Viraldice

Leonardo DiCaprio is clearly loving mask life. (Lainey Gossip)

Remember when Terry Crews was really awesome at speaking out about controversial topics? He's not anymore. Holy sh*t. (Dlisted)

Donald Trump Jr. threw a maskless party with 100 people in the Hamptons, which still won't make him grow a chin like a real boy. (Celebitchy)

Come for Meghan McCain actually trying to defend the St. Louis gun nuts, stay for her trying to act she's not an elitist because she doesn't live in a gated community. Millionaire beer heiress Meghan McCain. (The Daily Beast)

This is Kellyanne Conway's daughter https://t.co/aXorxfKU9D

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) June 30, 2020

What's a like to be a Black mayor mandating mask use in the South? About as awful as you think. Jesus Christ. (The Root)

A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is coming from... Seth Rogen? F*ck it, why not? (Atom Insider)

The messy politics of Black voices in American animation. (The New Yorker)

Johnny Depp conveniently omitted some pretty damning texts about his drug use, and he's now been ruled in breach of court in his lawsuit against The Sun. (Variety)

This is why America will never get coronavirus under control. pic.twitter.com/KaXL8YM9kf

— Gennefer STAY HOME Gross (@Gennefer) June 29, 2020

Christopher Nolan's publicist has issued a denial of Chair-Gate, which I'm sure will calm Film Twitter right down. This'll do the trick. (IndieWire)

How Jimmy Kimmel's beer-guzzling, sexist days ogling chicks on The Man Show actually paved the way for his late night success, not hampered it. (The Muse)

A pretty great interview with Damon Lindelof on just what the hell happened to Lost, and the explanation makes perfect sense. Unlike the ending. (Collider)

Elaine F. Weiss' The Woman's Hour:The Great Fight to Win the Vote isn't The Chancellor's usual kind of book. He usually finds historical non-fiction long and dull. "Yes, it's got a lot of pages, but the actual narrative reads like a novel." What's the last book you read outside of your usual style? (Cannonball Read 12)

Hammock dog. So comfortable pic.twitter.com/v1ZPCH3hjT

— Animal Life (@animalIife) June 30, 2020

Surprise, surprise: This year has me against the ropes again with my anxiety and panic. Who would have thought that a different cataclysmic change every month and the inability of people to wear a simple piece of cloth on their face would ruin me on a nearly daily basis?

Rhetorical question, that, so put your hands down, kids.

Each day I search for something to take my mind off of everything for a moment or two and that seems to help me a lot. Today I stumbled upon an Ask Reddit that seemed to be on the prowl for something similar. Instead of asking for the usual facts that make people like me nauseated, u/ExtraterritorialBird wanted something a little less depressing. They asked for comforting facts --excuse me, VERY comforting facts-- to raise spirits.

(That Chris Pine header? Just more comfort for you.)

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This one makes me genuinely ecstatic:

u/silva_wings
It's highly likely your pet dreams of you in their sleep :)

Edit: I can't find the exact article I read, but this one explains that most animals dream of things they do during the day. You're such a huge, loving part of their life it makes sense they'd dream of you!

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/canine-corner/201010/do-dogs-dream

Do these faces dream of me? AW!

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I want to believe:

u/AugustineBlackwater
Given all the atoms in the universe are recycled in various ways (having formed in the first stars), our entire body has already experienced billions of years of each atoms own personal history. Even more comforting, it's plausible those atoms will eventually become part of someone else in the future and will continue to exist in various forms - transforming continuously - until the end of time itself. So in a way, we're connected to something absolutely eternal and our ultimate fate is to be spread across the stars. Hell, depending how deep you want to get, there's also a tiny, tiny chance that your pattern of DNA will form entirely by chance again, creating someone that is biologically you but with a whole new memory, experiences and history. Basically, everyone and everything is connected. The best part? None of this is based on religion or wishful thinking, it's actual established and current scientific fact.

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u/Brissant Guys, GUYS, all these animal facts are very endearing and nice and stuff, but OP asked for comforting facts, annnnnd I'm pretty sure they mean that as in "what's some stuff to be hopeful for". So here's some stuff.

Newly invented bacteria can eat plastic. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24024/20191010/bacteria.htm

Ozone layer hole over Arctic has healed.

Scientific study claims people naturally try to do the right thing.

New method found to grow crops during winter, helping the feed the world.

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That's the one. The most comforting fact in the thread.

Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard have gone through quite a lot over the past few months.

They've feuded with the former's parents. They've been parent-shamed up the wazoo. And they've soldiered on amid a national pandemic.

But one thing has remained constant between these parents and former reality stars:

Their love for each other.

