''Class of 1984'' is a 1982

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

action thriller film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

directed by Mark Lester and co-written by

Tom Holland Thomas Stanley Holland (born 1 June 1996) is an English actor. His accolades include a British Academy Film Award, three Saturn Awards, a Guinness World Record and an appearance on the ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 Europe list. Some publications h ...

and John Saxton, based on a story by Holland. The film stars Perry King, Merrie Lynn Ross (who also served as co-executive producer),

Timothy Van Patten Timothy Van Patten (born June 10, 1959) is an American director, actor, screenwriter, and producer. He has directed episodes of '' Perry Mason'', ''Boardwalk Empire'', '' Black Mirror'', '' Deadwood'', '' Ed'', ''Game of Thrones'', '' The Pacific ...

, Lisa Langlois, Stefan Arngrim, Michael J. Fox (credited as Michael Fox in an early role shortly before his breakthrough on the television series ''

Family Ties ''Family Ties'' is an American sitcom television series that aired on NBC for seven seasons, premiering on September 22, 1982, and concluding on May 14, 1989. The series, created by Gary David Goldberg, reflected the move in the United States ...

''), and

Roddy McDowall Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 4 October 1998) was a British actor, photographer and film director. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in ''How Green Was My Valley'' (1 ...

. The film used the

punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

look and image that was becoming popular in the early 1980s. The theme song, " I Am the Future", was performed by

Alice Cooper Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillot ...

. The film also features a performance by Canadian punk band Teenage Head.

Plot

Andrew Norris is the new music teacher at a troubled

inner city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...

school. As he arrives on his first day, he meets fellow teacher Terry Corrigan, who is carrying a gun. When Andrew asks about the firearm, Terry assures him he will learn why the protection is necessary. When they enter the school, Andrew is shocked to see everyone scanned by metal detectors and frisked. He spots a student with a straight razor, but the security guards let the kid go because they are so overworked. The halls of the school are covered with graffiti. Andrew learns he is expected to patrol the halls as a security guard during his off periods. In his first class, a group of five disruptive students are roughhousing and causing trouble. The leader of the gang is Peter Stegman, the only member of the group who is actually registered in that class. They all eventually walk out, and Andrew discovers the rest of the students actually want to learn, especially Arthur, who plays the trumpet, and Deneen, who plays the clarinet. As Andrew gets to know the school and the area, he decides that he wants to put together an orchestra with his more advanced students. Peter's gang sells drugs and cause all kinds of mayhem. They follow Andrew home and taunt him one night. At school, Andrew is confronted with more and more evidence of Peter's crimes. The two grow increasingly at odds. Eventually, after Peter kills Terry's animals in his lab, Andrew and Peter wind up in a bathroom alone together. Peter throws himself into a mirror and beats himself, claiming that Andrew attacked him. Trying to clear things up, Andrew visits Peter's mother at home. Frustrated when Peter still plays the victim and his mother will not hear Andrew out, he hotwires Peter's car and drives it into a wall. During lunch, the gang starts a food fight and forces their friend Vinnie to stab Arthur, causing him to be sent to a hospital. Vinnie is arrested and held in a youth detention center. Terry is driven insane after the incident with the animals in his lab and is killed after crashing his car when trying to kill Peter and the others. Andrew's orchestra is about to give its first concert. As his wife, Diane, gets ready at home, Peter's gang breaks into the house and gang-rapes her. One of them takes a Polaroid of her being raped and has it delivered to Andrew on the podium, just as he is about to start the concert. Horrified by the photo, he runs off the podium in pursuit of Peter's gang. Andrew and the gang chase each other through the school. Andrew kills them off one by one, and finally confronts Peter on the roof. Their last scuffle ends with Peter falling through a skylight and getting strangled to death in the ropes above the stage. His corpse falls into full view of the audience. Andrew is never charged because the police could not find a witness to the crime.

Cast

Release

''Class of 1984'' was released in the United States on August 20, 1982.

Censorship

When it was originally released, the film was banned in several countries due to its lewd content.FilmCritic.com article:
Class of 1984
In the United Kingdom, it received four minutes and fourteen seconds of cuts from the

British Board of Film Classification The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...

