Post by petrolino on Dec 2, 2018 1:20:44 GMT
The crime film 'Class Of 1984' offers a troubling vision into a dark future that seems more real by the day. Music teacher Andrew Norris (Perry King) takes up a post at an inner city school with a bad reputation. Andrew is forced to battle a group of self-entitled malcontents daily as they try everything to disrupt his class, the gang enabled by ineffectual headmaster Principal Morganthau (David Gardner). At the end of each working day, Andrew returns home to his supportive wife Diane (Merrie Lynn Ross) and resets himself. Over time, Andrew witnesses the gang repeatedly bullying two of his band students, gentle trumpeter Arthur (Michael J. Fox) and feisty clarinetist Deneen (Erin Flannery), so he decides enough is enough. Rattled by Andrew's resistance, the reactionary gang members wage war against all those who oppose them and vow to destroy anybody that dares to get in their way.
'LAST YEAR THERE WERE 280,000
INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE BY
STUDENTS AGAINST THEIR TEACHERS
IN OUR HIGH SCHOOLS.
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS FILM IS
PARTIALLY BASED ON TRUE EVENTS.
FORTUNATELY, VERY FEW SCHOOLS
ARE LIKE LINCOLN HIGH ...YET.'
"A teacher is required to be responsible."
'Class Of 1984' is a controversial American high school thriller about a dedicated teacher's bloody war against a group of criminal minors (all five gang members are below the age of 18 and enjoy certain legal protections due to their status). Some of the action takes place at Abraham Lincoln High School and some out on the streets, director Mark Lester shooting the entire production on location in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to save on cost. The school's immediately established as a hellish environment for any student interested in learning, a place that's fallen into the grip of a small band of thugs who romanticise themselves as political agitators. In reality, they're a self-absorbed group of over-priveleged white supremacists whose bullying tactics are cowardly and underhand.
"Shot in Toronto during the summer of 1981, Mark Lester's vision of a school losing control to a gang of punk thugs comes off as both a riveting and humorous exploitation film for its time, anarchic students defying school authority, and a clever depiction of gang-driven school violence. The story is nothing we havent seen over the years; 'Dangerous Minds', 'Lean On Me' and 'The Principal' have followed more predictable but comparable stories tackling the rehab of depraved students, but aside from preceding those films, 'Class of 1984' also chose an unconventional plot"
- Cam Lindsay, Exclaim!
"New teacher Andrew Norris is fighting the rising tide of what would later become the future of the youth. “We are the future,” chants leader Stegman with his gang of punks. “I am your future,” he consistently tells Mr. Norris, and whodathunk he’d be correct? “Class of 1984” envisions a not too far future where the youth have all but spiraled out of control and our schools are now warzones with the potential for death at every turn. In 1982, “Class of 1984” was something of an exploitation revenge film, but decades later after utterly horrific accounts of school shootings, and students victimizing their teachers, “Class of 1984” is actually ahead of its time."
- Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed
- Cam Lindsay, Exclaim!
"New teacher Andrew Norris is fighting the rising tide of what would later become the future of the youth. “We are the future,” chants leader Stegman with his gang of punks. “I am your future,” he consistently tells Mr. Norris, and whodathunk he’d be correct? “Class of 1984” envisions a not too far future where the youth have all but spiraled out of control and our schools are now warzones with the potential for death at every turn. In 1982, “Class of 1984” was something of an exploitation revenge film, but decades later after utterly horrific accounts of school shootings, and students victimizing their teachers, “Class of 1984” is actually ahead of its time."
- Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed
Dolph Lundgren & Mark Lester
'The Revenge Of Vera Gemini' - Blue Oyster Cult & Patti Smith
"Thirty years ago this month, director Mark L. Lester changed the course of action cinema forever when he solidified Arnold Schwarzenegger’s persona in the gloriously excessive 'Commando'. Schwarzenegger was already a star thanks to the Conans and 'The Terminator', but 'Commando' is the film that established the identity he would revisit in film after film – and that introduced the “bigger is better” combination of exaggerated action and comedy that producer Joel Silver would apply to his 'Lethal Weapon', 'Die Hard', and 'Predator' series, among many other pictures. Those movies would be heavily influenced by Commando’s vivid palette and precise attention to cinematic space and geography, both of which stand in stark opposition to the style one finds in more recent action films like the desaturated, frenetically edited 'Bourne' movies (or the desaturated, frenetically edited, Joel Silver-less 'A Good Day to Die Hard'). 'Commando' has aged exceptionally well thanks to the clarity of Lester’s compositions and cutting as well as the pre-CGI effectiveness of its convincing stunts and action set pieces; the movie is energetic and exhilirating but not exhausting in the manner of so many recent tent poles, where the actors and action are suffocated by computerized visual design.
Lester himself is a fascinating figure, a successful independent filmmaker in the ’70s who transitioned from exploitation pictures like 'Truck Stop Women' and the cult classic 'Class of 1984' to high profile studio assignments such as 'Commando' and the Stephen King adaptation 'Firestarter'. Yet practically as soon as he found success in the studio system, Lester went back to the independent realm as both a director and mogul, forming his own distribution company, American World Pictures, in 1992."
- Jim Hemphill, Filmmaker
"Lisa Langlois was born in North Bay, Ontario. She spent her childhood years in Hamilton, Ontario where she attended a French language school, becoming fluent in French. In 1974 she represented Hamilton in the Miss Teen Canada beauty pageant, where she finished second. Langlois graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton.
She made her film debut in Claude Chabrol’s mystery 'Blood Relatives' (1978) opposite Donald Sutherland. Chabrol also cast her in his next feature, 'Violette Nozière' (1978). Langlois made a number of other films in Canada, including the thriller 'Phobia' (1980), directed by John Huston.
She appeared in another 1980 film, 'Klondike Fever', and played leading roles in three films that have acquired cult followings: the horror film 'Happy Birthday to Me' (1981), the teen actioner 'Class of 1984' (1982), and the killer rat shocker 'Deadly Eyes' (1982).
After this work in Paris and Toronto, Langlois moved to Los Angeles to pursue American projects. She appeared in two Paramount Pictures comedy features:' The Man Who Wasn’t There' (1983), a 3-D production, and 'National Lampoon’s Joy of Sex' (1984), directed by Martha Coolidge. In 1985 Langlois co-starred in the romantic comedy 'The Slugger’s Wife', where she played a struggling singer and performed her own musical numbers after auditioning for Quincy Jones. She made guest appearances on television programs such as 'Murder, She Wrot'e in 1986, and she performed on stage in the La Jolla Playhouse’s production of 'Once In A Lifetime' in 1988. She played the heroine in Roger Corman’s horror film 'The Nest' (1988) and co-starred in a made for TV movie, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1989).
During the 1990s Langlois moved back to Canada."
- Ed B, 'Lisa Langlois : Horror Queen'
Lester himself is a fascinating figure, a successful independent filmmaker in the ’70s who transitioned from exploitation pictures like 'Truck Stop Women' and the cult classic 'Class of 1984' to high profile studio assignments such as 'Commando' and the Stephen King adaptation 'Firestarter'. Yet practically as soon as he found success in the studio system, Lester went back to the independent realm as both a director and mogul, forming his own distribution company, American World Pictures, in 1992."
- Jim Hemphill, Filmmaker
"Lisa Langlois was born in North Bay, Ontario. She spent her childhood years in Hamilton, Ontario where she attended a French language school, becoming fluent in French. In 1974 she represented Hamilton in the Miss Teen Canada beauty pageant, where she finished second. Langlois graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton.
She made her film debut in Claude Chabrol’s mystery 'Blood Relatives' (1978) opposite Donald Sutherland. Chabrol also cast her in his next feature, 'Violette Nozière' (1978). Langlois made a number of other films in Canada, including the thriller 'Phobia' (1980), directed by John Huston.
