Review of The New Kids (1985) by Vince K — 02 Feb 2010

The New Kids is a mid-'80s semi-horror flick directed by the great Sean Cunningham, who did one of my favorite movies - the first Friday the 13th. It's also notable the screenplay was written by Stephen Gyllenhaal - Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's father.

It must have been pretty easy for them to get into the business since their daddy had Hollywood connections. The story follows a teenage brother and sister, who come from a military family. When their parents die in a car accident, they have no choice but to move to Florida with their Uncle and Aunt.

The girl is played by Lori Laughlin, who would later go on to play Jessie's girl on Full House. You also get to see a young Eric Stoltz as a classmate, fresh off of being fired from playing Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

The uncle owns a run-down amusement park called "Santa's Funland", which looks scary. You get the feeling that any minute an alligator is going to wander out of the woods and eat some babies.

That's why Florida is fucked up - alligators outnumer humans a trillion to 1, Banana Spiders are the scariest looking spider on earth, there's Tasmanian Devils, backwoods Deliverance rednecks, everything.

And the town rednecks are the antagonists here. Even though the good-looking siblings become instantly popular at their new school, the group of 5 rednecks immediately set their sights on the girl, and you just get the feeling she's probably going to get raped before the film is over.

The gang is led by pretty boy James Spader, and this is probably one of the first films where he played the evil asshole bad guy. He even owns a rape van. After the girl turns down the scumbag's advances, it's on.

They start terrorizing the siblings, doing everything from keying their car, vandalizing the amusement park, and even killing the pet bunny and throwing it in the shower with the girl. So, basically it's just one of those movies where the villains are so despicable and annoying that you can't wait for them to finally get their comeupance; meanwhile you're just left pissed off the whole entire time.

The siblings finally do get even in a long, drawn out final showdown, but there are some pretty good death scenes (the rollecoaster track decapitation was my favorite.) The New Kids is not one of the greatest '80s movies (no one sure as hell remembers it), but it still is pretty decent.