A very steady and strong couple, Jill and Derick celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary late last week... as best they could, given the conditions out there.

"Happy Anniversary my love @derickdillard," wrote Duggar as a caption to the photos above and below, adding in her message:

"These last 6 years have been quite the ride but I’m so grateful to have you always by my side. (see what I did there? lol)"

As for how they spent the big day?

"We celebrated yesterday (a day early) with a date to the place where we got engaged!" explained Jill, expounding on their walk down memory lane as follows:

"We had dinner @tablemesabistro just like we did before we got engaged, then we walked over to @kyyachocolate for some delicious chocolate and then to our bench (not really ours lol) on the Bentonville square where Derick popped the question a little over 6 years ago.

"After a little while we went to @andysfrozencustard for dessert."

Jill shared this pictures and memories on Father's Day.

She used that holiday to trash her terrible dad and to praise her husband, adding via caption:

"After celebrating Father’s Day today with family, Derick was busy working on assignments for a summer class, so I got the boys down early and surprised him with @dominos delivered for dinner.

"Fun facts:

"@dominos pizza was the first meal we had as husband and wife! + pizza and wings & @fanta (different restaurants tho) were common date foods for us while in language school in Guatemala."

Duggar concluded up her romantic anniversary post by asking her 1.6 million Instagram followers if they have “some anniversary/early relationship sentimental foods, places, or traditions.”

While we wait for responses, it's worth maybe updating readers on where things stand between Jill and her mother and father.

She has remained mostly quiet while Derick has torn into Jim Bob, accusing him of exploiting his kids and stealing millions of dollars from them.

But while Jill has said very little, various reports have come out that make it clear Jill is loyal to her husband and immediate family above all else.

And the best way she may subtly curse off her parents?

By moving all the way out of the country.

Will she actually go through with it? Perhaps!

View Slideshow: Jill Duggar: Has She Totally Cut Off Her Family?

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is giving many North Americans their first look at the bonkers wonders of its real-life inspiration. For Europeans (and Australians), the Eurovision Song Contest has been an enormous annual event for decades. Its audience is twice that of our puny Super Bowl. But in the U.S. and Canada, it's not widely broadcast. Not even Rachel McAdams had seen the big show before signing on to star in the Will Ferrell comedy all about it. She tells the story of her first exposure to this stunning cultural extravaganza on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Check it out.

Not only did Ferrell and McAdams attend the real Eurovision Song Contest, they performed as Fire Saga there so the Netflix movie could get crowd shots. But the crowd that turned out for "the Olympics of music" were not into it. "They were just shy of booing us off the stage," McAdams recalls. The people of Iceland were far more welcoming when the film shot on location there. "We felt like we really were living there," she says.

Here's a bonus clip where McAdams and Ferrell appeared--remotely--on Good Morning America. Ferrell shares his first exposure to Eurovision Song Contest. Plus, McAdams reveals how Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk inspired her performance.

For more on Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, check out our guide to the movie's cameos and our interview with a Eurovision Song Contest expert!

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is now on Netflix.

There was a time when the idea of June Shannon checking into rehab and getting sober seemed like nothing more than the most improbable dream her loved ones could conjure.

But believe it or not, it happened.

And what's even more shocking is that it might not have happened without Geno Doak, the man who got Mama June smoking crack and using meth in the first place.

The season finale of Mama June: Family Crisis saw June and Geno checking into a rehab facility in Florida.

Fans were skeptical about the couple's chances of getting sober, and rightfully so.

At their lowest point June and Geno seemed to value getting high above everything else, including their own lives.

June ignored months of desperate pleas from her daughters in order to continue "partying" with the man who entered her life and essentially set fire to everything she loved.

But in a reversal worthy of any scripted drama, it seems Geno has redeemed himself by not only getting sober, but helping Mama June do the same.

Therapist Dr. Ish Major spoke with UK tabloid The Sun this week and revealed that as far as he knows, June and Geno have remained sober since leaving rehab in May.

"Geno has been the driving force in their sobriety," Dr. Major told The Sun.

"He has come in and said, 'We got to do better.’ She has followed his lead.”

In many ways, of course this is an astonishing development.

After all, this is the man who introduced June to the drugs that very nearly claimed her life.

In other ways, however, it's not all that surprising.

Geno seems to have held tremendous sway over June from the moment they met.

It makes sense that the man who got her addicted would be the only one who can help her get clean.

Currently, the future looks bright for June and Geno.

But Dr. Major warns that there are difficult days ahead.

In fact, he went so far as to say he believes June and Geno will both relapse at some point.

“Relapse is a part of recovery. I do suspect there will be one," he told The Sun.

