The film ain’t too good but Matty thinks this ropey revenge flick has a few points of note for fans of C. Thomas Howell and scripter Leslie Bohem.

Ahead of its brief London theatrical run during November 1990, U.K. distro Entertainment in Video played up KID’s resemblance to The Hitcher (1986) in their marketing. However, beyond the desert setting and casting of C. Thomas Howell, Kid is closer in tone to the flick it shared British cinema space with, Young Guns II (1990).

Like Young Guns II, Kid is a Brat Pack take on western tropes; High Plains Drifter (1973) for the thirteen to eighteen demographic, with Howell doing his best Eastwood impression as the eponymous avenger. Sadly, the supernatural licks teased in Kid’s evocative opening are soon nixed in favour of an increasingly irritating subplot involving a squawking, heavy metal-loving moppet (future Beverly Hills 90210 fav Brian Austin Green) and his equally grating older sister (Sarah Trigger). Fellow teeny-bopper Drifter riff, The Wraith (1986), presented a greater depiction of friendship and romance; here, the entire strand seems wedged in to make the film’s nastier elements palatable to adolescents lured in by Howell. At the time, Howell wasn’t the B-movie draw he’d become as the ‘90s rattled on. The young actor was still considered a heartthrob type despite pursuing grittier roles in the wake of controversial race relations comedy Soul Man (1986). Fittingly, when Howell and Kid’s producers, Tapestry Films, reunited five years later it’d be on one of the star and shingle’s defining VHS era texts, saucy neo-noir Payback (1995).

Kid represents the fourth produced work of Leslie Bohem. A musician by trade (he was the bassist for art-pop iconoclasts Sparks between 1981 and 1986 and helped co-found spin-off group Gleaming Spires), Bohem decided to follow in his father Endre’s footsteps and become a screenwriter. His first project, a comedy called ‘976-ROCK’, failed to materialise, but a couple of Bohem’s subsequent spec assignments caught the attention of a few studios. Kid arrived within the same busy period as his scripts for The Horror Show (1989) (aka ‘House III’) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), and his teleplay for small screen horse opera Badlands Justice (1989): the fourth instalment in the Desperado series, and a pic laced with enough thematic overlap to suggest that the scribe was hammering out it and Kid simultaneously. 

Cheesy lovey-dovey crap aside, Bohem — who’d go on to write another conceptually and structurally similar flick, JCVD vehicle Nowhere to Run (1993) — does well with the story’s revenge angle, imbuing Howell’s quest to punish his parents’ killers with gristle and dark humour. Aiding things are colourful performances from wily pros Don Collier, Don Starr, Michael Cavanaugh, Henry Kendrick, Dale Dye, and R. Lee Ermey (as — what else? — a corrupt, foul-mouthed sheriff). Annoying, then, that these welcome flashes of pantomime are hindered by John Mark Robinson’s plodding direction. Today the owner of a successful prop company, Robinson had previously helmed music videos for Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, the Ramones, and, most famously, Tina Turner (What’s Love Got to Do With It?). Prior to Kid, he’d unleashed Roadhouse 66 (1984): a more comically minded and, ultimately, stronger and stylish take on small town conflict.

Kid was released on U.S. tape via LIVE Entertainment in July 1991 and is also known as ‘Back For Revenge’.

USA ● 1990 ● Thriller ● 87mins

C. Thomas Howell, Sarah Trigger, Dale Dye, and R. Lee Ermey ● Dir. John Mark Robinson ● Wri. Leslie Bohem