Background
I first saw Mark L. Lester’s Class of 1999 in the summer of 1990, not long after my 13th birthday, in a theater in the basement of an office building/shopping center in Washington, DC’s Tenlytown neighborhood, right across the street from the headquarters of of DC’s CBS affiliate and the neighborhood Hardees. Most of these details are unimportant, but I realized as I started writing that I remembered them and figured I might as well share.
In terms of filmmaking, as a kid I was also at least marginally aware of Tim Burton, the Coen Brothers and David Cronenberg, having been really enthusiastic about Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Raising Arizona when they all came out, and The Fly when it came out on video (I was too young to see it when it came out, but by the time it hit VHS, I was allowed to watch R-Rated movies) but seeking out Blue Velvet and Eraserhead after being floored by the first few episodes of Twin Peaks was what really set me on the path to being a "film person." (full disclosure- I kind of can’t stand David Lynch now, perhaps because he helped make me a "film person," though it probably has more to do with his public persona and the fandom that surrounds him than his movies, though I also don’t think he’s made anything that good since Mulholland Drive [never share this opinion on social media, you will alienate friends and get hostile messages from strangers]. My appraisal of post-1990s Tim Burton is even less generous. Of all these formative influences, I don't have anything negative to say about the Coens, but it’s really just David Cronenberg who still resonates with me in a major way [and who continues to make really excellent movies imho]).
In some ways, it’s surprising Class of 1999 had a theatrical run at all. For all the value I find in the film, at heart it's truly a b-movie, and was probably one of the last movies of the b-movie era, from Poverty Row to AIP to Roger Corman to Jerry Gross and the kinds of movies that played at drive-ins and in Times Square in the 70s and 80s- to play in theaters. Even by 1990, its type of genre movie- with a fairly modest budget, name actors but no big stars and without either a big studio, respected indie distributor or any kind of critical acclaim behind it- was more likely than not to be released directly to video or cable. Director Mark L. Lester would only direct one more film with wide theatrical distribution, 1991's Showdown in Little Tokyo, pretty much everything he's done since (nearly 20 films over the next two decades, and many more as producer) has gone straight to disc or television.
What It Is
Class of 1999 is a spiritual sequel to Mark L. Lester's 1982 film Class of 1984, but while that was a stylish but more or less conventional juvenile delinquency/Death Wish-style revenge movie, Class of 1999 has a much broader and stranger scope, focusing more on the teen characters (as opposed to their teachers, the focus of Class of 1984) and adding cyberpunk-influenced science-fiction elements. It takes place in the kind of high crime wasteland near future often envisioned by exploitation movies in the 70s, 80s and 90s (and by some reactionary conservatives today). At the time of this film’s release, violent crime was on the rise, but after a peak in 1991, it would steadily decline for the next decade (and still remains well below 1990 levels, despite some recent increases). Ironically, crime would be at the lowest point in over a decade in 1999.
Dr. Langford, meanwhile, has been collaborating with ominous government entity the Department of Education Defense (aka the D.E.D.- get it?) and the even more ominous MegaTech corporation, led by Dr. Bob Forrest (Stacy Keach, looking pretty striking with an exquisite platinum flat top mullet and pale shock contact lenses), to combat gang violence at Kennedy via the introduction of three military-designed android teachers (the iconic Pam Grier, It's Alive's John P. Ryan and action movie stalwart Patrick Kilpatrick) to instill order and discipline in the unruly student body (many of whom are addicted to the narcotic "Edge"- along with rampant crime, made up street drugs, such as Robocop 2's "Nuke," are fairly prominent in 80s/90s action/sci-fi movies).
In what seems like a matter of just a couple of days, the robotic trio is taking student discipline to violent extremes, brutally beating Cody and several other students before ultimately killing Blackheart member Mowhawk (Sean Gregory Sullivan, who would go on the play Andy Warhol in 1998's 54, which I'm sure is somebody somewhere's "I Kinda Liked It" movie). As the body count mounts, Cody begins to suspect something is amiss and teams up with Christie to uncover the whole story behind the new teachers. This, of course, puts him directly in their digital crosshairs, so Cody must reunite with the Blackhearts and form an alliance with the Razorheads in order to combat the now out-of-control teachers, who respond by reverting to full combat mode (conveniently, they're still equipped with personally customized internal weapons systems). Mayhem ensues, culminating in a deliriously over-the-top after hours showdown in the halls of Kennedy High.
Mark L. Lester got his start in the early 70s, independently producing and directing drive-in pictures like Steel Arena, Truck Stop Women, Bobbie Jo & the Outlaw and the Robert Forster-starring Stunts before making Linda Blair vehicle Roller Boogie and the Class of 1999 precursor Class of 1984, both of which were successful and allowed him to move on to more mainstream productions like the Stephen King adaptation Firestarter, the Arnold Schwarzenegger hit Commando and the less successful action comedy Armed & Dangerous, starring John Candy and Eugene Levy. He co-wrote the screenplay to Class of 1999 with Full Moon Pictures regular C. Courtney Joyner and "splatterpunk" horror author John Skipp.
Why They Hated It
Reviewers did not respond favorably to Class of 1999 upon its initial release, criticizing it for its graphic violence and similarities to more popular films like The Terminator and Robocop. Many were simply dismissive of it, while others were fairly brutal. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called it "swill" and declared "what a waste." David Kehr in the Chicago Tribune wrote that it was “so extreme, so redundant and so meaningless” as to be “nullifying.” Richard Harrington in the Washington Post gave it a “D for dumb, dull and derivative.” Leah Garchik in The San Francisco Chronicle disliked it it for being too bloody and called its special effects “nothing to write home about.”
