Only now does it occur to me... that Sean S. Cunningham has more up his sleeve than merely dead camp counselors, rip-offs of THE ABYSS, or haunted house movies with CHEERS cast members. No, he's an, um, sophisticated filmmaker capable of crafting an elegant revenge-drama/thriller/'80s bully movie. Allow me to present: the six most remarkable things about Sean S. Cunningham's THE NEW KIDS.
#1. He chooses to begin with a workout/strength-training montage set to the sultry tunes of Lalo Schifrin.
A bold move, because it's the sort of thing that usually occurs at the end of a movie's second act, right before the heavyweight champion bout or whatever. You'll note that we're looking at FULL HOUSE's Lori Laughlin, there on the left (and on the far right is Shannon Presby, essentially a poor man's Michael Biehn, who is playing her brother). In the center is their dad, played by
#2. Tom mutherluvin' Atkins, of "John Carpenter/LETHAL WEAPON/NIGHT OF THE CREEPS/everything good in this world" fame.
Don't get too excited, though, because he's not long for this world. That's right––General Tom Atkins gets a heart-stringy farewell
before being killed, offscreen, in a car accident. The now-orphaned siblings leave to live with their sketchy uncle at his dilapidated creepy Christmas theme park in the middle of nowhere. As transplants in a small southern town, they have now become the eponymous... "new kids."
#3. James Spader. When I heard James Spader played a bully in a film called THE NEW KIDS, I assumed that it was set at a Bret Easton Ellis yuppie/boarding school/douchebag academy. I was picturing LESS THAN ZERO, I guess.
And was there any question that his character would be a cokehead?
This is a very subtle movie, is what I'm saying.
So Spader and his bully gang launch a campaign of terror against the new kids, at one point even killing their beloved pet bunny in a moment that is very proto-FATAL ATTRACTION. As a part of this campaign, the movie must reckon with
#4. Toxic masculinity. So Spader's gang o' yuppies-attempting-Southern-accents is meant to be sexually inappropriate in their interactions with Lori Laughlin. Because this was the same decade that brought us plenty of sexual misconduct and outright assault packaged as the acceptable teenage experience (i.e., SIXTEEN CANDLES, PORKY'S, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, et al.), this meant that they really had to overplay it to signify that these were Bad Guys. Because, for instance, almost every '80s teen movie had a scene where a guy asked out a girl and refused take "no" for an answer––and often was rewarded and lauded for his persistence––how could THE NEW KIDS possibly demonstrate an example of said behavior being "bad?" Well, this particular member of Spader's gang begins with dogfight invitations,
moves on to hair-licking,
and quickly escalates with death threats.
Here's how they differentiate Spader's stalking from, say, John Cusack's in SAY ANYTHING:
The only real difference between these scenes and the ones from, perhaps, a John Hughes film, is of degree.
#5. Eric Stoltz. As the "ginger nerd" who romances Lori Laughlin and attempts to save her from a gang of would-be rapists at a school dance, this sort of affords us a glimpse of what it would have been like to see Eric Stoltz play Marty McFly in BACK TO THE FUTURE.
Though I count myself a Stoltz fan, I absolutely think Zemeckis made the right call in replacing him with Michael J. Fox––Stoltz has a sweet, hangdog vibe that doesn't quite match the likability Fox projects so effortlessly. I imagine a Stoltz BACK TO THE FUTURE would have been a slower burn, with its Oedipal scenarios turned excruciatingly awkward. It would probably have a cult following, but I really don't think it would have been the epochal sort of classic that it remains today.
Anyway, that's just rank speculation. So here's a screengrab of Stoltz falling victim to "the ol' crouch n' shove."
#6. Finally, you know what, this gets its own slot: James Spader lighting the stream on a gas pump and turning it into a makeshift flamethrower for purposes of trying to murder Aunt Becky.
That about sums it up, ladies and gentlemen. THE NEW KIDS.
