Title: Class of 1999
Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away: Though not in a very prominent role, Malcolm McDowell is in this movie. Stacy Keach is also in here with a crazy little white rat tail.
Introduction: I bought this on VHS for an undisclosed amount, as it is one of those rare movies.
Location: This movie starts in a sort of prison, and they go to other various places throughout the city, but it is primarily set in a school. I’d say that about 78% of this movie, if not more, is filmed within the school.
Plot: It’s 1999 (Oh no!) and for some reason everyone is carrying guns and trying to kill each other. It’s like Mad Max only in a school. So, obviously, the teachers are robots that have advanced programming and begin to take on a mind of their own, by killing the students. I kid you not, in one scene the teacherbot breaks up a fight and takes the two kids involved and spanks them. And I thought Catholic school was hard.
This boils down to the basic fight of man vs. machine and let me tell you, these kids go through a lot to try and stop their teachers. Had they just called me, I would’ve told them to just get a giant magnet and make those teacherbots sing country.
Acting: The main kid reminds me of Corey Feldman. I think that pretty much explains it all.
Production: This movie is set in 1999 (the future), though it was actually filmed in 1989. It looks like 1989 in every aspect of it.
Sex/Nudity: No, thankfully. Too many robots killing humans.
Special Effects: The robots have this vision thing that reminds me of the Terminator, but the models themselves look like they were left over from the T2 set. So let’s just agree that this movie was made because T2 had some extra props lying around and they didn’t want them to go to waste.
Overall Verdict: If this movie wanted to be taken seriously at all, it wouldn’t have had the spanking scene. Granted, that unintentionally funny scene made it all the more shocking when the teacherbot would later snap a kid’s neck. Ultimately, plot aside, you have to love this movie simply because it is set in a future that has already happened. I like seeing movies from the 1980’s that tell you “This is what the future is going to look like”, but then we’ve already lived through it so the answer is obviously no. These types of things simply did not happen in 1999. However, people were panicked in 1999 about the impending doom of Y2K. Remember that? Perhaps that could be the sequel to this that never got made until now. Class of 1999 Part 2: The Revenge of Y2K. I like it. Someone make it.
