‘Class of 1999’ (1990) Review

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Over on Kung Pew Video, I’ve been revisiting the direct-to-video relics that raised us. This week:

Movies in the 1980s seemed to imagine two totally different versions of America. 

On one hand, you had the bucolic version of life in the 80s. We’re talking kids on Mongoose bikes roaming the streets and wooded areas of suburban America and getting up to hijinks. In this version, the USA is a place of possibility, mystery, and wonder. Just dangerous enough to make the story interesting but safe enough to allow the characters some independence and room for self-discovery. 

That’s The Goonies version.

Then there’s the darker version. The version where drugs, gangs, crumbling schools, and the possibility of total civilizational collapse were the reality. 

That’s the Class of 1999 version. These are the movies that looked at the country’s most anxiety-inducing problems and asked: If this is America in 1989, what the hell’s it gonna look like in ten years? What filmmakers came up with often ran the gamut from the utterly horrifying to the totally bizarre.

Class of 1999 falls mostly in the latter camp with its bleak and sometimes baffling depiction of America on the threshold of the new millennium. Because apparently director Mark Lester imagined a future where teen gangs ruled large sections of American cities that looked more like blasted war zones than places where people lived and raised families. 

They packed UZIs and prowled the streets in armored, Mad Max-style vehicles. But still went to school and did their homework. And when they got busted for dealing drugs or stabbing a classmate? They did what any sensible violent thug would do: they showed up for detention. 

And watching this all far into Class of 1999’s future is good fun, but it begs the question: What the hell were these filmmakers smoking in the ’80s? Because Class of 1999 feels like Saved by the Bell hooked up with The Terminator and gave birth to some twisted, bizarro version of RoboCop.

The Back of the VHS

Class of 1999 hit theaters in May of 1990 and it posed a simple question: What if American schools got so bad, killer cyborgs replaced the teachers? 

Bradley Gregg plays our hero Cody Culp, former leader of the Blackhearts, who has just been released from prison. He comes home to find his entire family addicted to a new drug called Edge. 

The Blackhearts want him back, but Cody’s stint in the clink has changed his perspective, and he’s started to realize that if he doesn’t choose a different path, the old one’s gonna be the end of him.

But Cody soon finds out the system’s not done with him. And before the credits roll, he’ll have to confront a trio of murderous cyborg teachers and a mad scientist and unite two rival gangs against a common enemy.

The Future That Wasn’t

I’ve loved Class of 1999 since I was a teenager. I’m not even sure I had a choice, to be honest. It was on Showtime about a billion times a day back then, and in those days, we just watched whatever was on. 

But the world the movie imagined fascinated me. I grew up in a small town, and thankfully we didn’t have gangs, burned-out cars, and entire neighborhoods the police refused to patrol. 

New York City and LA might as well have been a million-billion miles away as far as I was concerned. So when I saw movies like this, some part of me just assumed this was essentially the reality in other parts of the country. Just exaggerated and set a few years into the future. 

Which I found totally fascinating. It was like this shadow version of America that was strange and mysterious and dangerous. And for some reason just acted like jet fuel for my imagination. 

As an aside, Class of 1999 has always seemed like the homicidal cousin of Rock ’n’ Roll High School Forever. Like, they almost could exist in the same cinematic universe. Just different genres. 1999 is a sci-fi/horror and Forever is a goofy rock comedy. But of the two movies, I think Class of 1999 probably creates the more cohesive world. 

It’s not really believable, but it works because the movie commits to its absurdities. Nobody’s winking at the camera. Lester and the cast play everything completely straight. And one big reason it all hangs together so well has to do with the production design and location scouting. 

Cody’s grimy hood was shot on location in an actual abandoned neighborhood near Sea-Tac Airport. The school was an actual school, dressed up in chain-link, barbed wire, and guard towers to make it look like some weird hybrid of high school and prison.

And the climate of Washington state really helps sell the whole dystopia thing. It’s cold, wet, and overcast. The streets are real, the buildings are real. The mud and rain and crumbling houses are real, and all of those elements combined coat the movie in this gritty texture that you just can’t get on a studio backlot or green screen. 

