The Feud

The film focuses on two middleclass suburban families, circa 1950s (in upstate NY?) from the opposite sides of town and how one mistake sets off a problem which neither one has started. Black comedy, screwball, farce, and even elements of drama make an otherwise enjoyable movie. The cast of unknowns are superb, as is Rene Auberjonois (Deep Space Nine) as the Reverton and Stanley Tucci as the lively police officer.

Don't hesitate to rent it if you ever see it at the local rental place!

Thomas Berger's unique sense of back humor has not adapted well to the movies. "Little Big Man" is still the best adaptation of his work, but that movie's tone is suffused with much 1960's anti-war sentiment. "Neighbors" became a loud, unfunny comedy scripted to accommodate the styles of Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, and was a big failure.

As a film, "The Feud" is like an amateurish "Neighbors" with a low budget and much overacting on the part of the cast, particularly Rene Auberjonois, Gayle Mayron, Joe Grifasi, and Stanley Tucci - none of whom are remotely amusing. The director Bill D'Elia has done mostly TV series, and he certainly doesn't have the proper offbeat sensibility (or the directorial technique) to pull off this very difficult kind of black comedy. But then, very few people do. Even David Lynch has struck out on occasion. Perhaps Berger's fiction is best left on the printed page.

Tony Beeler lives in Hornbeck, but he goes to a dance in Millville, where he meets Eva Bullard. Hornbeck and Millville are rivals in football, but the towns are about to be enemies for more reasons than that.

Tony's father Dolf goes to a hardware store owned by Eva's father Bud. He wants paint remover, but he has a cigar in his mouth, and smoking and paint remover are a bad combination, even though the cigar is not lit. So Dolf gets in an argument with Bud and a Scrooge-like man in black named Reverton. The result is 'the feud'. A series of bizarre but unrelated events lead to each side blaming the other, and the desire for revenge.

Some more background: Tony has a geeky friend with tape on his glasses who likes to experiment with dangerous chemicals. Dolf works in the Millville Munitions plant. Tony's sister Bernice is a tramp.

Rene Auberjonois made Reverton quietly evil but often on the verge of exploding, though toward the end he was more looney than evil. Ron McLarty overacted as Dolf, but his performance fit this type of movie. One possible highlight (though I didn't care for it) was a scene where Harvey, a cop who didn't seem sane enough to be carrying a gun, gave an outlandish lecture to a boy whose ball went into the street. Stanley Tucci did quite a good job with this wacko. And Kathleen Doyle was a little too perky as Bud's wife. Joe Grifasi had the best opportunity of all to be weird as Bud, but I shouldn't say why.

I wish I had known ahead of time, but I used to live near where this movie was filmed, and I have gone inside a hospital in Statesville, N. C., which closed when I lived in the area and has been used as a movie set ever since.

Overall, I was pretty happy, but some of the humor was a little too dark.

I caught this movie recently on TV in an odd timeslot and was most pleased that I continued watching! Centering on a conflict between two families in the 1950s who each live in towns right next to each other, this satirical comedy is a must see.

Dry humour abounds throughout the film, with each family encountering a series of mishaps which they believe the other family has caused - which is, of course, a decidedly wrong assumption!

Rene Auberjonois is fantastic as the jittery Reverton, who commences a one-man campaign on behalf of the Bullards to enact revenge on the totally innocent Beelers. You simply must watch this film until the surprising end, where the life of almost every character has taken a dramatic turn from before.

I give 'The Feud' a 9 out of 10; if you happen to glimpse this little gem at your local video store, do not hesitate to grab a copy! Superb!