She appeared in another 1980 film, 'Klondike Fever', and played leading roles in three films that have acquired cult followings: the horror film 'Happy Birthday to Me' (1981), the teen actioner 'Class of 1984' (1982), and the killer rat shocker 'Deadly Eyes' (1982).
After this work in Paris and Toronto, Langlois moved to Los Angeles to pursue American projects. She appeared in two Paramount Pictures comedy features:' The Man Who Wasn’t There' (1983), a 3-D production, and 'National Lampoon’s Joy of Sex' (1984), directed by Martha Coolidge. In 1985 Langlois co-starred in the romantic comedy 'The Slugger’s Wife', where she played a struggling singer and performed her own musical numbers after auditioning for Quincy Jones. She made guest appearances on television programs such as 'Murder, She Wrot'e in 1986, and she performed on stage in the La Jolla Playhouse’s production of 'Once In A Lifetime' in 1988. She played the heroine in Roger Corman’s horror film 'The Nest' (1988) and co-starred in a made for TV movie, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1989).
During the 1990s Langlois moved back to Canada."
- Ed B, 'Lisa Langlois : Horror Queen'
Lisa Langlois
'Girl Of 100 Lists' - The Go-Go's
Perry King's casting is key to the success of the project as Andrew's not a buff muscleman, but more a sensitive, "everyman" figure. Lester was so impressed by King's work in films like Richard Fleischer's 'Mandingo' (1975) and Jed Johnson's 'Andy Warhol's Bad' (1977), he sought him specifically for this role. Andrew has a key relationship with another staff member played by Roddy McDowall, alcoholic chemistry teacher Terry Corrigan. Lester and McDowall became lifelong friends off the back of this production. Another important casting decision that's dead-on is the pivotal role of Stegman's mother who's played brilliantly by Linda Sorensen, a member of Robert Altman's stock company.
"I'll freely admit that I can't tell if Class of 1984 is a good movie or not. On the one hand, it's unmixed, trashy exploitation, portraying a most overheated melodrama that plays on the audience's prurient fear of subcultural elements. And I honestly don't know if I'm putting that in the "good" or "not" pile. On the other hand, it's a rather ingenious attempt at refurbishing the old juvenile delinquency films of the '50s in a critical, possibly even satirical light, where the Forces of Civil Good are revealed to be just as f*cked up as the rotten, antisocial kids they're facing down. It's the Blackboard Jungle-meets-Death Wish mash-up that I suspect nobody was asking for in 1982, but having received it, I'm shocked and delighted by how organically those two things slot together. Basically, we have here a movie that looks like trash, and sounds like trash, because it is trash, but trash with a much bigger brain than you'd be primed to expect. Unsurprisingly, if you check the label of this fascinatingly ambivalent motion picture, you discover that it's a Canadian production; oh, Canada, where they made all the best sleazy genre films in the 1980s.
What we have here, by the way, is one of the most important films in the "punksploitation" field. A subgenre that, if I understand the history of punk properly, missed the main wave of that subculture by some years: Rock 'n' Roll High School inaugurated the genre in 1979, but the vast majority of punk films are from the mid-'80s, well after punk's heyday. But nonetheless, there was enough of a social awareness of the punk scene, and enough of a concern amongst the Nice People that all these leather-and-Doc-Martens-wearing bastards with their acutely surly attitudes wanted nothing more than to spread their reign of assault and rape and vandalism and drug use and God knows what to every peaceable suburb in Reagan's America and Thatcher's England, that director/executive producer Mark L. Lester was able to create this stern "what if?" fable preying on exactly that fear."
- Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending
"Movies like this either grab you, or they don't. "Class of 1984" grabbed me. I saw it for the first time at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, where I wandered into the theater expecting to find the dog of the week and wandered out two hours later, a little dazed and sort of overwhelmed.
