Oh my God, this movie is awesome!

Within the first five minutes, the film features not only a training montage but also a scene where a family cheering good news immediately gets a phone call delivering bad news.  (“SHUT UP!” our hero yells at his friends and family.)  By the time the film hits the five minute mark, it has managed to denounce communism, terrorism, laziness, and drunk driving!  And that’s even before James Spader shows up as a cocaine-sniffing teenage crime lord!

First released in 1986 and directed by the same guy who did the first Friday the 13th, The New Kids tells the story of Loren (Shannon Presby) and his sister, Abby (Lori Loughlin).  Their father (Tom Atkins) was a badass army colonel who fought communists, received commendations from the President (and that President was Ronald Reagan so you know those commendations were for doing something cool and not just for posting memes on twitter), and who taught his children self-defense.  Every morning, he exercised with them and drilled into their heads the importance of being disciplined and willing to stand up for themselves.  Sadly, their father and mother were both killed in a car accident after meeting with President Reagan at the White House.

Though they’ve been taught how to survive in the world by an expert, Loren and Abby are both teenagers and the law says that they need adult supervision.  They move down to Florida and stay with their Uncle Charlie (Eddie Jones),  Charlie owns a run-down amusement park that he’s decided to call Santa Land.  He figures that tourists who are driving to “Walt Disney World and Epcot” will want to stop off at Santa Land.  Personally, I think the tourists will probably want to keep driving to where they actually want to go but who knows?  Uncle Charlie does have a petting zoo and there is something oddly charming about the idea of Santa hanging out in the bayous of Florida.  I mean, there’s a reason why Santa Claus And The Ice Cream Bunny is beloved by viewers all over the world.

At the high school, everyone notices Loren and Abby.  Abby gets  a dorky boyfriend named Mark (Eric Stoltz …. no, really!) and Loren starts dating the sheriff’s daughter, Karen (Paige Lynn Price).  Unfortunately, the new kids have been noticed by Eddie Dutra (James Spader) and his gang of inbred rednecks.  Dutra and his gang deal drugs and have a pit bull who they’re hoping to enter into dog fights.  (“Went straight for the jugular,” one gang member says at one point.)  Dutra decides that he likes Abby, which leads to Loren getting protective, which leads to Dutra and the boys waging their own war on Abby and Loren and everything eventually comes to a deeply satisfying Straw Dogs-style conclusion at Santa Land.

The New Kids is one of those films that succeeds by being thoroughly absurd and over-the-top.  Dutra and his gang aren’t just evil.  Instead, they’re downright Satanic in their determination to destroy the new kids.  The gang is fearsome enough, especially Gordo (Theron Montgomery), who is the fat future forklift operator from Hell.  But what really makes this gang memorable is the fact that their leader is James Spader, with bright blonde hair, a smooth Southern accent, and moves that are so assured that he sometimes seem to be dancing across the screen.  Dutra’s evil and the cocaine that he snorts leads to him making some bad decisions but he’s got style.  As for the New Kids, Shannon Presby is a bit bland as Loren but that blandness actually provides a nice contrast to Spader’s more flamboyant performance.  Lori Loughlin is likable and kicks Gordo in the balls, which is pretty cool.  (Gordo more than deserved it.)

Cheerfully sleazy and unapologetically ridiculous, The New Kids is 80s exploitation cinema at its best.