Class of 1984

As 1980s exploitation cautionary tales go, I guess 1982's CLASS OF 1984 ain't too bad.  It was one of those "I'll get around to it" movies, long on my queue.  I recall Siskel and Ebert reviewing it on their television program, and Ebert giving it a favorable write-up in his annual almanac.  He made some good points, but for all its social awareness, this is still essentially a trashy potboiler.  And did/will appeal to the type of film goer who counts the minutes between topless shots and graphic violence.  Of course, director Mark L. Lester's film has both.

CLASS OF 1984 has a prologue that indicates the state of juvenile delinquency in high schools, and how the following tale hasn't yet reached the sad state we're about to see.  Nearly forty years later, well...schools do have metal detectors and shootings.  And gangs.  But they've always been there.  Peter (Timothy Van Patten) is the vicious, yet somewhat effeminate leader of a group of louts who wreak destruction and foul language retorts to everyone in their path.  He and his punk rocker buds run afoul of the school's new music teacher, Mr. Norris (Perry King), who, unlike rest of the school's administration, isn't easily intimidated by their wave of terror.  Of course Norris will suffer their wrath, first with somewhat benign pranks and later with increasingly ferocious vengeance.  But he won't back down.

"I am pain! I am the future!" Peter yells.  Prescient?

The stage is set for the inevitable violent finale, quite colorful, and which in part makes the latter day case to bring shop class back to the curriculum.  CLASS OF 1984 wants to be a thoughtful document about the failure of society in positively shaping its youth, but always returns to its distasteful B-movie roots.  Note an especially gratuitous and indefensible scene where a would be female recruit for Peter's gang is instructed to strip in front of everyone.  Or the also inevitable gang rape of another character.

Roddy McDowall lends some cache as Mr. Corrigan, a biology teacher who is a veteran of gang intimidation at this shithole of a school and carries a gun in his briefcase.  One he will point at his students in class one day when he finally reaches his breaking point.  This scene is easily the best in the movie.  It's a shame that McDowall's follow up scene is ridiculously cheesy, but Lester and the other screenwriters can't resist their baser tendencies.

Michael Fox (before he added the middle "J") plays one of the kids in Norris' orchestra.  He's chubby and vulnerable here.  Also worthy of contemporary amusement is some of the graffiti in the boys' bathroom, which mentions O.J. Simpson.

CLASS OF 1984 is worth it for connoiseurs of '80s cheese, but even they may be worn down by Alice Cooper's awful theme song and Merrie Lynn Ross' (as Norris' wife) acting.