"They’re a couple of months out and their recovery is still very, very fragile," he added.

“Relapse is happening, it’s coming. We know that. Three weeks, three months, six months, it’s happening.”

Dr. Major emphasized that the goal of rehab is to help addicts steer clear of relapses -- and also to help them minimize the damage if and when setbacks occur.

“What I want to see is June build up relapse prevention skills," he said.

"I want her to have enough good things in her life so when that day comes, she can make an easy decision. I’m not going to do as much because I got a lot of good stuff I don’t want to lose right now," the doctor continued.

“Hopefully she will gain good things for when relapse comes. Hopefully they are still adherent to treatment.”

Well, one good thing -- which could easily turn out to be a mixed blessing -- is the fact that Mama June: Family Crisis has been renewed for a fifth season.

At least that's what June claimed on her Instagram Story this week.

“B-tches Mama June is back! You heard it right here, we are coming up for Season 5!" June told her followers this week.

Thankfully, it seems the show is not rushing back into production, and June will be given some time to solidify her sobriety.

“We’re not filming yet, but Mama June will be back!" Shannon continued.

Needless to say, there's a lot going in the extended Honey Boo Boo universe these days.

The news of June's sobriety comes on the heels of reports that she had crushed her family's hopes by bailing on rehab.

Of course, as is the case with all reality stars, there are times when the Shannons are forced to emphasize the drama in their lives in order to drum up ratings.

Fortunately, it seems that June's sobriety is as real as it gets.

Hopefully, she'll be able to remain clean with the help of her family -- and the continued support of Geno Doak.

Now there's a sentence we never thought we would type.

View Slideshow: June Shannon Flaunts New Tooth: I'm Fixing My Whole Life!

2020, am I right? I know that we as embittered adult human flesh-bags are now used to declaring every year to be the worst year ever because we've been deprived of our rose-tinted childlike innocence, but you have to admit that 2020 has been the epitome of Hold My Beer in almost every way. I blame Cats. It must have opened up some sort of hell-portal.

We're still dealing with COVID-19, or at least some of us are. Others have basically decided that a literal pandemic that has killed at least 505,000 people is no big whoop right now because they want to go get their hair done and face masks infringe on their freedoms. Shock horror, that's not how pandemics work, people. But don't worry, I'm sure we'll all learn from our mistakes and be more vigilant in the future. Humility has to kick in at some point, right? Well...

As reported by the BBC, scientists in China have identified a 'new strain of flu that has the potential to become a pandemic.' Yup, ANOTHER F**KING ONE OF THESE IS OUT THERE! Come on, universe, you barely gave us time to prepare for the murder hornets. Wait, are they still a problem we need to be concerned about? I honestly have no idea what's going on anymore. Time and space have no meaning.

This new strain of flu emerged recently and is carried by pigs but it can infect humans. Researchers claim that it could mutate further and spread quickly from person to person because we could have little to no immunity to it. This new strain is reportedly similar in nature to swine flu, which was the last flu pandemic we dealt with in 2009. That outbreak proved less deadly than feared in large part because many older people were somewhat immune to it because it was so similar to other flu viruses that had spread over the years. So, maybe we'll be OK? Possibly? It might be fine?

What hasn't been ticked off the 2020 calamity bingo card yet? Vampire apocalypse? Mothra? The return of New Coke? Place your bets now!

When it opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, Hair proved divisive among critics; some raised the roof, others simply shrugged. Over 40 years later, the fuss has fizzled out altogether. As if by a wicked twist of irony, the original musical, which boasted shaggy bobs begging to be “beaded, braided, flowered and confettied,” has gone grey at the sides, and receded into memory as a quaint relic of flower-powered idealism.

In its original incarnation, Hair was considered far from passé. Sprouting from New York City’s experimental theatre scene in the 1960s, ‘Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical’ blazed new trails across Broadway, transforming the American stage into a herbal-induced love-in. It was messy and crude, yet boldly original; it broke rules, smashed records and pushed the limits of censorship beyond what was imaginable. For the first time, denizens of Broadway could while away the hours enjoying full-frontal nudity and same-sex kisses – the Age of Aquarius was in full flow.

Yet while most onlookers sat, stonkered in the haze of hippiedom, director Miloš Forman began cherry-picking elements that would later inform his screen adaptation. His vision reframes the stage show’s loose “happening”, scrapping handfuls of characters, songs and, well, just about everything. What’s left may seem like a tie-dye jamboree, spouting the virtues of living low and getting high, but dig a little deeper, and you’ll find a musical memoir dedicated to queer love.

