Class Of 1999

Cast: Bradley Gregg, Stacy Keach, and Pam Grier

Director: Mark L. Lester   

96 minutes (15) 1990

Lions Gate 
Blu-ray region B

[Released 25th February]

Rating: 7/10

Review by Steven Hampton

This sequel to Class Of 1984 is basically a standard-model exploitation movie of sci-fi and action. If the influence of Blackboard Jungle (1955), was most evident in Class Of 1984, then pre-millennial themes of corporal punishment in teenage education sting these rowdy students much like humanity is besieged in the man versus machine dramas of Westworld (1973), and The Terminator (1984), albeit with stunt gags often presented here, quite winningly it must be said, as tongue-in-cheek satire. This is when and where Class Of 1999 nods most affectionately to RoboCop (1987), as the various decision-making processes of three mecha-teachers go horribly wrong.

Class Of 1999 has newly paroled teen Cody (Bradley Gregg) going back to school where the Mega-Tech company and federal defences now provide strict android teachers capable of enforcing programmed rules against rebellious students, and brutal discipline to eradicate gang violence. Kennedy High School’s headmaster, Langford, is portrayed by Malcolm McDowell, whose screen presence chimes with the unrelated Roddy McDowell, of Class Of 1984, but also brings welcome genre references to a British movie, Lindsay Anderson’s classic of allegorical revolution in a boarding school, If.... (1968).

Stacy Keach essays the smirking yet deranged albino inventor, Bob Forrest, who conspires with Langford to employ inhuman methods, including splatterpunk SF mayhem against unruly kids. His humanoid tools of authority are Hardin (John P. Ryan, It’s Alive), Connors (blaxploitation queen Pam Grier, Jackie Brown, Ghosts Of Mars), and Bryles (Patrick Kilpatrick), playing quirky variations on stereotyped school-teachers with cybernetic enhancements to deal with disobedient children. Class Of 1999 delivers savagely cynical futurism with a gross-out horror climax, alternating from cheesy jokes to militarised ultra-violence, while also successfully bridging the conceptual gaps between aforementioned sci-fi movies and off-beat contemporary thrillers like The Warriors (1979), and John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 (1976).     

The action-packed, explosive finale, where rival gangs team-up against homicidal battle-droids involves the rescue of a kidnapped girlfriend, before a school bus is used like a battering-ram, smashing through the main doors. The director, Mark L. Lester, is a highly capable creator of several cult or genre pictures, including Stunts (1977), Firestarter (1984), Commando (1985), Showdown In Little Tokyo (1991), Night Of The Running Man (1995), and White Rush (2003). Are some of these movies just guilty pleasures? Well, yes... but most of Lester’s work is good fun, scoring higher points than usual, especially when compared to the standards of many other movies from the VHS rentals era.    

Disc extras -

• Audio commentary by Mark L. Lester
• School Safety: interviews with Lester, and co-producer Eugene Mazzola
• New Rules: interview with screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner
• Cyber-Teachers From Hell: interviews with special-effects creators Eric Allard and Rick Stratton
• Future Of Discipline: interview with director of photography Mark Irwin
• Theatrical trailer
• TV spots
• Still gallery
• Video promo