Dis­cov­er the sly social cri­tique of this Rea­gan-era teen thriller

“You’re gonna make it, kids. You’ve got­ta be strong.” This is Colonel ​“Mac” MacWilliams in the open­ing sequence of The New Kids, giv­ing his teenaged chil­dren Loren (Shan­non Pres­by) and Abby (Lori Lough­lin) a pep talk about life after hav­ing wok­en them at the crack of dawn and tak­en them out­side for a gru­elling out­door fit­ness routine/​combat training.

These ado­les­cents have been lov­ing­ly reared by Mac to be tough, resource­ful and self-reliant mem­bers of soci­ety. After his pep talk is over, all three will recite togeth­er, ​“It’s a jun­gle out there”, an expres­sion which shows that Mac has brought his exten­sive expe­ri­ence as a Spe­cial Forces com­man­der back home with him from his mul­ti­ple tours in the more lit­er­al jun­gles of Vietnam.

Even as a tele­vi­sion news report tells us of Mac’s 75 mis­sions against ter­ror­ism, and of the spe­cial com­men­da­tion that he is receiv­ing from the Pres­i­dent for hav­ing ​“sin­gle-hand­ed­ly sub­dued five plane hijack­ers on a Boe­ing 747”, the call comes in that this Amer­i­can hero and his wife have just been killed in a car acci­dent. Now orphaned, Loren and Abby move to Glen­by, Flori­da to live with their uncle Char­lie (Eddie Jones) and his wife Fay (Lucy Mar­tin), who run a gas sta­tion and run-down amuse­ment park that Char­lie has pur­chased with the last of his life’s savings.

Smart, hard-work­ing and good-natured, the two teens will make the best of their new cir­cum­stances. But Loren finds him­self drawn into his own Viet­nam as a gang of five local high-school delin­quents, led by the psy­cho­path­ic Dutra (James Spad­er), will make both kids’ lives hell in a rapid­ly esca­lat­ing cam­paign of ter­ror. All Mac’s impart­ed lessons about strength and sur­vival are about to be put posthu­mous­ly to the test.

Fresh­ly arrived in this small town, Loren and Abby are ​‘the new kids’ of the title, but hov­er­ing around the cen­tre of this film is anoth­er pair of sib­lings, ​‘the old kids’ Char­lie and Mac. ​“Your father and I, we were very close when we were boys, did he ever tell you that?” Char­lie asks his niece and nephew at Mac’s mil­i­tary funer­al, in words that tell of broth­ers who have grown apart and become estranged since childhood.

At first the con­trasts between the broth­ers seem obvi­ous: Mac had gone from one suc­cess to anoth­er, where­as Charlie’s life has been a series of entre­pre­neur­ial fail­ures (with his recent­ly pur­chased ​‘San­ta Fun­land’ look­ing set to be just the lat­est of these). Mac’s home was decid­ed­ly mid­dle class, where the chil­dren had their own sep­a­rate rooms, while Charlie’s house is much fur­ther down the socioe­co­nom­ic scale, with Loren and Abby hav­ing to share a messy cor­ru­gat­ed barn. The two broth­ers are polit­i­cal­ly divid­ed too.

Mac has risen through the ranks of the mil­i­tary, and his final proud achieve­ment before his untime­ly death was to receive a medal from the incum­bent Pres­i­dent (i.e. Rea­gan), where­as Char­lie believes ​“1960 was the prime year of our coun­try”, chiefly because that was when ​“Kennedy was elect­ed”. Yet despite these dif­fer­ences, Char­lie is as patri­ot­ic as Mac (he rais­es the Stars and Stripes over San­ta Fun­land every morn­ing), and ulti­mate­ly proves as brave too.

Loren and Abby must nav­i­gate these changes, not only adjust­ing to life in a new high school, but also help­ing Char­lie realise his (Amer­i­can) dreams for the shab­by amuse­ment park. As mil­i­tary brats, they are used to con­stant­ly mov­ing home and adapt­ing to new cir­cum­stances – and they have soon befriend­ed stu­dious Mark (Eric Stoiltz) and the Sheriff’s daugh­ter Karen (Paige Price), earned a more gen­er­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, and trans­formed San­ta Fun­land into a work­ing concern.

Yet the broth­er and sister’s assim­i­la­tion to their new envi­rons faces a far greater chal­lenge from Dutra, a mali­cious, preda­to­ry, drug-deal­ing bul­ly who feels threat­ened by Abby’s unyield­ing rejec­tion and Loren’s fear­less defi­ance, and who unleash­es his boys like fight­ing dogs against the MacWilliams sib­lings. Still at the begin­ning of his career, Spad­er plays Dutra with unhinged men­ace – even if, as evi­dence of his ver­sa­til­i­ty as an actor, he him­self played the ​‘new kid’ in Fritz Kiersch’s Tuff Turf (anoth­er juve­nile delin­quent film which came out in the same year).

