Class Of 1999
(1990)
Director: Mark L. Lester
Cast: Bradley Gregg, Traci Lind, Malcolm McDowell
As I have
mentioned several times before in past movie reviews for this web site,
school wasn't always easy for me. More so when I reached junior high,
and especially when I reached
high school. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to get through those last
two years at high school. Homework and other assignments from my
teachers were bad enough, but I also had to deal with peers who for the
most part weren't very kind towards me, either ignoring me altogether
or being bullies. It was certainly rough at times, but even when my
situation at school was at its bleakest, I did realize that it could
have been a whole lot worse for me. When I was not at school, and
instead at home watching television programming from the United States,
I repeatedly saw what the situation was like for a number of American
high school students who went to schools in neighborhoods that were, to
put it kindly, not very desirable. In these television programs (both
fictional and non-fictional), the first thing that students would
experience when entering school would be to go through metal detectors
and be inspected by security guards. Despite that so-called protection,
you would still have to deal with extremely rough fellow students, much
more dangerous than ordinary bullies. The hallways and classrooms would
be unkempt, covered with graffiti and other signs of destruction.
Possibly because of this environment, the teachers at these schools
didn't seem to care about the welfare of their students, whether it was
if the students would graduate or not or even if they would survive to
adulthood.
No
doubt you have witnessed that portrayal of many
American inner city high schools somewhere along the line, even if you
never went to one as a teenager. Since so many of us know about it, it
shouldn't come as any surprise that Hollywood has on a number of
occasions made movies that use the subject of the dire state of a
number of American high schools. What's interesting is that they tend
to follow one of two possible paths. The first is with noble
intentions. For example, there is the 1955 Glenn Ford movie Blackboard Jungle,
and forty years later the Michelle Pfeiffer movie Dangerous Minds
came out. Personally, I thought both of these movies were kind of
silly; Blackboard
Jungle portrayed its troubled teenagers mostly as mischievous in
a way that I think even audiences in 1955 thought was tame. And Dangerous Minds,
based on a true story, had its teacher using the works of Bob Dylan and
Dylan Thomas to encourage her students. (In real life, the teacher used
rap music on her students.) Anyway, the other path that Hollywood has
used with portraying inner city high schools is a more exploitive one.
Some of these have certainly been silly. For example, years ago for
this web site I reviewed High School Hellcats,
which I thought was unintentionally funny and a camp classic waiting to
be rediscovered. But there is one particular high school exploitation
movie that I especially want to bring up, and that is the 1982 movie Class Of 1984.
Directed and co-written by famed B-movie maker Mark L. Lester (Night
Of The Running Man),
it generated somewhat of a controversy when it was first released in
part to its bleak vision of American youth and its R-rated content. But
the movie did have its champions; believe it or not, famed film critic
Roger Ebert gave the movie three and a half stars out of four.
I read Ebert's review of Class Of 1984
when I was a teenager, and that was one big reason why I soon after
decided to rent the movie and watch it. I watched it with my parents -
who were ironically both trained to teach in the public school system.
I don't remember what my parents thought of the movie, but I
remember
what I thought. While I thought it had some effective bits, ranging
from violent moments to episodes of black humor, I thought overall it
was kind of depressing and downbeat. It seemed to say that my
generation was way down the wrong path, and things would only get worse
in the years to come. But all the same, the movie was apparently
successful enough that eight years later, Mark L. Lester made a sequel
(well, actually more of a follow-up) - Class Of 1999.
You may be wondering why I decided to watch it since the original movie
made me uncomfortable. Well, there was a promised twist in this
follow-up that made the movie sound so outlandish that it seemed
unlikely I would be able to take the movie very seriously. Let me
explain by telling you the plot. In the city of Seattle in the near
future, violent crime has escalated to incredibly high levels,
including at Kennedy High School. This has got the attention of the
government, and they get into contact with Dr. Forrest (Stacy Keach, The
Traveling Executioner), who is the head of Mega Tech industries. In
short order, it is arranged that three individuals - Bryles (Patrick
Kilpatrick, Remo
Williams), Connors (Pam Grier, The Arena),
and Hardin (John P. Ryan, Cops & Robbers)
- will go work at the high school to both educate and discipline the
students. And in even shorter order, the three manage to get the
students in order, though through some peculiar actions. As it turns
out, there is a reason why the three teachers are unafraid of their
students and manage to control them - the three are actually robots in
disguise as humans. Actually, they are robots that were formally used
in the
military, but that shouldn't eventually bring in some serious
problems... right?
