Themes: Small-Town Life, Street Gangs, High School Life
Main Cast: Shannon Presby, Lori Loughlin, James Spader, John Philbin, David H. MacDonald
Release Year: 1985
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Abby (Lori Loughlin) and her brother, Loren (Shannon Presby), seem to have it all: good looks, lots of friends, and a great relationship with their loving mom and their heroic, discipline-minded military dad. When their folks are killed in a car crash, however, the siblings must move to small-town Florida to live with their sweet but cash-impaired Uncle Charlie (Ed Jones) and Aunt Fay (Lucy Martin), who own a gas station and a struggling, bargain-bin amusement park. For Abby and Loren, life in the Sunshine State proves to be a mixture of hard work, new faces, and harassment at the hands of drug-dealing, skirt-chasing local scion Dutra (James Spader) and his gang of trailer-park psychopaths. Dutra places a bet with the wiry, reptilian Gideon (John Philbin) about which of the young villains will be able to bed Abby first, leading to a series of increasingly vile sexual come-ons. Abby, however, has other romantic ideas involving a kindly boy named Mark (Eric Stoltz). Between bouts of defending his sister's honor, Loren finds a similarly wholesome romance with pretty, blond Karen (Paige Lyn Price). With the help of these new friends, Loren and Abby make some headway in the local social hierarchy, but their skirmishes with Dutra and his minions escalate, climaxing with attempted rape, kidnapping, and bumper-car violence on the night of a high-school dance. Director Sean S. Cunningham also directed the original Friday the 13th. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
This amalgam of the teen flick and the revenge melodrama offers more than just hackneyed characterizations, awful soft rock tunes, and low production values; it offers the unusual and cathartic chance to watch sympathetic protagonists creatively kill one person after another. The 1980s horror genre, thanks in no small part to New Kids director Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th, gave rise to splatterfests in which the audience ironically rooted for the villain, who would, after all, return for the sequels even though the supporting characters wouldn't. In The New Kids, Cunningham goes one better, providing a pair of fresh-scrubbed, all-American leads with the motive (persecution by rednecks) and the setting (a low-rent amusement park) in which to kill gruesomely, in self-defense. Shannon Presby and future TV star Lori Loughlin, as the army brats who turn their father's training loose on the despicable Floridians who have abused them, provide an appropriate mixture of shiny white teeth and martial arts prowess, while future yuppie icon James Spader and John Philbin (Children of the Corn and Return of the Living Dead vet) prove both handsome and loathsome as the leaders of the coke-snorting teen despots who experience retribution amongst the roller-coasters. Although most of the extreme violence is implied rather than explicit, Cunningham films his little exercise in vigilante justice like any other slasher flick -- lingering setups and lightning-fast payoffs. Full of vaguely Yankee-centric distaste for the South and its allegedly chaw-spitting, date-raping, dog-fighting denizens, The New Kids is nevertheless hard to take seriously as anything except an adolescent power fantasy with a particularly high body count. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Vince Grant - Joe Bob; Theron Montgomery - Gordo; Eddie Jones - Charlie; Lucy Martin - Aunt Fay; Eric Stoltz - Mark; Paige Lyn Price - Karen; Court Miller - Sheriff; Tom Atkins - "Mac" MacWilliams; Fred Buch - Guidance Counselor; Toni Crabtree - Newscaster; Jean de Baer - Mary Beth MacWilliams; Ilse Earl - Guidance Counselor; Donnie Kehr - Friend; John D. LeMay - Redneck; Barry Moss; Brad Sullivan - Colonel Jenkins; Margaret Welsh - Friend; Alexander Panas - Paint Store Proprietor; John Archie - Math Teacher; Billy Barzee - Redneck; Kenny Davis; Gregory Gilbert - Redneck; Noel Rego - Friend; Tim Waldrip - Friend; Chad Wiggins - Chad Bob; Julie Hughes
Credit
Peter Smith - Art Director, Barbara de Fina - Associate Producer, Barry Moss - Casting, Julie Hughes - Casting, Pennie Du Pont - Casting, Molly Maginnis - Costume Designer, Sean S. Cunningham - Director, Rita Roland - Editor, Michel Rubini - Composer (Music Score), Lalo Schifrin - Composer (Music Score), Evan Archerd - Songwriter, Miriam Cutler - Songwriter, Steve Nelson - Songwriter, Michel Rubini - Songwriter, Bill Wray - Songwriter, Joe Harnell - Songwriter, Elizabeth Lambert - Makeup, Barbara de Fina - Production Designer, Robb Wilson King - Production Designer, Steven Poster - Cinematographer, Sean S. Cunningham - Producer, Andrew Fogelson - Producer, Tom Coll - Set Designer, J.B. Jones - Special Effects, Courtney Brown - Stunts, Mike Kirton - Stunts, Artie Malesci - Stunts, Jeff Moldovan - Stunts, Jay Amor - Stunts, Stephen Gyllenhaal - Screenwriter, Brian Taggert - Screenwriter
