Class Of 1984 (1982) – Review

When different kinds of movies tackle the same social issues, the results can often be staggeringly diffrent. Take the subject of teaching troubled kids in an inner city environment for example; in 1995s Dangerous Minds, Michelle Pfeiffer manages to inspire a bunch of impoverished students while in the background, Coolio made a fucking mint from Gangsta’s Paradise. However, while a glossy drama is one way to tackle the issues of apathy and gang violence intruding into schools, Mark L. Lester took an entirely different approach in 1982 with Class Of 1984, a shamelessly hysterical thriller that instead took its exploitation leanings and suggested that the best thing for a feral, maniacal, teenage dirtbag is nice, soothing, teenage dirt nap.
That’s right, sensible social commentary be damned as we hurtle into a flick that plays like bizarro mash-up of the politics of Death Wish and the restraint of far sterner version of Troma’s Class Of Nuke ‘Em High. School’s out baby; out of its mind!

As he starts his first day teaching music at Lincoln High, an especially troubled inner city school, Andrew Norris can’t help be taken aback by the sight of metal detectors and kids being frisked for weapons as they enter this heavily graffitied institute of learning and the brazen gang activity that goes on under the noses of the security. He gets the rather depressing 411 from Terry Corrigan, a biology teacher who has all but given up hope and has taken to carrying a gun around in his briefcase during school hours and is given the rather defeatist advice to just ignore a lot of the stuff he’s about to see.
However, Norris is one of those idealistic types and in his mission to teach these kids about the wonders music can hold, he instantly butts heads with Peter Stegman, a potentially gifted student who instead has devoted his large intellect and youthful energies to running various crime rackets around school as he and his obnoxious gamg makes everyone’s lives a living Hell. Before you know it, both Norris and Stegman are locked in an ever escalating game of tit for tat that starts with cruel pranks and attempted expulsions, but soon balloons into a full-on campaign of hatred that can only have tragic results.
Due to Stegman’s youth and the fact that no one wants to speak out against him as a witness, the police are utterly helpless and if anything else, it’s Norris who finds himself facing criminal charges everytime his frustration gets the better of him. However, when their rivalry starts claiming collateral damage, things start to get deadly serious as a fellow teacher suffers a fatal breakdown and a student gets shanked like a prison inmate in the school cafeteria – but matters soon get ultra personal when Stegman and the gang decide to target Norris’ pregnant wife and thus the stage is set for some after school activities that someone isn’t walking away from…

While the problems of crime and gang violence in high schools is sadly still a very real and very concerning subject, Class Of 1984 does what any, self respecting, sleazy, exploitation film would do and treats its pertinent attempt at social commentary with all the tact and subtlety of a fire hose colonic. After all, why waste time trying to explore the possible reasons behind why kids turn to violence and a life spent in a gang when there’s so much rampant, Death Wish style fear mongering to be done to make the more conservative members of the audience utterly terrified of future generations. In fact, Class Of 1984 manages to neatly side-step any sort of social responsibility whatsoever by simply making its main villain an educated teenage, caucasian rich kid who is merely a wild-eyed pyscho, thus doing away with the need to try and explain things from the teenager’s point of view. Marginalised? Poverty? Racial inequality? Nah, why waste time with all that responsible shit when there’s gritty thrills to be had when a teacher and his students go to war.
Make no mistake, the kids are the plainly villains here; they’re not misunderstood, they’re not secretly in pain and there’s deliberately no attempt to stop them from bring thoroughly irredeemable as they go though their school day with all the decorum of a Mad Max henchman. No, we’re supposed to be 100% on the side of the adults here as they struggle to mold young minds that aren’t better than that of animals and soon the facade of civility gives way to present the movie’s only logical solution to such a  complex problem.

This would all be a massive issue if Mark Lester had any intention of actually taking his subject matter in a mature way, but when you realise that he’s the man who went on to helm wonky Stephen King adaptation Firestarter and legendary Schwarzenegger body count epic, Commando, Class starts to make a lot more sense. And it that didn’t clue you in, there’s always the godawful opening theme song provided by Alice Cooper and Lalo Schiffrin (sample lyric: “When does the dream, become a. Night. Mare?”) or the fact that you can tell that the movie is instantly stacking the deck to make you completely ok with a climax that’s blatently going to have our clean cut hero masacre some kids in self defence. Taken in its own terms, Class If 1984 proves to have some diamonds located in the rough as one of the bullied kids turns out to be a pre “J” Michael J. Fox lumbered with an unfortunate bowl cut and a voice so reedy, you’d want access to a flux capacitor I order to go back in time yo watch the bullies to beat him up again. Elsewhere, watching sweet old Roddy MacDowell lose his marbles and start teaching his biology class at gun point is something of a joy to behold, especially when he finally starts getting right answers from terrified students staring down the barrel of a 9mm pistol. Lester also goes full exploitation for the finale, serving up the unfortunately requisite rape scene to finally give its hero the justification he needs to wipe these punks off the face of the earth and goes to it with typical 80s gusto. Be it taking out one thug with a fucking bandsaw in shop class, or causing another to dangle above a school concert after getting hung, it’s best not to try and way up the moral ramifications and just go with the flow.

Years later, Lester returned to the same stomping ground with the far more ludicrous (yet utterly superior) Class Of 1999 that took the same themes, but added malfunctioning, Terminator style cyborg teachers to the mix. However, while the addition of killer robots would probably make anything better, it’s the fact that the kids are the heroes that makes it more fun to watch.
If you want a thoroughly unpleasant exploitation thriller, Class Of 1984 scores healthy marks, but if you’re expecting much depth, prepare to flunk.
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