3/24/09: The New Kids (1985)The movie poster above declares that
The New Kids is “A New Ticket to Terror from the Director of ‘Friday the 13th.’” That would be Sean S. Cunningham, who also produced the original
Last House on the Left—as
discussed last week. That entry got us to thinking about how we kind of remembered that Cunningham had made another revenge epic. We were being part of the many who treat
The New Kids as a forgotten flick.
The film is as bafflingly fun as we (finally) remembered, though. Cunningham would be more successful as a producer than a director, and
The New Kids went direct-to-video for most of the country. That was fair. Still,
The New Kids establishes its bold ways from the start. We see popular genre star Tom Atkins as the military dad of teenagers Abby and Loren. He rouses them out of bed early for a good jog and some combat training. His kids think it’s a great way to start the day.
Sadly, Atkins’ character will be killed off shortly after the opening credits. Too bad. The kids were basically being raised by Chuck Norris. We learn this while Abby and Loren are watching a news report about their father receiving “a special Presidential commendation for valor.” (The media might have covered that kind of thing back in 1985). The news anchor adds that their dad had “single-handedly subdued five hijackers on a Boeing 747 last October 14th.” It was part of his “74 amazing missions against terrorism.”
We’d like to see that movie about the hijackers. Anyway, the celebratory party is cancelled when Loren answers the phone and finds out his wonderful parents have died in a car crash.
The siblings go to live with their Uncle Charlie at his place in Florida. Things are different there. For example, Charlie thinks 1960 was a peak year for America because Kennedy was in the White House. Also, Charlie’s trying to revive a run-down amusement park called Santa’s Funland. Abby and Loren are offered living quarters in a tin shack, but they’re resourceful enough to start making a go of Charlie’s investment. They also run afoul of the local drug-dealing, dog-fighting bad kids—led by bottle-blond James Spader, looking like the lovechild of Christopher Walken and Gary Busey conceived during a taping of Deney Terrio’s
Dance Fever. (Pardon the precious criticspeak, but it’s true.)
As with
The Zero Boys and
Future-Kill, this is a film where you mostly feel sorry for the antagonists. The bad guys don’t know who they’re dealing with. That’s made clear when—after various humiliations—the local creeps manage to give Loren a beating in the men’s room. Loren’s pretty banged up, but he just conjures inspirational memories of his father. The teen is soon working out to rock music in the kind of classic ’80s training montage that means revenge is around the corner.
The New Kids has other weird touches that make it compelling as a bad movie. Sadly, that doesn’t include Eric Stoltz ever taking up arms as Abby’s mild-mannered love interest. The final scene, however, is a happy tribute to exploitative entertainment. You also get a token final shot meant to set up a sequel that never happens. That’s just as well. Wouldn’t be much suspense there.
Make it your own: There’s a fairly cheap
DVD, but with nothing in the way of extras. That’s unfortunate. There are some good stories behind the film. In addition to offering early work from Spader and Stoltz—along with Lori Loughlin, later of
Full House, as Abby—we’ll note that the script was co-written by the father of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Also, manly hipster novelist Harry Crews used to claim that he wrote much of the film. He’s thanked in the closing credits, and the movie was shot in Crews’ adopted home state of Florida.
