Time will tell if Class of 1999’s vision of robot teachers will come to pass, but director Mark Lester was, quite sadly, right on the money with its spiritual predecessor. 1982’s Class of 1984 feature metal detectors at the entrance of the school, something that didn’t actually occur until the 90s if my Google searches can be trusted (an attempt to place them in a New York school in 1988 was rejected; nothing earlier turned up). The sad thing is Lester was hoping to help improve things, using his film to shine a light on a growing problem (in a slightly misguided B-movie way, sure) so that they wouldn’t actually get to that point. Now, the scariest thing about this once controversial film is that it’s a bit tame compared to what’s actually happened.
In a better world, there wouldn’t be many/any real life incidents to think about, and we could just enjoy this 1980s, more action-driven version of Blackboard Jungle, replacing that film’s racial tension with less incendiary elements like drugs and gang violence. Our hero is Andy Norris (played by James Gunn’s favorite actor, Perry King), a music teacher whos just taken a job at a rundown inner city school in an unnamed American city in Toronto. He’s on campus for all of 12 seconds before drawing the attention (and thus hatred) of a gang of punks led by Stegman (future HBO in-house director Timothy Van Patten), who disrupt his class and, when he kicks them out, deface his car. He tries to get them expelled for dealing drugs, which ups the ante, and the film is basically their endless back and forth revenge acts, culminating in an awful sequence where the punks rape Norris’ wife and show him a picture of the act. At this point, the peace-keeping Norris loses it, and our climax has him finally doing what the more blood-thirsty audience members had been demanding for almost an hour: striking back with cheesy 80s action movie violence.
If you’ve seen The Principal or The Substitute, you’ve pretty much already seen this movie, but Lester (working from a script originally drafted by Tom Holland) has a few shades of grey to make it more interesting than those later ripoffs. Stegman, for example, is actually something of a musical prodigy, surprising Norris/us with a pretty great piano solo of his own composition, but Norris refuses to let that make up for the terrible behavior he’s already displayed. One can’t help but wonder if Norris gave him the second chance, that the movie would have taken a different turn – maybe it could have become an early Whiplash?
There’s also the character of Terry Corrigan (the great Roddy McDowall), a science teacher who befriends Norris and tries to convince him to look the other way, not get involved, etc., only to snap at the meaninglessness of his job. “I can’t get through to them!” he weeps, before bringing a gun to class and using it to keep the kids focused on his questions, and then beating Norris to the punch with his attempts to stop these kids permanently (he’s less successful). He’s the great tragic character of the film, and one wishes Lester had spent more time with him than he did.
Of course, these movies must have an innocent kid that gets caught in the crossfire. That character here is played by none other than Michael J. Fox (just Michael Fox in the credits), shot before Family Ties would forever end his time as a seventh billed player in Canadian action thrillers. He survives the obligatory attack that occurs around the film’s midway point and spends the rest of it not doing much while lying in a hospital bed. Its clear from his brief appearances however that he was destined for bigger things, and it’s also pretty funny to see himfour years before Back to the Futureplaying someone the same age as Marty McFly (and even here he was about 20).
The film was released on DVD via Anchor Bay during the 00s, but it makes its Blu-ray debut this week courtesy of Scream Factory. As usual, they have ported over all of the extras from the older release and added their own, making it a fair “double dip” for fans and an attractive package for first time buyers. From the old edition is a solid retrospective with Lester, King and Merrie Lynn Ross (Norris’ wife), covering the film’s origins, production, and legacy in the usual fashion of these thing. Also carried over is the commentary with Lester, moderated by Perry Martin (the original DVD producer), but if you watch the retrospective and other new features you can skip it, as Lester repeats everything there anyway (his inspiration for the film, involving a trip to his old high school, is a story told three times on this disc). The rest of the time Martin is asking him bland and generic questions about filmmaking (“Do you storyboard?”) that often yield equally bland answers (“Yes”). Lester may have struck gold a couple times (Showdown in Little Tokyo, Commando) but he reminds me a bit of Sean Cunningham – guys that should stick to producing.
The new stuff is pretty enjoyable; there’s a nice interview with Lisa Langlois (the lone female punk) and Erin Noble (another bright spark of Norris’ music class), and a whopping 45 minute interview with King where he talks about his career from The Possession of Joel Delaney,up through this and Riptide, his mid-80s TV show. Like Robert Englund, he’s got a terrific memory and a clear fondness for telling stories, so it’s a great piece even if it spends very little time on 1984 itself (since he was in the other retrospective, I’m not sure how much more he could add anyway without starting to repeat himself). Then there’s a new interview with Lester and Lalo Schifrin, the latter wearing a fantastic wolf sweater that I wish Scream Factory had included as a limited edition pack in bonus. Lester tells the same damn stories, but Schifrin talks about the terrific Alice Cooper theme song. The trailer and some other promotional stuff is also there, and the film sports a pretty nice, new transfer; A low budget 34 year-old film isn’t exactly going to yield a reference quality disc, but it’s by far the best the film has ever looked, with a solid audio track to match.
Next week, Scream will release a new edition of Escape From New York, which was produced around the same time. That film’s vision of the future hasn’t come to pass, and I wish we could giggle at Class of 1984‘s prophetic glimpse of near future just as easily as we do Carpenter’s idea that by 1997 Manhattan would become a fortified prison. Alas, the only thing “funny” about his ideas is the notion that a teacher in an inner city school would be shocked to see metal detectors and colleagues carrying weapons to protect themselves. In that respect, it’s “dated” for the completely wrong reason, making it harder to enjoy as an escapist revenge thriller as it should be. It might not be a horror film per se, but few things are as terrifying as the idea that you could watch this moviewhich had to be trimmed to avoid an X rating for its violenceand then flip to the news to see something far worse has happened in one of our schools again.
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Brian, aka BC, has been watching horror movies since the age of 6, and twenty years later decided to put it to good use, both as a writer for several leading genre sites, as well as launching his own, Horror Movie A Day, which Roger Ebert once read and misunderstood the points that were being made.