"Class of 1984" is not a great movie but it works with quiet, strong efficiency to achieve more or less what we expect from a movie with such a title. It is violent, funny, scary, contains boldly outlined characters, and gets us involved. It also has a lot of style. One of the reasons for the film's style may be that it was made by people who knew what they were doing. The whole Dead Teenager genre has been seriously weakened in the last several years by wave upon wave of cheap, idiotic tax-shelter films from Canada and elsewhere: films in which a Mad Slasher and a lot of screaming adolescents have been substituted for talent, skill, and craft -- movies such as "Prom Night" and "Terror Train" and "The Burning."
Mark Lester's "Class of 1984" stands head and shoulders above movies like that. It tells a strong, simple story. It is acted well. It is not afraid to be comic at times and, even better, it's not afraid at the end to pull out all the stops and give us the sort of Grand Guignol conclusion that the slasher movies always botch. You may or may not think it's any good, but you'll have to admit that it works."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
What we have here, by the way, is one of the most important films in the "punksploitation" field. A subgenre that, if I understand the history of punk properly, missed the main wave of that subculture by some years: Rock 'n' Roll High School inaugurated the genre in 1979, but the vast majority of punk films are from the mid-'80s, well after punk's heyday. But nonetheless, there was enough of a social awareness of the punk scene, and enough of a concern amongst the Nice People that all these leather-and-Doc-Martens-wearing bastards with their acutely surly attitudes wanted nothing more than to spread their reign of assault and rape and vandalism and drug use and God knows what to every peaceable suburb in Reagan's America and Thatcher's England, that director/executive producer Mark L. Lester was able to create this stern "what if?" fable preying on exactly that fear."
- Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending
"Movies like this either grab you, or they don't. "Class of 1984" grabbed me. I saw it for the first time at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, where I wandered into the theater expecting to find the dog of the week and wandered out two hours later, a little dazed and sort of overwhelmed.
"Class of 1984" is not a great movie but it works with quiet, strong efficiency to achieve more or less what we expect from a movie with such a title. It is violent, funny, scary, contains boldly outlined characters, and gets us involved. It also has a lot of style. One of the reasons for the film's style may be that it was made by people who knew what they were doing. The whole Dead Teenager genre has been seriously weakened in the last several years by wave upon wave of cheap, idiotic tax-shelter films from Canada and elsewhere: films in which a Mad Slasher and a lot of screaming adolescents have been substituted for talent, skill, and craft -- movies such as "Prom Night" and "Terror Train" and "The Burning."
Mark Lester's "Class of 1984" stands head and shoulders above movies like that. It tells a strong, simple story. It is acted well. It is not afraid to be comic at times and, even better, it's not afraid at the end to pull out all the stops and give us the sort of Grand Guignol conclusion that the slasher movies always botch. You may or may not think it's any good, but you'll have to admit that it works."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
Class Of '84
'We Destroy The Family' - Fear
Crime specialist Mark Lester researched his text vigorously, producing a challenging screenplay with horror filmmaker Tom Holland who added a dash of macabre shading. Lester looked into the hardcore punk scene, visited a bunch of high schools and studied reported and unreported crime statistics in his quest to make the film believable. Everything within the picture frame is there for a reason and there's some potent symbolism. Cameraman Albert Dunk produces exciting visuals that add weight and dimension to the storytelling. I think Lester's always been a smart, cineliterate filmmaker who values creative freedom and he includes explicit references to Sam Woods' 'Goodbye Mr. Chips' (1939), Richard Brooks' 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955), Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971) and Eloy De La Iglesia's 'Murder In A Blue World' (1973).
"Back in the early ‘80s, I was one of three kids in my high school who listened to Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys and the Bad Brains. We were just skinny, dorky kids who’d been declared weird from the get-go, and hardcore had come along at exactly the right time to accentuate that. We weren’t bad kids, really; just a little off. Lord knows we were smarter than the jocks and the metal heads, but much, much less popular. Something strange was happening across the rest of the country, though.