, and was refused a video certificate four years later. It was finally passed fully uncut in 2005. In

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, the theatrical version was banned in 1983 – the case went up to the Supreme Administrative Court – and an edited video release was similarly banned in 1984. In 2006, an uncut DVD release was approved with an “18” rating.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has a rating of 71% based on 21 reviews, with a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

of 6.2/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

gave the film a score of 49 based on 11 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Film historian and critic

Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fi ...

described the movie as an " pleasant, calculatedly campy melodrama. ... Still, not bad as revenge movies go." He further characterized the picture as a loose remake of ''

The Blackboard Jungle ''Blackboard Jungle'' is a 1955 American social drama film about an English teacher in an interracial inner-city school, based on the 1954 novel ''The Blackboard Jungle'' by Evan Hunter and adapted for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks. I ...

'', with King, Van Patten, and Fox in the roles of

Glenn Ford Gwyllyn Samuel Newton "Glenn" Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-American actor who often portrayed ordinary men in unusual circumstances. Ford was most prominent during Hollywood's Golden Age as one of the biggest box-offi ...

Vic Morrow Victor Morrow (born Victor Morozoff; February 14, 1929 – July 23, 1982) was an American actor. He came to prominence as one of the leads of the ABC drama series '' Combat!'' (1962–1967), which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstand ...

, and Sidney Poitier, respectively. In the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...

'', Roger Ebert wrote: "''Class of 1984'' is raw, offensive, vulgar, and violent, but it contains the sparks of talent and wit, and it is acted and directed by people who cared to make it special."

Home media

Shout Factory's horror division Scream Factory released the film as a Collector's Edition

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

on April 14, 2015.

Legacy

Comedy writer and producer

Tom Scharpling Thomas John Giuliano II (born February 9, 1969), known professionally as Tom Scharpling, is an American comedian, television writer, producer, music video director, voice actor, and radio host. He is best known for hosting the weekly Internet r ...

has noted that ''Class of 1984'' is one of his favorite films. Scharpling would often reference the movie on his weekly

call-in In broadcasting, a phone-in or call-in is a programme format in which viewers or listeners are invited to air their live comments by telephone, usually in respect of a specific topic selected for discussion on the day of the broadcast. On radio ( ...

radio program ''

The Best Show on WFMU ''The Best Show with Tom Scharpling'' (formerly ''The Best Show on WFMU'') is a combination music, call-in, and comedy Internet radio show/ podcast hosted independently by Tom Scharpling since 2014, which previously aired on New Jersey-based r ...

''.Recidivism page:
The Belt Brigade
"Recidivism page:

"

Sequels

The film spawned two science fiction sequels. '' Class of 1999'' (1990) also was directed by Mark Lester. '' Class of 1999 II: The Substitute'' (1994) was released

direct-to-video Direct-to-video or straight-to-video refers to the release of a film, TV series, short or special to the public immediately on home video formats rather than an initial theatrical release or television premiere. This distribution strategy wa ...

by Vidmark Entertainment. The three movies have plots only loosely related to each other.

Class of '99

When the musicians

Layne Staley Layne Thomas Staley (born Layne Rutherford Staley; August 22, 1967 – April 5, 2002) was an American musician, songwriter and the original lead singer of the rock band Alice in Chains, which rose to international fame in the early 1990s as part ...

and

Tom Morello Thomas Baptist Morello (born May 30, 1964) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and political activist. He is best known for his tenure with the rock band Rage Against the Machine and then with Audioslave. Between 2016 and 2019, More ...

decided to join efforts to record a song for the soundtrack of the movie

The Faculty ''The Faculty'' is a 1998 American science fiction horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Kevin Williamson. It stars Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, B ...

(released December 25, 1998 in North America and 1999 in the rest of the world) they named this supergroup Class of '99.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Class Of 1984 1982 films 1982 action thriller films 1982 independent films 1980s crime action films 1980s crime thriller films 1980s English-language films 1980s high school films American action thriller films American crime action films American crime thriller films American high school films American independent films American rape and revenge films Canadian action thriller films Canadian crime action films Canadian crime thriller films Canadian films about revenge Canadian independent films English-language Canadian films Films about educators Films about neo-Nazis Films about school violence Films directed by Mark L. Lester Films scored by Lalo Schifrin Films set in 1984 Films shot in Toronto Punk films Teen action films Teen crime films Teen thriller films Teensploitation 1980s American films 1980s Canadian films