Cody and Christy

The actors are another big reason the movie still holds up.

Bradley Gregg (who you might recognize from Stand by Me and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) plays Cody Culp as a sympathetic-but-edgy protagonist. He’s a little bit of Corey Haim’s sensitive guy vibe mixed with Robert Rusler’s don’t mess with me persona. You can believe he was the leader of the Blackhearts, but you can also buy that he’s come out of the joint a changed man. And seeing his family hooked on Edge has forced him to take a hard look at the world he helped create. 

Especially where his little brother Angel is concerned. Angel is played by Joshua John Miller and there’s a scene where he and Gregg are shooting hoops in their weird gang attire. Angel’s dressed like he just raided Prince and Steven Tyler’s closets and Cody’s wearing his jacket that looks like it’s made for a 10-year old boy. Anyway, Miller dribbles the ball like a kid who’s never held a basketball in his life, and it’s one of those scenes I always have to rewind, because it just cracks me up. I mean, it’s wholesome, but couldn’t they have given this kid some other activity that didn’t involve coordination? 

And can we just talk about the outfits in Class of 1999 for a minute? I mean what the hell are these bangers wearing? You’d think the official gang uniform of 1999 was gonna be colorful tights and denim jackets that someone’s mom shrunk in the wash. Apparently, even on the verge of collapse, looking hip is a top priority.

Anyway, Angel’s not the only person in Cody’s life that brings out his softer side.

Christy, played by Traci Lind, is the audience surrogate and Cody’s budding love interest. As the new kid and daughter of the new principal (played by Malcolm McDowell), she’s the closest thing to a normal person that we meet in the film. And because her reaction to this crazy-ass world is convincing, we buy it. 

Stating the obvious here, but Lind is beautiful, and in a lot of movies she would just be treated as set dressing. But here she plays Christy as vulnerable and tough without ever coming across like a cliche. And as our window into this bizarre world, the realism lives or dies on the strength of her ability to sell it. And her girl-next-door performance works perfectly. 

While researching the movie for this review, I was surprised at how limited her filmography was. Maybe she just made a big impression on me in this, but I would have sworn she was in a lot of other stuff I watched as a kid. Apparently she quickly got her fill of the limelight and in the late 90s, she retired from acting.

Anyway, together Gregg and Lind have enough chemistry and lend the movie just enough humanity to anchor all of the bonkers shenanigans going on around them in something real and relatable. 

The Unholy Trinity

And there are a lot of shenanigans going on in this movie.

Pam Grier’s Miss Connors is kind of like that one young, attractive teacher that every guy seemed to have a crush on in high school. Until she tries to broil your ass with her flamethrower arm for sticking gum under your desk. Patrick Kilpatrick as Mr. Bryles, the gym coach, has a sweet rocket launcher arm. And John P. Ryan plays Mr. Hardin, the kindly old teacher whose idea of corporal punishment amounts to spanking a mofo to death.

Ryan is one of my favorite “that guys.” He’s in Death Wish 4, Best of the Best, Delta Force 2, and Star Time—a movie I’ll probably review someday.

Kilpatrick appeared in Death Warrant, Best of the Best 2, and Showdown with Billy Blanks, and Under Siege 2–always as a henchman or a heavy.

Pam Grier really doesn’t need an introduction, but in my little Kung Pew universe alone, her notable credits include Above the Law, Escape from L.A., and Something Wicked This Way Comes. She floats effortlessly between good guy and bad. 

But together, these three form the movie’s unholy trinity.

And when their old military programming kicks in, the movie leans hard into the one question the whole movie hangs on: What happens when teachers stop disciplining students and just start wasting ‘em? 

The Wig 

But I promised a mad scientist, and now it’s time to introduce him. Dr. Forrest is played by Stacy Keach. And Keach is great in this, but the guy is such a pro, he didn’t just bring his acting chops to Class of 1999. Apparently, he also managed to get the production company to spend an extra three thousand bucks on the crazy wig and contacts he wears in the movie. 

And without those costume accents, I can’t imagine the character being as memorable and effective as he is. And he is memorable. 