In those early days of Reagan and the Moral Majority, this whole punk rock business was taken to be a very tangible and terrifying threat, not only to the Young People, but their parents as well. Why did these kids dress that way? Why did they listen to such angry music full of all those curse words? Why do they hate the suburbs so much? What’s wrong with the suburbs? Cautionary prime time specials began cropping up on TV warning people about the threat posed by punk rock and daytime talk shows tried to tell parents what to do should their son or daughter come home with a mohawk.
These evil punk rockers see, had absolutely no respect for authority. They regularly carved up policemen, killed their parents, ate babies and dogs, and burned down churches. It seems punks like myself represented, as Penelope Spheeris put it in her wonderful but damnably impossible to find 1981 documentary, 'The Decline of Western Civilization'. It was all pretty fucking hilarious. Reagan was in office and thuggish, Christian jocks were running the schools, but they thought WE were the threat? We were just GEEKS, for godsakes!
More hilarious still, punk villains began appearing on shows like 'CHiPs', 'Quincy'., 'M.E'. and 'Miami Vice', all of them clearly created by someone who had never met and possibly never even seen, a real punk. It was only a matter of time before low-budget filmmakers got in on the act, writing punk villains into their exploitation pictures.
Sure enough, after reading some statistics about the frightening rise in school violence, Mark Lester set out to make an updated reboot of 'Blackboard Jungle' and came up with 1982’s 'The Class of 1984'. In an interesting way, it works as the flipside to ‘79’s 'Rock ‘n’ Roll High School', but told from the administration’s point of view and, as a result, is much less funny."
- Jim Knipfel, Den Of Geek
"I actually was visiting my old high school back in 1981, which was Monroe High School in the valley to see an old teacher, and I was walking around, and it had changed completely from when I was attending the school. There were gangs roaming around the hallways, and there was no dress code, and it looked like a very dangerous place, and I remembered back to this movie Blackboard Jungle, which was one of my favorites growing up, and I thought “Wow, what if I should do something like a teacher that comes back to the high school and confronts a gang that’s ruling the place.” That was the idea, and then I began doing enormous amounts of research, and I found that there were all these incidents of violence in the schools, and this was way before Columbine and these types of things. So all of these things: gang fights, prostitutes, drugs, and there was even a teacher who had come to class with a gun, and I thought “Maybe he teaches with it?” So I put all the incidents together, with a Blackboard Jungle type-story where all of this comes to an urban high school, and that’s how it all started.
I had no idea that it would take off like it did, although until it opened, it was very controversial when it came out. It was in Time Magazine, and Ronald Reagan once had a speech about education, and they put the pictures from the movie into an editorial, and it had such controversial press, so it took off back then, and at the beginning of the film, I’d put a warning to the country that this would happen, the future couldn’t get much worse."
- Mark Lester, Dread Central
In those early days of Reagan and the Moral Majority, this whole punk rock business was taken to be a very tangible and terrifying threat, not only to the Young People, but their parents as well. Why did these kids dress that way? Why did they listen to such angry music full of all those curse words? Why do they hate the suburbs so much? What’s wrong with the suburbs? Cautionary prime time specials began cropping up on TV warning people about the threat posed by punk rock and daytime talk shows tried to tell parents what to do should their son or daughter come home with a mohawk.
These evil punk rockers see, had absolutely no respect for authority. They regularly carved up policemen, killed their parents, ate babies and dogs, and burned down churches. It seems punks like myself represented, as Penelope Spheeris put it in her wonderful but damnably impossible to find 1981 documentary, 'The Decline of Western Civilization'. It was all pretty fucking hilarious. Reagan was in office and thuggish, Christian jocks were running the schools, but they thought WE were the threat? We were just GEEKS, for godsakes!