I suppose that the premise for Class Of 1999
that I just described in the above paragraph could have been crafted
into a movie that was completely serious in tone. But I think that
would have taken a considerable amount of careful and hard work to pull
off, so I can understand why director Lester (who also wrote the
movie's story) made the movie in a way that was not to be taken
completely seriously. Indeed, there are a number of moments in the
movie that are clearly played for laughs. Here's one example: On the
first day that the robot teachers are at the school, robot teacher
Hardin observes two of his students in a scuffle in his classroom. To
break up the scuffle and restore order in his classroom, Hardin walks
up to the fighting students, grabs them, and drags them to the front of
the classroom. Then he proceeds to heavily spank them on their
buttocks. Yes, I know how that might sound heavy handed (ahem) and
obvious, but I admit it - the sight of the spanking made me laugh out
loud. No other attempt at humor in the movie made me laugh as loud as
that particular scene, but I admit there were a few other attempts at
humor that either made me smile or chuckle a little. Some of these
revolved around actor Keach's portrayal of Dr. Forrest. Keach gives a
pretty over the top portrayal of a truly mad scientist, and his
enthusiastic performance does give the movie considerable comic energy
whenever he makes an appearance. The fact that he was made up in the
makeup room to have albino white hair (though with his trademark dark
mustache) and strange contact lenses in his eyes further makes his
contributions to the movie hard to take seriously.
But while Class Of 1999
can't be taken completely seriously as a whole, that is not to say
there isn't seriousness to be found along the way. For example, instead
of having its focus more on the three robot teachers, the movie instead
generally follows one specific character, a teenager named Cody (Gregg,
Fire
In The Sky)
who has just got out of prison and is determined to stay on the right
path from now on. The following of his character does bring in some
seriously handled plot, from his drug addicted mother and brothers,
plus a budding romance with Christie (Traci Lind, Survival
Quest), the daughter of the principal (Malcolm McDowell, Get
Crazy).
But such serious material that comes out of this isn't very well
handled. A lot of it seems to be unfinished; Cody's drug addicted
mother simply disappears and is never seen or referred to again, and an
attempted rape of Christie that Cody manages to thwart is really
glossed over and not thought of for very long, even by Christie's
principal father. Another thing is that this serious material seems to
clash very badly with the comic material, and as a result the viewer
many times will find it hard to determine if he or she is supposed to laugh or
express some other emotion towards what's happening. That may explain
why many of the performances of the key players seem both uncertain and
unenthusiastic. As the hero, actor Gregg is for the most part very
unemotional, not even reacting at times to when people he's close to
get into trouble or worse. It probably does not help that his character
has a very murky background and reasoning process; we don't ever learn
what he was in prison for, and why he is so determined to not get into
trouble with the authorities again.
The
movie has additional script problems beyond the
character of Cody. The opening seems way too rushed in introducing both
the
situation and the robot teachers who are brought in to bring order to
the school. And there are sequences that seemed to be missing, such as
the unseen immediate aftermath when one student is given a fatal drug
overdose from one robot, and what happens to a lot of gang members
during the climactic battle at the high school. Maybe director Lester
for the latter unclear detail thought that the action and destruction
would mask and compensate for that. I will admit that the climax is
filled with some really exciting and surprisingly large scale action for what
was not a high budget. And the movie as a whole also looks pretty good,
with a lot of detail and care in almost every shot that gives the movie
considerable "oomph". Lester also puts in some impressive visuals at
times, my favorite being when a gang member is punishingly pulled
through a hole in a wall. But at the same time, there is often a sloppy
feel to the movie's direction. Quite often when something exciting is
happening, you feel the camera is not quite in the right place or the
right angle to
really capture the mayhem. It also doesn't help that the editing of the
action also rushes the action so quickly that not only is it hard to
follow what exactly is happening, often the action is over before you
know it. I can only imagine that the "R" rated version of the movie (I
saw the unrated version) would be cut down in a way to make things even
worse. Clearly Lester needed a refresher course in film school before
he directed this movie that, while as it is definitely wouldn't get him chewed out
in front of the class, would still even in its unrated version not make
him the teacher's pet.
(Posted August 12, 2022)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
-
-
Check
for availability on Amazon (Blu-Ray)
-
-
Check for availability on Amazon (Amazon Prime
Video)
See also: The Bang Bang Kid,
High School Hellcats, 3:15
|