Class of 1984 (1982)

Directed by Mark L. Lester. Starring Perry King, Timothy Van Patten, Roddy McDowall, David Gardner, Michael J. Fox, Merrie Lynn Ross, Al Waxman, Stefan Angrim, Keith Knight, Neil Clifford, Lisa Langlois, Erin Flannery, Linda Sorensen. [R]

King is the new music teacher at a crime-addled inner city school, but he spends less time inspiring his students than locking horns with menacing punk Van Patten and his gang of disruptive flunkies. Campy high school melodrama fueled by mindless histrionics, emotional calculation, drug freak-outs, over-the-top violence, and so on; comes off like Schlockboard Jungle, but Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier aren’t walking through that classroom door anytime soon. Transition to revenge-minded exploitation fodder in the final act isn’t entirely unwelcome—it wasn’t exactly a sober chronicle of troubled youths and anxious adults before that—and although it gets outrageously silly in execution, at least the filmmakers know how to make good use out of a buzzsaw. The finale is punctuated by something halfway between self-satisfied punchline and heavy-handed pedagogy. Cast tries (way too hard in the case of Ross’ handwringing teacher’s wife); released just before his TV breakthrough on “Family Ties,” Fox was credited without his middle initial. Followed by a couple of sequels (starting with Class of 1999) that ventured even further into the ridiculous by adding sci-fi elements!

38/100