More hilarious still, punk villains began appearing on shows like 'CHiPs', 'Quincy'., 'M.E'. and 'Miami Vice', all of them clearly created by someone who had never met and possibly never even seen, a real punk. It was only a matter of time before low-budget filmmakers got in on the act, writing punk villains into their exploitation pictures.
Sure enough, after reading some statistics about the frightening rise in school violence, Mark Lester set out to make an updated reboot of 'Blackboard Jungle' and came up with 1982’s 'The Class of 1984'. In an interesting way, it works as the flipside to ‘79’s 'Rock ‘n’ Roll High School', but told from the administration’s point of view and, as a result, is much less funny."
- Jim Knipfel, Den Of Geek
"I actually was visiting my old high school back in 1981, which was Monroe High School in the valley to see an old teacher, and I was walking around, and it had changed completely from when I was attending the school. There were gangs roaming around the hallways, and there was no dress code, and it looked like a very dangerous place, and I remembered back to this movie Blackboard Jungle, which was one of my favorites growing up, and I thought “Wow, what if I should do something like a teacher that comes back to the high school and confronts a gang that’s ruling the place.” That was the idea, and then I began doing enormous amounts of research, and I found that there were all these incidents of violence in the schools, and this was way before Columbine and these types of things. So all of these things: gang fights, prostitutes, drugs, and there was even a teacher who had come to class with a gun, and I thought “Maybe he teaches with it?” So I put all the incidents together, with a Blackboard Jungle type-story where all of this comes to an urban high school, and that’s how it all started.
I had no idea that it would take off like it did, although until it opened, it was very controversial when it came out. It was in Time Magazine, and Ronald Reagan once had a speech about education, and they put the pictures from the movie into an editorial, and it had such controversial press, so it took off back then, and at the beginning of the film, I’d put a warning to the country that this would happen, the future couldn’t get much worse."
- Mark Lester, Dread Central
Perry King
'High School' - The MC5
'Class Of 1984' has a dynamic music score composed by Lalo Schifrin who marries contemplative piano melodies and berserk synthesiser distortion. Timothy Van Patten plays his own piano composition in the film which is a nice touch and the school band plays 'Moon River' during practise, a gorgeous song composed by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer) that features in Blake Edwards' comedy 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' (1961): both Mark Lester and Henry Mancini were born in Cleveland, Ohio. The soundtrack is augmented by songs from punk band Fear and Canadian rabble-rousers Teenage Head perform live at the club. The original score includes some chilling passages added by Schifrin that escalate the tension, leading to a long, involving, nail-biting climax that's superbly orchestrated from a technical standpoint. You might just find yourself shouting at Andrew, "nail those scumsuckers!!", they're so hideous in the extreme.
"Mark L. Lester is a friend to horror and wild cinema in general. Though his name may not be instantly recognizable to some, a quick look at his credentials will rectify that! He produced and contributed to the script for Tobe Hooper’s wonderfully weird 'The Funhouse'. As a director, his savage and prophetic 'Class of 1984' still disturbs to this day, for an unnerving amount of reasons. His adaptation of 'Firestarter' captured a freakish tornado of both unintentional and deliberate violence. And the battering ram impact of 'Commando', his most successful feature, remains respected worldwide. Recognize him now?"
- Chris Haberman, Dread Central
"In the cutthroat and utterly realistic world of the film marketplace here at the Cannes Film Festival, "Class of '84" is a big hit. It will never play the Palais des Festivals, the gigantic deco stoneheap on the Boulevard Croisette where the new works of Antonioni, Godard and Herzog were unreeled. But on the little Cannes backstreets along the Rue d'Antibes, where the local cinemas run day and night with the new film product that is for sale here, "Class of '84" is just what they're looking for: classy, stylish, very violent, highly promotable. By the end of the movie's first screening, its owners had offers from every major film marketing territory in the world.