Oklahoma farmhand Claude (John Savage) arrives in New York days before he’s due to report to his army unit for service in Vietnam. He’s soon befriended by a group of hippies led by the charismatic, Medusa-tressed Berger (Treat Williams), who takes it upon himself to liberate Claude from his inhibitions before he’s carted off in khakis. Their quiet romance becomes the sweet centre of a film sprinkled with surface delights. Sure, they chase girls, but while it may be Sheila (Beverly D’Angelo) who catches Claude’s eye, it is undoubtedly Berger who takes his heart.

With a frame tailored fit to reveal the invisible traces of desire, Forman carefully dismantles the love triangle of the source material. In the skinny-dipping scene, Berger, evidently out of ideas in winning Claude’s attention, deflects him towards Sheila. “She’s all yours,” he insists while edging closer to the pond, stripping his clothes to the ground as if to draw a line in the sand. It’s the line between conformity and freedom, between straight and queer, and it is Claude’s attempts to cross it which make up the film.

There’s an intimacy felt through these gestures, leaving Claude’s scenes with Sheila to feel, much like his call to duty, a process of conscription. It is Berger, after all, who performs the ultimate act of love by taking Claude’s place aboard an aircraft destined for Vietnam, a sacrifice which draws upon Shakespearean verse in the musical’s final number: “Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.” As Romeo’s dying words ring out over tarmac, Claude – re-enacting the closing ritual of many on-screen romances – races towards the departing plane. Except here, there’s no prize at the finish line.

The last time we see Berger makes for an image so haunting, you forget you’re watching a musical-comedy. He’s one of countless young men, each suited up and as faceless as the next, marching into the abyss of the aircraft’s crypt-like interior. In the real world of 1979, it wasn’t long until this image began to resonate with a different war: that against AIDS and a government unwilling to fight.

It seems befitting then, that the stage show’s 20th anniversary was celebrated as an AIDS benefit concert in 1988, featuring a mix of performers from both stage and film. And it wasn’t the last time cast members lent their voices to a rallying cry. During the National Equality March of 2009, a Broadway revival of Hair shut its doors, took to the streets and urged audiences to follow in what became the largest LGBT+ rights event in a decade.

To celebrate the queer legacy of Hair is to pay tribute to two men: Gerome Ragni and James Rado, who along with creating the musical, casted themselves in the lead roles during its original run. Their relationship was professional as well as intimate. “He was a love of my life,” said Rado, speaking publicly about his omnisexuality for the first time in 2008. At its core, Hair distills their expression of queer love and, as stage revivals come and go, preserves it in Technicolor for future generations looking to let the sunshine in.

The post Let The Sunshine In: The queer legacy of Miloš Forman’s Hair appeared first on Little White Lies.

Amid chatter that Kylie Jenner's business empire is falling apart, Kim Kardashian has reportedly sent a message to her half-sister and occasional rival.

And the message goes something like this:

HA! Sucks for you!

No. Kardashian did not come out and taunt her sibling in this manner.

But the former sex tape star is selling a 20 percent stake in KKW Beauty to Coty Inc., a business that is home to some of the world's largest beauty brands ... such as CoverGirl, Sally Hansen and OPI.

Kim has struck this deal for $200 million, which means her cosmetics company is now worth $1 billion, according to the Financial Times.

Yes, the Kardashian/Jenner family is now comprised of TWO BILLIONAIRES.

Coty Inc. made the announcement about the strategic partnership on Monday, issuing a press release that said it will "focus on entering new beauty categories and global expansion" beyond Kardashian's existing product lines. 

We're talking fresh developments in skincare, haircare, personal care and nail products, you guys!

So very exciting!

And profitable.

Kylie actually sold a majority of her company to Coty in 2019, but Kim will remain in charge of her business in the wake of this partnership.

"This relationship will allow me to focus on the creative elements that I'm so passionate about while benefiting from the incredible resources of Coty, and launching my products around the world," said Kardashian in her own statement yesterday.

The question to those interested now becomes this:

Is Kim Kardashian worth more than Kylie Jenner?!?

Last year, you may recall Kylie was hailed as the world's youngest "self-made billionaire" by Forbes.

This distinction generated quite a bit of controversy because critics pointed to Kylie's last name and familial connections and scoffed.

How could she be "self-made" when she wouldn't be famous if her sister's hadn't taken it from Ray J on camera, they basically asked and argued?

In the end, however, this debate failed to even matter because Forbes actually stripped Jenner of her title last month, accusing her of inflated business figures and "forging' tax returns," suggesting she is worth around $950 million.

Kylie was mighty pissed over this allegation.

