Free Great Movies Review
Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen) and Roy Alston (Maxwell Caulfield) play two angsty teenage best friends who road trip to Los Angeles to go on a crime spree in The Boys Next Door (1985) directed by Penelope Spheeris. While the movie is a serial killer movie, the tone is more of a punk rock comedy. After Bo and Roy graduate high school they head to LA with $200 and start to commit random crimes like beating up a gas station attendant and throwing a bottle at an old lady's head. The dialogue and the crime quest through LA are aimless, as these lost and horny boys drive to many LA locations talking disenchanted nonsense. They go to the Venice Boardwalk, the La Brea Tar Pits, and Hollywood Boulevard, all of which are cool to see in the mid-1980s. Even when Bo and Roy start killing people, the dramatic and action scenes are unintentionally amusing. Director Spheeris's skills are much better suited towards comedy as in Wayne's World (1992) or documentary as in The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy. Here there is very little dramatic weight. It's still a reminder that today's "incels" have always been lurking on the fringes of male teenage culture.
