhaps do it more quietly, because he's probably a fucking serial killer who will stuff my body into one of those wine casks and let me rot in his closet for 26 years.
"I've not always been mad, y'know, but um... I was actually driven mad by the indifference of architecture and council planners. Y'see I live in a tower block, and um, the thing about those is that there's terrible noise problems, because there's no noise insulation at all y'know, and 8 floors below you there's always some bastard who's got a Yamaha home organ, y'know. You're just about to go to sleep and you hear this doot-doot! chh-chh doot-doot! chh-chh chkdt BAH WA DAH BAH NAOW! doot-doot! chh-chh doot-doot! chh-chh! and like, the people who live upstairs from me, I can't understand what they're doing! Y'know I listen, and all I can hear is this weird noise and it goes voom voom, BLAT-NN BLAT-NN, voom voom, BLAT-NN BLAT-NN, and it sounds, right, it sounds like two elephants on a motorbike riding round and round, while a seal bangs a kipper on the table! I went upstairs to complain, and the door was answered by this elephant in a crash helmet! Standing behind him is this seal going: "WHAT IS IT NOW, RALPH?"
Billy Balowski - The Young Ones
So anyway, how best to vent my rage? Write an article about films which feature shitty neighbors, of course!
(And nah, we're not doing the obvious ones like Pacific Heights and The 'Burbs, because I'm obscure and indie as fuck, ya'll.)
Lords of Salem
 |
| "It's Devil's Food!" |
Aawww, aren't they cute? Nice, proper, polite little middle aged ladies, popping round your apartment with a fresh pot of tea and some yummy chocolate chip scones fresh out of the oven, just checking to make sure you're okay after your latest crack smoking spree. And also, you know, to see if you'd like to go have sex with that little roast chicken demon baby Satan in the next apartment and get pregnant with the Antichrist, after which they'll tuck you in bed and make sure you get a good nights sleep.
Dead & Buried
 |
| "Tis but a scratch." |
Welcome to Potter's Bluff, the nicest little seaside town you could ever hope to live in. But there's a couple of conditions. First, you have to be violently murdered by the townsfolk. And not just murdered, but bludgeoned, burned, disfigured, tortured, crushed, mutilated and obliterated. Then, once you're dead, your body will be painstakingly reconstructed and willed back to life with voodoo magic and you become a
lifelong undead resident, who is expected to partake in the next ritualistic murder of the next hapless interloper.
The Stepford Wives
 |
| "So, Patty...is Frank really the champ?" |
Oh honey, let us move our affluent white selves to a quaint, idyllic suburb away from the big stinky evil city, and we'll raise our angelic kids amid tea parties and church bingo and have a puppy and a white picket fence and live the American Dream! Except you'll actually be dead and replaced with a lifelike robot with bigger tits and the personality of a powerfully sedated Kardashian who becomes ridiculously obsessed with household cleaners and recipes.
The Howling
 |
| "Was that Wolfman Jack?" |
So, you've just been nearly raped and strangled by a werewolf in a seedy porno shop in downtown L.A. You might need a vacation. Yeah, up North someplace. In a cabin. By the sea. Long walks through the redwood forests, group therapy sessions, a jacuzzi... oh, and that BDSM Pocahontas whose trying to fuck your husband? Yeah, she's the sister of the pervo wolfboy who tried to kill you, and all of your neighbors are pack members who spend the moonlit nights fucking 'round the campfire, slaughtering cows and plotting your indoctrination into the community. You're gonna be the Alpha Male's bitch whether you like it or not, honey.
Rosemary's Baby
 |
| "Trick Or Treat for pork rinds." |
Well, hey - it
is New York, and it
was the 60s. You could fare a lot worse than the Satanic version of The Ropers for your next door neighbors. Well, no, actually you couldn't. Scratch that, pun intended. At first, Rosemary merely seems annoyed by her garish and tacky neighbors. Bu when they drug her pudding and lay her out semiconscious on an altar, naked, and let the Devil hump her while they watch...well, it's enough to make Rosemary not invite them to her New Years Eve party, that's for sure.
[REC]
Man, you finally find a decent apartment in downtown Barcelona and the guy in the penthouse unleashes an apocalyptic plague, turning all of the infected into rabid demons whose bite spreads the contagion from the top floor on down faster than the clap runs through a whorehouse. And the police have quarantined the building and are imprisoning the tenants inside, hoping to contain the virus by allowing it to run its course. This is one of those rare instances when eviction could be a good thing.
Harry Brown
Man, you make a career out of being a decorated war hero and you think you could get a little peace and quiet when you retire. But no. The slummy tower block that your pension allows you to rent is overrun with gangs and drug dealers and hooligans of all sorts, and you can't even take the shortcut through the underpass tunnel to get to the hospital to see your wife before she dies. So Harry does what any sane and reasonable old retired guy with emphysema would do - he buys a gun and starts killing the punks. Because he is an absolute badass.
Rear Window
 |
| Not a phallic symbol. At all. |
Oh, the 1950s. When everyone was whitewashed and wholesome, sharing an apartment building courtyard with good cheer and homegrown neighborliness. Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, master of the perverse. In that case, your neighbors are alcoholic, suicidal, sexually licentious, inner city assortment of losers at life, who have congregated here pretty much to grow old and die, having given up on life. And one of them is a puppy slaughtering madman who murders his wife right under Jimmy Stewart's nose and has the nerve to think he can get away with it.
Stir Of Echoes
There's nothing like community in the big city, neighborhoods where you grow up, spend your whole life and know everyone. All of your neighbors are family. Your home is their home. And their secrets are your problem when you foolishly decide to go poking around in them. Look, big deal, so
one retarded girl got walled up in the cellar of your new apartment by your best friend/next door neighbor and her ghost is now tormenting your every waking moment. Deal with it, man. There's a game on tonight.