As the gang exe­cutes Dutra’s jeal­ous vendet­ta, amp­ing up from wil­ful destruc­tion of prop­er­ty to full-blown vio­lent assaults on per­sons, and as Loren – a chip off the old block – car­ries out his own mis­guid­ed Spe­cial Ops mis­sion vain­ly designed to put a stop to the mad­ness, it starts to become clear why Sean S Cun­ning­ham, who had famous­ly pro­duced Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left and helmed Fri­day the 13^th, was in charge of direct­ing this film.

The New Kids nev­er quite becomes a hor­ror film, but it cer­tain­ly plays with hor­ror tropes. There is a show­er scene clear­ly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psy­cho, and the scene ends with a ​‘bun­ny boil­er’ moment that antic­i­pates Adri­an Lyne’s Fatal Attrac­tion by two years. The set­ting in an amuse­ment park of the film’s cli­mac­tic culling evokes genre films like Christo­pher Freeth’s Malatesta’s Car­ni­val of Blood and Tobe Hooper’s The Fun­house – as well as the noirish hall of mir­rors in Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shang­hai – and is express­ly char­ac­terised as a ​‘blood­bath’ in a sen­sa­tion­al (but not inac­cu­rate) head­line from the local newspaper.

In the end, Loren takes on five assailants who are deter­mined to con­duct a reign of ter­ror – a feat which shows him assum­ing the hero­ic man­tle of his father (who was recog­nised pre­cise­ly for thwart­ing five ter­ror­ists). Yet while Abby may, in a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, flirt with the idea of leav­ing Char­lie and Fay and return­ing to the com­fort­able bour­geois lifestyle that Mac had afford­ed them, Loren sees both that Dutra’s super-height­ened sense of enti­tle­ment has not in any way been tem­pered by his mid­dle-class upbring­ing, and that in his way Char­lie is as much of a hero as Mac. These real­i­sa­tions – about decen­cy tran­scend­ing class – rep­re­sent the sib­lings’ true coming-of-age.

In many ways these ​‘new kids’, with their clean-cut ways and just-say-no atti­tudes to drugs and sex, embody the val­ues of the Rea­gan era, and the trans­fer of their own mod­est inher­i­tance for invest­ment in Charlie’s small (re)start-up busi­ness rep­re­sents some­thing akin to Reagan’s trick­le-down eco­nom­ics. And yet Loren and Abby’s final, decid­ed­ly down­ward­ly-mobile deci­sion (in a decade that favoured the upward­ly mobile) to stay with Char­lie in pref­er­ence to a ​‘bet­ter’ (which is to say wealth­i­er) lifestyle is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a com­mit­ment to fam­i­ly, and to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic out­look at odds with their own father’s Repub­li­can allegiances.

Con­trast this with Dutra, anoth­er afflu­ent Rea­gan­ite kid from a com­fort­able, sub­ur­ban back­ground not unlike the MacWilliams’. Yet he is hap­py to prey on peo­ple like Char­lie, and to exploit his much poor­er friends for his own per­son­al gain. Remem­ber that Dutra’s per­se­cu­tion of Abby and her broth­er begins with a mon­e­tary bet that he will prove psy­chot­i­cal­ly unwill­ing to lose, and that dehu­man­is­es any­one who stands in the way of his man­ic, mur­der­ous dri­ve for profit.

Script­ed by Stephen Gyl­len­haal (with some input from Bri­an Tag­gert), and scored by Lalo Schifrin, The New Kids occu­pies a pecu­liar place for a stu­dio quick­ie: on the one hand it is well-writ­ten and well-act­ed, with round­ed char­ac­ters and often wit­ty dia­logue; on the oth­er, it becomes a vio­lent sur­vival­ist exploita­tion flick not so very far removed in theme and tone from Mark L Lester’s reac­tionary high-school revenger Class of 1984.

That odd merg­er of high and low arguably rep­re­sents a much greater ten­sion in the film than any car­ni­va­lesque cat and mouse, and will leave hard­ened hor­ror hounds and more ​‘respectable’ view­ers feel­ing equal­ly, if dif­fer­ent­ly, dis­ap­point­ed by what­ev­er mate­r­i­al in the film fails to con­form to their spe­cif­ic desires. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, as these clash­es – both tonal and ide­o­log­i­cal – reflect the con­tra­dic­tions of the times, when Reaganomics were aspi­ra­tional mod­el for some, and night­mare for others.

The New Kids was orig­i­nal­ly released on VHS in the UK under the title Strik­ing Back, with 54 sec­onds cut at the insis­tence of the BBFC. The New Kids is avail­able on Blu-ray on 101 Films’ Black Label from 29 June.