CLASS OF 1999 (1990) - ***

"...Thumbs Up!" - Gene Siskel

In the future nine years ago, the gang violence at American high schools as seen in Mark Lester's original CLASS OF 1984 apparently escalate to the point that the police has pretty much abandoned the regions around the schools and refuse to venture into such teen-punk controlled "free-fire zones." The newly-formed Department of Educational Defense(!) are taking the anarchy-ruled schools back using the help of cyborg teachers, starting with Kennedy High in Seattle. With such a premise, you know this movie will have the bots go haywire and start killing everyone, instead of operating smoothly and reforming the joint successfully, turning all the gangbangers into good students.

Pretty much if CLASS OF 1984 was a very good exercise in revenge action exploitation about a persecuted teacher having to stand up to some kids, then 1999 is pure science fiction shoot-em-up, mostly brain-less, action cinema junk where the teachers are now the villains, or think of this as like when Arnold Schwarzenegger switched sides in TERMINATOR 2

Really, I shouldn't have enjoyed CLASS OF 1999 as much as I did, and if I had subscribed to the so-called guilty pleasure theory, this would be such a title. But I don't believe in that nonsense, either you dig a movie or you don't. That "guilty pleasure" label is a pussy-proof term for people who fear that their friends may turn their noses up at them. Screw that, I liked CLASS OF 1999 and I apologize to absolutely no one for it. Kiss my ass.

You know, that wouldn't be a bad epitaph on my tombstone.

Anyway, the only way I can describe CLASS is that like your weekly Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie of the Week, at least 95% of this very low budget film is a rehash of better films from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK to THE TERMINATOR to ROBOCOP and I lost count afterwards. This also one of those silly B-picture from the late 1980s/early 90s where the "futuristic" art direction is neon and purple, the computer technology never advanced beyond the Macintosh, a cheesy score and of course the obligatory robotic voice-over and the cheap primitive graphics of the time.

But what works is that unlike most such Sci-Fi Channel dreck, CLASS has an engaging-enough premise to hook ya in, and actually pays off as much as possible on it. You have this school that's been transformed into a secured fortress where paramilitary guards with automatics patrol, making the students check their guns in at the entrance, and taken back and forth by armored buses. The new professors initially go all medieval on the unruly gangsters in a satisfying ubermensh fantasy, including bringing back spanking to discipline in a scene so ridiculously good, you have to see it for yourself:



For what it is, 1999 is solid trash matinee entertainment but it's inferior to the earlier CLASS if simply because while 1984 was raised above-average by the terrific acting from Timothy Van Patten and Perry King, the cast here is lackluster. Mind you, 1999 has a terrific B-movie talented cast with Stacey Keach, Malcolm McDowell, Pam Grier, and Z-genre favorite Pat Kilpatrick, but damn the actors playing the gangster kids are just dullard. Bradley Gregg as the anti-hero badboy teenager is like a poor man's Michael Pare in his gruff mean tough tone of voice, and Pare is impoverished as he is.

Still, how many movies you know of that begin with the protagonist being released from jail, and the condition of his parole is that he must attend high school? I mean I can understand him, but why does every other kid at Kennedy High go? Is it like part of a deal between the police and these punks in exchange for the gangs to retain rule of their free-fire zone? How does that gun-check actually work? Why is there a forklift in the high school basement at the climax? Why does Principal McDowell let his daughter attend this school from hell, instead of some private institution far far away, in spite of the nasty gangs roaming around? Can a robot really be strangled to death? Why are the cyborgs given folders for "data on the worst offenders" when it could have been simply booted directly into their main-frame? Why is it that every movie with cybernetic creatures always have a shot where there skin either fully or partially burns off to reveal the steel body underneath?

Why am I putting more thought into this than the filmmakers did?

Still, I liked the early scene when Gregg returns home and it seems like he had accidentally driven into rival turf, but then it's revealed that he only did this so to annoy his old alpha-male adversary and wreck his wheels. Even later, this rare serious moment when you see Gregg's little brother fighting their mother over drugs, and it's quite an effectively sad dramatic moment.

CLASS OF 1999 may kill a braincell or two of yours if you dare check it out when it finally goes to school on DVD this September, but it's worth it, if simply to hear this awesome line that I'll re-use if I ever get to script a movie for real: "Yeah I trust him.....like a vampire giving me a blowjob!"