Monday, July 30, 2012

The New Kids

The New Kids is a 1985 revenge picture directed by Sean S. Cunningham of Friday the 13th fame, and written by Maggie Gyllenhaal's Dad. It stars Lori Loughlin and Shannon Presby as a brother and sister whose parents are killed in a car accident, so they are shipped off to live with their wacky uncle at his run down amusement park in Florida. You can see the site of the park as it stands today here. This marks Mr Presby's only foray into feature film. Also of note - Lori Laughlin never shows her boobs despite an R rating and a shower scene that was perfect for boob showing. As a matter of fact, you don't get any boobs at all in the whole damn movie. It's a shame really, because nothing makes a good movie gooder like some boobs. That's a film making rule of thumb. The picture opens with Lori Laughlin getting woken up by her dad saying that she needs to get her "sexy little body" out of bed, which is pretty fucking creepy. Turns out that they are just the kind of regular all American family where Dad wakes the kids up at the crack of dawn and has them do military drills. Strangely, the kids seem to love this shit. We get a pretty sweet montage of running around and hitting punching bags and then the next thing you know dear old mom and dad have been killed in a car accident. OH NOES! WHAT TO DO?! Well there is only one thing you can do - ship the kids off to the weird uncle with the broken down amusement park. After a long ride on a greyhound bus the kids arrive at their Uncle's place where they get settled down in their new home - a barn on the midway. They get started right away at helping their Aunt and Uncle work on opening the Amusement park. There are about 97 montages of workin' and tomfoolery. After all that nonsense the kids start at their new High School. At school, things really start to get rolling. We meet Eric Stoltz as friendly Eric Stoltz kind of guy, and we meet James Spader as Dutra - the town menace! Dutra has an awesome blond hairdo, and some sweet floral print western shirts, and a gang of inbred ruffians that follow him around. He has an extraordinarily rapey vibe. It isn't that it seems like he will just rape Lori Loughlin, it's more like he is going to rape the whole town. Men, women, children, picnic tables, whatever. He is gonna do it. He also drives a sweet custom van. I love this villain. At some point Dutra and his crew make a bet on who will bed Lori Loughlin first. Back at the Amusement park / gas station, Lori Laughlin is manning the pumps when who rolls in but Dutra in his awesome fuck truck. He asks her to the dance and she has the gall to say no! Dutra is all "WHO THE FUCK??!" and vows to rape the entire Miami metro area. It is ON! So from here on out Dutra and his gang start fucking with the amusement park, vandalizing wacky uncles Cadillac, and causing general mayhem. Amidst all of this, Lori Loughlin's brother notices that the sheriff's daughter has some neat boobs, but we don't get to see those either. Lame. The bullying gets crazier and crazier and eventually hits a FEVER PITCH! Oh boy! This actually makes up the bulk of the movie. The Dance finally arrives and Dutra is so mad! Hoppin mad! He and the gang try to show Lori Loughlin love the only way they know how - by kidnapping her, dousing her in lighter fluid, and attempting to set her on fire. I must have stopped paying attention for a bit because I'm not really sure what happens next, but they all end up back at the amusement park with wacky uncle being covered in chicken blood so they can unleash a pit bull on him. They also take off Lori's pants and stuff. This causes uncle to flip the fuck out and everything goes crazy. People are shot! A guy who looks just like Judah Friedlander gets his face bit off by a pitbull! There's blood all over the place! The mayhem eventually makes its' way to the midway where Dutra's gang meet their untimely demise one after another in Amusement Ride carnage. Death on the bumper cars! Death in the house of mirrors! It all brings us to a tense standoff between the brother and Dutra at the gas pumps. Eventually Dutra meets his maker at the end of a flaming gas nozzle. Oh the humanity! After all this it flashes ahead a few weeks and wacky Uncle is actually alive! The amusement park is a success because everyone loves that all these people died there! Everything is great and Lori and her brother declare it to be their forever home. Yay!!! Everything will be OK!!!!! Or will it???? I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and I was surprised that I had never seen it before. James Spader is a FANTASTIC douche as Dutra. The only thing it was missing is T&A, which could easily have been shoehorned in there. Oh well - can't win em all. The closing shot clearly sets things up for a sequel which was never made. A shame, really.

Dutra Megamix!

1 comment:

  1. The New Kids...one of the movies I'm sure James Spader would like to forget he made. Eric Stoltz once told a story how when they were filming this movie Spader drew a target on Eric's motel room window, and in the middle of the night shot a BB gun at it. Stoltz also said that one morning "Jimmy" was out in the courtyard wearing only his underwear, sunglasses, and a leather fringed jacket, and he was shooting a crossbow into the trunk of a palm tree. Lori's mom came out for the morning paper, took one look at a guy shooting a crossbow, screamed and ran back into her motel room. It must have been an interesting shoot.

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