Class Of 1984

Cast: Perry King, Timothy Van Patten, and Roddy McDowell

Director: Mark L. Lester    

98 minutes 18 1982

101 Films Blu-ray region B

[Released 25th February]

Rating: 8/10

Review by Steve Hampton

“Life is pain. Pain is everything. You will learn.”

An unnerving portrait of violence in schools, especially with guns, this looks unfortunately so topical that it’s somewhat controversial to see Class Of 1984 getting a re-release on the premium home-entertainment format. Problems of modern juvenile delinquency are fuelled by a punk rebellion, and falling or failing education standards, resulting in quite mindless and constant aggression. In this ‘lawless zoo’ of a wholly American educational institution, a grim situation is further aggravated by drugs and racism, amidst rumbling echoes of Richard Brooks’ seminal The Blackboard Jungle (1955), and a clever title, just ahead of its time, that riffs blatantly upon George Orwell’s dystopian SF novel, 1984 (1948).

New-in-town music teacher, Andy Norris (Perry King), seems endearingly naive, but he’s also engagingly sympathetic to troubled children, even more so as he's appalled by the bitterly  confrontational misbehaviour of gangs when he’s employed at the rundown Lincoln High School. Norris is facing up to one of the greatest dilemmas of our time - how can a responsibly moral establishment figure manage to properly and fairly educate young people when so many of them simply refuse to learn anything? Active participation in various classrooms is rejected in favour of bullying, sporadic rioting, and other criminal activities.

   

Before achieving stardom as the time-travelling hero of Back To The Future, a chubby Michael J. Fox here plays a trumpet in the school band, at least until he’s stabbed and so winds up in hospital. Clever brat Stegman (Timothy Van Patten) is the ruthless gang leader who provokes everyone in sight without any obvious reasoning beyond a surly disruptive attitude, but his apparent case of utterly psychopathic charm is quickly exposed, to an opposing and unsubtly moral force, when Norris attempts to deal with the nasty boy’s cruel antics. Roddy McDowell plays biology teacher Corrigan, a man who cracks under pressure after the movie’s first hour, and he starts teaching a full class at gunpoint. This sequence is a decidedly moving portrayal of vengeful authority run amok, for a tragedy just waiting to happen. It's certainly a potent theme that media has often returned to, particularly in French TV movie, La Journee de la jupe (aka: Skirt Day, 2008), starring the great Isabelle Adjani.   

Long befre the bell rings on the closing action, one kid climbs up the flagpole and falls to his death. Vandalism in school corridors, labs, or workshops, reflects the mental turmoil of broken homes, dysfunctional families, and social depravation. Like the vicious ‘droogs’ (Nadsat for ‘friends’) in Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stegman’s gang of thugs are not averse to home invasion, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Pervy gang moll Patsy (Lisa Langlois, Transformations, Mindfield), lures reactive hero Andy into a final and ultimately fatal pursuit, resulting in a night of hysterical mayhem, complete with an accidental lynching above a theatre stage.

The stunning resurrection granted to Class Of 1984 for this welcome HD release really ought to spark a career retrospective for its under-appreciated filmmaker, and the disc extras reflect this very well. 

Bonus material:

A limited edition booklet includes ‘Future Retro: The Punk Culture And 1980s Sci-Fi’ by Scott Harrison, and ‘And Pain Is Everything: an interview with director Mark L. Lester’.

Disc extras:

• Commentary track with director Mark L. Lester
• Life Is Pain... an interview with writer Tom Holland
• Do What You Love - a career retrospective of Perry King
• History Repeats Itself - an interview with director Mark Lester and composer Lalo Schifrin
• Blood And Blackboards - interviews with cast and crew
• Girls Next Door - interviews with actresses Erin Noble and Lisa Langlois
• Trailer and TV spots
• Stills gallery