Whitebrush is that proverbial middle-of-nowhere town everyone else in the world is busy driving through on their way to someplace else. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody else. So when a stranger (C. Thomas Howell) walks off the bus, everyone is instantly curious about the young man who looks like trouble.
It doesn't take long for trouble to find him. Harlen (Michael Bowen) and Pete (Damon Martin), two local punks, are pestering town beauty Kate (Sarah Trigger) and her younger brother Louie (Brian Austin Green). When Howell's nameless protagonist Kid steps in to smack some sense into them, it's the start of trouble. The pair are the rotten offspring of county sheriff Luke Clanton (R. Lee Ermey), who is about as happy to find a drifter in the area as Sheriff Teasel was to welcome John Rambo to Hope, Washington.
Nobody ever comes to Whitebrush -- the proprietress of the local motel (Lenore Kasdorf) just got back from a three week trip to California and didn't bother to leave anyone else watching the front desk -- but Kid's got something special on his mind. Ten years ago, he witnessed the death of his parents at the hands of five townsfolk. Now, fully-grown and hardened into a quiet loner, Kid's returned to Whitebrush to revenge himself on the folks who did him wrong. It's 1990, and Whitebrush is about to explode.
I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I'm an unapologetic fan of C. Thomas Howell. The guy's been in everything from A-list fare like E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, The Outsiders, and Red Dawn, to B-level schlock fests like Breaking the Rules and Jailbait, to the supernatural suspense classic The Hitcher (one of my all-time horror guilty pleasures). That he starred in one of my favorite TV series, the vampires-meet-Melrose Place drama Kindred: The Embraced is just icing on the cake. I just like C. Thomas Howell, OK?
So when you take Howell and chuck him into the Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" role in a 90's neo-Western about a dude riding into town to kill some men what need killing, let's just say you've got my attention. And, happily, Kid delivers exactly what I wanted from such a setup.
Which isn't to say Kid is a great movie. It's mediocre at best. But it manages to rise above its mediocrity with a few characters, scenes, and gags that will stay with you years later. For me, the biggest comes just a few minutes in, as Harlen and Pete accost Kate and tie her dog to the railroad tracks as an oncoming train bears down on the helpless animal. Howell's Kid shows up and turns the tide, knocking Harlen on the tracks and holding him there by the neck with a broken mop handle as the train speeds closer.
Howell offing a sadistic store owner using handcuffs, bug spray, and a tennis ball is a close second.
R. Lee Ermey's also here, playing a role that will seem quite familiar to anyone who's seen Marcus Nispel's 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot. Seeing him in Kid, it's not hard to understand why Nispel cast him thirteen years later. The guy pulls off 'effortlessly menacing' in a way few other actors who aren't muscular mountains can manage. The film wisely doesn't devolve into a slugfest between him and Kid -- as buff as Howell got for the role, you still get the notion Ermey would castrate Howell with his own teeth then piss on him for good measure.
The other performance you'll remember is Brian Austin Green as Metal Louie, a thirteen year old with a squeaky Edward Furlong in Terminator 2 voice, one pierced ear, a leather jacket, and a desire to front his own band. Louie is every annoying younger brother you've ever known, and Green plays this to the hilt. Whether he's prancing around air-strumming to the tunes pounding out of his Walkman, or subjecting Kid to a five-minute "Intro to Metal" thesis complete with audio aids provided by bands you've never heard of, he owns virtually every scene he's in, and the introduction of his band (which plays weekdays at the local saloon) never fails to get a laugh out of me.
Kid is a low-budget Spaghetti Western for the 90's: a simple tale of a wronged man coming back to avenge his murdered parents. Shot in just over a month, with a budget that likely didn't exceed $1 million, in the same parts of Arizona used to film television shows like Little House on the Prarie and Gunsmoke, it was never going to win any awards. It, like its protagonist, shows up to do what it intends to do, then walks off into the desert leaving folks to wonder thirty years later if it really happened, or was all just a dream.
Critics, when they noticed it at all, were not kind to this movie. My 1999 edition of VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever rates it "2 1/2 Bones" out of 5, and has this to say:
Young guy carries grudge for the murder of his parents and seeks pound of flesh. Enter mysterious beautiful woman and copious complications. Good sound FX.
That's it. By the time the 2018 edition came out, its entry had been dropped in favor of newer, more interesting flicks. It likewise fails to appear in my 2006 TV Guide Film & Video Companion, my 1996 Psychotronic Video Guide, or my 1995 Family Guide to Movies and Videos. VideoHound's Complete Guide to Cult Hits & Trash Pics likewise doesn't mention it. RottenTomatoes features exactly zero Critic reviews for Kid. Even Wikipedia, which has entries for practically everything else Howell has ever been in, doesn't have a page devoted to it. For all intents and purposes, this movie might as well never have existed.
But it did. And that, friends, is why you just spent precious time you'll never get back reading me wax nostalgic about it. Kid is not a great movie. It's not some undiscovered classic, and it's not even well known enough to have a cult following except by dorks like me. To my knowledge, it was only released on DVD in Germany in PAL format with a German language track, making it impractical for importing. But you can get it on LaserDisc if you're nerdy enough to fly that freak flag.
Assuming you don't speak German and hate the idea of acquiring a dead media format player for the sole purpose of owning this movie, I'll do you a solid. Here's the full movie uploaded to YouTube for posterity:
Take 90 minutes of your day and bask in the cheese that is this nineties neo-Western not-so-classic. You're welcome.