"What am i even waking up to. i thought this was a reputable site.. all i see are a number of inaccurate statements and unproven assumptions lol," Kylie Tweeted in response to the Forbes piece.

"I’ve never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. Period," she added.

Kim and her younger sibling, meanwhile, have allegedly feuded over Kylie's crazy wealth for months.

The former has supposedly been jealous of the latter's business accomplishments.

And also a tad bitter, considering Kardashian thinks Jenner would never have gotten anywhere without her.

That can be discussed in depth another time; all that matters at the moment is that -- just like Ray J in that aforementioned video -- Kim has seemingly now come out on top.

"I am so proud of my beautiful wife Kim Kardashian West for officially becoming a billionaire," Kanye West wrote in a Tweet Monday night, adding:

"You've weathered the craziest storms and now God is shining on you and our family."

As you can see below, Kanye then included photos of vegetables for some reason.

Kardashian founded KKW Beauty in 2017, tapping into her hundreds of millions of social media followers to sell lip gloss, body foundation and perfume.

The Coty acquisition is expected to close in the summer of 2021, meaning Kylie still has some time.

She can go film her own amateur adult video with Travis Scott or something, put it on the market and try to surpass Kim's wealth once again.

Will she go ahead and do so, however? Stay tuned, folks.

View Slideshow: Kylie Jenner Net Worth: Is She Officially the World's Youngest Billionaire?!

“I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your 50 cents’ worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you.” Maureen O’Hara’s bristling speech in Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 film Dance, Girl, Dance is a landmark example of a Golden Age Hollywood movie attacking the concept of the male gaze. O’Hara’s character Judy is a dancer who performs as a comic warm-up act for her friend Bubbles’ burlesque number. One night, sick of the jeers and the lecherous stares, she lets rip.

Dance, Girl, Dance, now available as part of the Criterion Collection, appears late in Arzner’s filmography. After her directorial debut in 1927, she made 16 features before quitting in 1943. During those years she was one of precious few female directors working in Hollywood, and the first to join the Directors Guild of America in 1936.

Many of the films made by Arzner, a lesbian who lived with her partner Marion Morgan for four decades, revolve around the theme of courage: the bravery to make difficult choices or sacrifices for a moral code, the strength to be one’s own, uncompromised self in public, or in Judy’s case, to give a theatre of men a lesson in feminist thought. “I’m sure they see through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do!”

Arzner had worked her way up from the ground floor. Discarding an early ambition to become a set dresser, she entered the business as a typist before going on to be a respected editor and screenwriter. Editing was a job she enjoyed, as she told Kevin Brownlow in 1979: “Nobody could bother you and you could do things with the actors. You could cut them off if they were no good and you could cut off their long draggy exits and cut through the other side into something else so that you’d get them out of the room.”

Arzner relished creative control. When she first stepped on to a set she was struck with an important realisation. “If one was going to be in this movie business, one should be a director because he was the one who told everyone else what to do,” she said in a 1977 interview. “In fact, he was the ‘whole works.’”

Before long, Arzner demanded the opportunity to be the “whole works”. Her first film, 1927’s Fashions for Women, was silent, but she took the coming of sound in her stride, and has even been credited with inventing the boom mic, when she directed Clara Bow’s first talkie, campus comedy Get Your Man co-starring Fredric March.

In the 1930s, Arzner’s films gave female stars intelligent, complex roles centring around moral dilemmas and a cynical attitude to marriage. In 1933’s Christopher Strong, Katharine Hepburn stars as a dashing aviator in love with a married man; in 1936’s Craig’s Wife, Rosalind Russell plays a housewife whose fierceness masks her vulnerability; and The Bride Wore Red features Joan Crawford as a cabaret singer caught in a Cinderella romance. As So Mayer has written: “Love and marriage weren’t even close seconds to courage and self-determination for Arzner and her protagonists”. You rarely have to look too closely to find the queer subtext.

Arzner directed her final film, First Comes Courage, with Merle Oberon in the Norwegian resistance, in 1943, but she continued to work. She made World War Two training films and Pepsi adverts for her friend Crawford, as well as teaching filmmaking at UCLA, where her students included Francis Ford Coppola.
We can marvel at her achievement now, but Arzner hated people drawing attention to her exceptional status as a female director.

Nevertheless, her films have not been circulated, studied, praised as much as those of her male peers, and they are far more interesting than her rarity value, so see them whenever you can. Dance, Girl, Dance is an invigorating place to start.

The post The pioneering filmmaker who broke the mould for women in Hollywood appeared first on Little White Lies.

“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 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 taht 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 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 13th, 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.

The post Discover the sly social critique of this Reagan-era teen thriller appeared first on Little White Lies.

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