This is a fine adult movie from 2006, back when budgets were big, returns were lucrative and the industry was thriving. Watching it now is instructive as to how many key elements have changed.
The story is simple enough and often, under Mike Tristano's direction, plays like a real movie, perhaps Joe Dante's "The 'Burbs", which was the first movie to cross my mind during the opening reels of "The New Neighbors". Tristano's script, via casting and acting, telegraphs at the outset that the new couple moving in across the street are sinister/evil -check out Randy Spears' super-smug facial poses and suggestive remarks, plus Nikki Hunter's epitome of a porn actress-styling. Perfect casting of Mike Horner as the square suburbanite reminded me of a Tom Hanks character -not from "the 'Burbs"" but his newer roles than that one.
But the conceit of the script, as developed by the strange charactor of Severin, not the Severin of Sacher-Mosoch/Lou Reed fame through the classic "Venus in Furs" but rather a strange hipster exorcist (model would be Michael Gothard in Ken Russell's classic "The Devils". He expresses the familiar pornographer's POV (Free Speech Coalition time) of how Satanc behavior ranging from free love to kink is what the insustry is all about , in conflict with most right-wing concepts, especially fundamentalist religion. Today the lines are drawn diffeentgly: progressive attitudes versus DeSantis' bfrand of fascist contgrol.
Tristano tries to have it both ways, ostensibly siding in tghe film in favorf of the demons and the bad influence represented by Spears yet presenting Severin the Regulator as aiming for a balance, in otgher words sexula liberation and freedom without actual conflict with rhe far right's forces of repression. Film's final twist goes whole hog in favor of Satan - a vicarious bit of whimsy.
With well-designed and performed set-up scenes, not the token and brief ones of today's gonzo world, there is a laudable balance here between story and XXX content. The sex scenes are complete but perhaps half the length preferred today, so a 2-1/2 hour "Neighbors" film would have to run 4-1/2 hours if shot now.
Perhpas the movie's greatest accomplishment, in line with it's theme of destroying the myth of the perfect nuclear family, is the rank approach to incest, which two decades later is so popuilar, no longer a porn novelty. Besides Hunter, the very non-porno-look lead actress Linda Roberts is very impressive in what proved to be the role of her career. The late Haley Paige and Euro star Barbara Summer are also terrific. Definitely a movie that's stood the test of time.