He plays Forrest as quiet, calm, and super creepy. This dude is cold, clinical, and absolutely certain that deploying three terminators into a public high school is not just necessary. To Forrest, it just makes logical sense. If the kids are bad, you just waste ‘em. 

Problem, solution. 

The Problem

Now, as I’ve said, I have loved this movie since I was a kid, but I do have a few complaints. Really just one complaint. 

Class of 1999 is actually a direct sequel to director Mark Lester’s original film, Class of 1984. That movie follows a similar premise. Inner city school. Out of control kids. A teacher pushed to the edge. 

Now Lester directed Firestarter, Commando, and Showdown in Little Tokyo, but before he gave us naked sushi dining, he decided to return to the well and ask: What if we moved Class of 1984 a few years into the future, added killer cyborg teachers, and just went completely bananas with it?

Different setting. Different genre. But the question the two movies pose is the same.

Class of 1984 had an answer to that question and it wasn’t shy about it. Eventually the teacher at the heart of the story is pushed over the edge and he wastes the students in a hyper-violent finale. 

The bad ones anyway. 

Which was extremely controversial at the time. The MPAA threatened to brand the film with an X rating, forcing Lester to heavily edit down the violence. But the message the movie left audiences with remained: when the system fails, violence is the answer.

And if the kids of Class of 1984 were too unruly to reach, the students in Class of 1999 look like they’re about to drag the whole country down with them.

And considering the schools and neighborhoods of 1999 are literal warzones, you would think the solution would be simple. You send in the cops or the military, right?

Which is basically what happens. The cyborgs are decommissioned military hardware, repurposed for a joint program between bioweapons manufacturer Mega Tech and the Department of Educational Defense to clean up the schools. 

Department of Educational Defense. These guys…

But the movie chickens out of its own setup and decides to take the side of the juvenile thugs when the hardware starts running amok.

So which is it? Are the students a lost cause or not? Are the neighborhoods war zones or not?

But once the cyborgs start murdering kids indiscriminately the movie gives us our villains. Between Dr. Forrest gleefully rooting his murderbots on and the cyborgs using any excuse to use violence against the students, it’s obvious Hardin, Connors, and Bryles aren’t the good guys. But that doesn’t make the gang bangers the good guys by default, and the movie doesn’t do the best job of threading that needle.

Instead, Lester just tries to distract us with rocket launcher arms. Which of course totally worked on me when I was a kid. Now that I think about it, what Lester did there was really kind of genius. I mean, what’s the audience for Class of 1999? Adolescent and teenage boys? Not hard to guess which side they were gonna take in a matchup between teachers and students. 

By the way, I had the same problem with the sequel to this movie: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute. Check that review out if you want to hear what I had to say about that one. 

Watch or Not?

So should you watch Class of 1999? Well, if you’ve never seen it, and you’ve made it this far into the video, it’s probably safe to say it’s your kind of movie. Sure, some of the effects are dated. But for me, that’s part of the appeal. The practical effects in this were created on a modest budget by talented filmmakers who had to figure out how to make all of this stuff work in front of a real camera. No CGI. And you just gotta appreciate that. 

Of course, the premise is ridiculous. The world makes no damn sense when you really think about it. But Class of 1999 commits to the bit and never flinches or tries to be ironic or cute.

And it delivers basically everything that badass poster promises.

It gives us a fully realized dystopian Seattle. Two sympathetic and likeable leads in Gregg and Lind. Stacy Keach looking like the world’s creepiest biology teacher. Pam Grier as your teacher crush who ends up crushing you. Patrick Kilpatrick and his rocket arm. John P. Ryan spanking dudes to death. And a final act with tons of sweet kills and explosions to titillate even the most jaded Gen X latchkey kid.

What else could you possibly want from a movie with killer cyborg teachers?

Class of 1999 is cheesy but sincere and totally bonkers. It’s a movie I’ve loved since I was a teenager and a window into a future that 80s filmmakers were absolutely convinced we were headed for. 

Glad they were wrong. So far, anyway. 

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Thanks for checking out this review of Class of 1999. If you like these kinds of movies, I drop a new review every Thursday at 10 am CST. Drop back by or, hell, click and subscribe, and I’ll see you in the next one.