Post by stefancrosscoe on Feb 24, 2017 15:53:07 GMT
"Last year there were 280, 000 incidents of violence by students against their teachers and classmates in our high schools. Unfortunately, this film is partially based on true evenets. Fortunately very few schools are like Lincoln High...yet!"
Andy Norris (Perry King) is the newly arrived musical teacher at Lincoln High.
He is a rather optimistic and kind man who doesn't take to the warnings and the bad reputation of his new workplace very serious, instead he sees it as an challange.
But when one of his own students are the latest victim of a brutal attack, his "utopian" dream begins to fall to pieces.
After a failed attempt by reaching out to the high school's number one troublemaker, Peter Stegman (Timothy Van Patten), Andy then decides to have a chat with his parents. But the only thing he gets in return by going personal, is a violent power struggle between a desperate teacher and a highly cunning student who knows every trick in the book on how to get away with his crimes without being prosecuted.
Maybe a bit of a cult-classic/vigilante kind of a film more than your oridnary action movie, but it sure does pick up in the second half.
Directed by Mark L. Lester (Commando) the film takes aim of what goes on in a possible, and very bleak future were the kids are running the show, and their teachers can only watch on without doing much to interfere with their daily life.
Perry King did a good job as Andy Norris, and what a talent Tim Van Patten was back then, not really sure what happened to his acting career, but for the past 10-15 years or more, he is probably more famous for writing and directing several episode of shows like The Wire, The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire.
Roddy McDowall always delivers, even in the smallest of parts, and here he is brilliant as a teacher on the edge of a nervous breakdown as he takes his own class as hostages:
Learn or DIE!
Also the film made great use of Alice Cooper and his I Am The Future.