Meanwhile, I remained inside the cinema, totally absorbed by a film I gradually realized was really very good. "Class of '84" is not likely to make many critics' "Best 10" lists next January, but after a week of anemic, disappointing and boring "serious" films in a so-far disappointing Cannes Festival, it was a reminder of what movies are, and what they can do: It was a strong story, well-acted, confidently directed, exciting, moving and controversial.
Coming out of the cinema, I ran into Jack Kroll, the critic from Newsweek and we had one of those standard Cannes conversations:
Kroll: "Seen anything worth seeing?"
Self: "Well, to tell you the truth, 'Class of '84' is the best film I've seen so far."
Kroll: "You've got to be kidding."
Self: "Not really. What have you liked so far?"
Kroll (sighs): "Not a whole hell of a lot."
Kroll said he would check out "Class of "84" at a later screening, and marched, off toward the Palais for the official French entry, which was a movie about a rock-'n'-roller who goes on an odyssey around France carrying the body of his twin sister in a bass case (I exaggerate, but only slightly). Meanwhile, later the same afternoon, I met Mark Lester, the director of "Class of '84" for a quick espresso in a dim little joint behind the marketplace."
Meanwhile, I remained inside the cinema, totally absorbed by a film I gradually realized was really very good. "Class of '84" is not likely to make many critics' "Best 10" lists next January, but after a week of anemic, disappointing and boring "serious" films in a so-far disappointing Cannes Festival, it was a reminder of what movies are, and what they can do: It was a strong story, well-acted, confidently directed, exciting, moving and controversial.
Coming out of the cinema, I ran into Jack Kroll, the critic from Newsweek and we had one of those standard Cannes conversations:
Kroll: "Seen anything worth seeing?"
Self: "Well, to tell you the truth, 'Class of '84' is the best film I've seen so far."
Kroll: "You've got to be kidding."
Self: "Not really. What have you liked so far?"
Kroll (sighs): "Not a whole hell of a lot."
Kroll said he would check out "Class of "84" at a later screening, and marched, off toward the Palais for the official French entry, which was a movie about a rock-'n'-roller who goes on an odyssey around France carrying the body of his twin sister in a bass case (I exaggerate, but only slightly). Meanwhile, later the same afternoon, I met Mark Lester, the director of "Class of '84" for a quick espresso in a dim little joint behind the marketplace."
- Roger Ebert attends the Cannes Film Festival, May 31, 1982
Arnold Schwarzenegger & Mark Lester
'Search And Destroy' - The Stooges
'Class Of 1984' is Mark Lester's favourite among his own films. He directed a futuristic follow-up that's excellent, 'Class Of 1999' (1990). Another sequel followed from director Spiro Razatos, 'Class Of 1999 II : The Substitute' (1993), which is also pretty good. In 2012, Amanda Waltz reported at Film Stage that Lester was planning to remake his own film, but this never happened. An official remake of 'Class Of 1984' was then announced in 2015 but this has yet to materialise. Seriously though, I don't feel we need a remake, because the punk scene can't easily be substituted for any other; if punk was one thing and one thing only then perhaps, but it was a uniquely independent and evolving artistic movement that encouraged creativity, individuality and freedom of expression. 'Class Of 1984' is perfect as is.
'I Am The Future' - Alice Cooper & Patty Donahue
--- ---
Vigilante Justice : '80s Style!
Defiance (1980 - John Flynn)
The Exterminator (1980 - James Glickenhaus)
Ms. 45 (1981 - Abel Ferrara)
The Star Chamber (1983 - Peter Hyams)
Vigilante (1983 - William Lustig)
Young Warriors (1983 - Lawrence D. Foldes)
Alley Cat (1984 - Victor M. Ordonez, Eduardo Palmos & Al Valletta)
Savage Streets (1984 - Danny Steinmann)
The Annihilators (1985 - Charles Sellier Jr.)
The Principal (1987 - Christopher Cain)
(I'd really like to see Lewis Teague's 1982 crime drama 'Fighting Back')
Lisa Langlois & Michael J. Fox
'No Guilt' - The Waitresses
