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THE NEW KIDS
aka
STRIKING BACK
Rating: 
USA. 1984.
Director – Sean S. Cunningham, Screenplay – Stephen Gyllenhaal, Story – Stephen Gyllenhaal & Brian Taggart, Producers – Sean S. Cunningham & Andrew Fogelson, Music – Lalo Schifrin, Production Design – Robb Wilson-King. Production Company – Fogbound.
Cast:
Shannon Presby (Lauren McWilliams), Lori Laughlin (Abbie McWilliams), James Spader (Dutra), Eddie Jones (Charlie McWilliams), John Philbin (Gideon), Tom Atkins (Colonel McWilliams)
Plot: After their parents are killed in a plane crash, Lauren and Abbie McWilliams go to live with their Uncle Charlie in Florida. At school Abbie attracts the attention of a gang of toughs who bet among themselves to see who can score with her first. When she rejects them, they vandalize Uncle Charlie’s carnival. When Lauren breaks into the gang leader Dutra’s house and takes money at knifepoint to pay for the damage, all-out war ensues.
Director Sean S. Cunningham, after toiling for a number of years in B and independent filmmaking, had an enormous hit with Friday the 13th (1980), one of the key influences on the 1980s slasher film. But Friday the 13th was a film whose success Cunningham failed to consolidate in any way. Other directors from around the same period such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and Peter Jackson were able to springboard from low-budget horror hits to success as big-budget mainstream directors. Not so Sean S. Cunningham whose subsequent output – the kidnap thriller A Stranger is Watching (1982), this and the cheesy monster movie Deepstar Six (1989) – remained resolutely caught down the B-budget end of the scale, with Cunningham never again replicating the success that Friday the 13th had had.
For those familiar with the 1970s genre of revenge exploitation movies – The Last House on the Left (1972), Massacre at Central High (1976), Day of the Woman/I Spit on Your Grave (1979), The Exterminator (1980), The Class of 1984 (1982) – The New Kids will hold few surprises. On one hand it is a competently made film – Sean S. Cunningham has polished his act considerably since Friday the 13th. But rather than stir up any raw primal savagery, Cunningham only really churns cliches. And there are times it strains credulity – it does, for example, seem rather absurd that people end up killing each other just because of a rejected date.
James Spader, later Cannes Award winner for his role in Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), in dark glasses and immaculately dyed-blonde hair, has a frighteningly effectively macho presence in the film. Screenwriter Stephen Gyllenhaal is these days better known for his two famous acting children, Jake and Maggie Gyllanhaal.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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