Among the less scathing but more dismissive reviews, Kevin Thomas recognized that Mark Lester is a “master at turning out exploitation pictures underlined with outrageous dark humor and social comment” and but concluded that with Class of 1999, “this time he sold himself short.” In the New York Times, Vincent Canby recognized the movie’s appeal to teenagers, but called the action sequences “absurd” and criticized the movie’s “failed attempts at dark humor.”
Even more genre-friendly reviewers didn’t have much enthusiasm for the film. In Cinemafantastique, Dan Persons called the film “good,” but criticized Lester for putting the emphasis on “action over plot” (though he also praised the final action sequence, as well as John P. Ryan’s performance) and drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, who didn’t find much to criticize about it, also didn’t have much more to say about Class of 1999 other than, “You gorehounds will enjoy this one.”
Bad and middling reviews, combined with a limited and delayed release (Vestron's Lightning Pictures encountered financial problems at the time and were forced to sell the film to Taurus Entertainment, who had success with The Kentucky Fried Movie, Sleepaway Camp and several George Romero films but not much else) likely contributed to Class of 1999's failure at the box office, failing to recoup even half of its fairly modest 5 million dollar budget.
Weirdly, many critics who disliked Class of 1999 dismissed it for being both over-the-top violent and and yet also somehow dull. Not that one necessarily precludes the other, but it seems more likely that, at least at time, critics approached a movie like Class of 1999 on autopilot, criticizing the kind of movie it is without giving thought to its potential to possess individual merits. Dullness, to me at least, implies blandness- long stretches where nothing happens in a non-stylized way (vs. filmmakers like Tarkovsky who used space and silence with artistic intent) and excessive scenes of expository dialogue or blandly written dialogue in general. I suppose it could be applied to action or horror movies with pedestrian direction, but with Class of 1999, that’s just not the case (the 1994 direct-to-video sequel Class of 1999 2: The Substitute, not directed by Mark Lester, falls prey to this) . Even when Class of 1999 has talky bits, they tend to feature the kind of actors, like Malcolm McDowell and Stacy Keach, who would be interesting reading the phone book and who seem, along with Grier, Ryan and Kilpatrick, to fully understand and embrace the potential campiness of the material. All the adult actors seem to be enjoying themselves in their over-the-top roles. If they lack the level of nuance you mind find in some of their more acclaimed performances, none of them are ever dull in Class of 1999.
A lot of the film’s negative reception probably had a lot to do with timing. Action movies in the early 90s were moving away from the kind of graphic violence that marked many of the popular films, including Lester's own Commando, of the 1980s. While Robocop 2 and Predator 2, both released in 1990 and similar in tone and style to Class of 1999, enjoyed commercial success, the tenor of action movies would change radically a year later with the release of Terminator 2, which supplanted the grimy, low-budget, neon-tinged cyberpunk vibe of the original with a vibe that was less gory, more brightly lit and elaborately staged, kid friendly and toyetic. Terminator 2 became one of the highest grossing movies of all time and heralded the shift in action movies from hard R-rated bloodbaths to the more wide-reaching PG-13 spectacle-oriented genre films that continue to dominate the box office more than 30 years later.
Terminator director James Cameron, like other influential filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and Joe Dante, got his start working for exploitation producer Roger Corman. Many of the Corman school graduates brought elements from their b-movie roots to their big-budget, mainstream productions, making films that were energetic, highly visual, peppered with smart humor, memorable character performances (Corman regular Dick Miller appeared in films by all four, as well as films by Corman grads Jonathan Kaplan and Allan Arkush) and unafraid of bursts of unrestrained violence, but were also still Hollywood enough to feel welcoming to audiences while still maintaining a level of artistic weight to them (Demme's Silence of the Lambs, which features a cameo by Roger Corman, and Scorsese's Goodfellas and Casino are probably the best examples of the Corman sensibility writ large, applied to serious, but also commercial, filmmaking).
In addition to being too much of a b-movie for critics and audiences, Class of 1999 also suffered from being a film both about and marketed towards teenagers at a time when teen movies were in a state of declining prominence. Teen-oriented films were fairly popular throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, but as their audiences grew older, so did the characters in the films those audiences wanted to see. By 1990, the teen stars of the past decade were also taking on more adult roles. Among the year's releases were Bad Influence (Rob Lowe, James Spader), Jacob's Ladder (Tim Robbins), Ghost (Demi Moore), Days of Thunder (Tom Cruise), Blue Steel (Jamie Lee Curtis), The Freshman (Matthew Broderick) as well as Flatliners and Young Guns 2, which collectively encapsulated a fair chunk of the remaining Brat Pack).
As audiences and established youth stars moved on to adulthood, films geared towards teenagers like Pump Up the Volume, Cry-Baby and Book of Love (all released in 1990) were all doing poorly at the box office. Even horror films, highly teen-centric in the 1980s, were focusing on more post-adolescent stories- symbolically, Friday the 13th Part 8 and A Nightmare on Elms Street Part 5, both from 1989, featured protagonists celebrating their high school graduation. Several films released in 1990 that were aesthetically similar to Class of 1999 but featured adult protagonists (Predator 2, Robocop 2 and Hardware) all did significantly both better critically and financially. Just based on personal experience, as someone who was a teenager in the 90s, this trend had a lot to do with the narcissism of the Baby Boomers and their general indifference towards Generation X, especially those of us born in the late 70s and early 80s, when the culture of the "Me Generation" really started to flourish in toxic ways.
(One exception to this trend was the Hudlin Brothers' House Party, but being one of the first comedies about Black teenagers made since Cooley High 15 years earlier, one of the first comedies featuring up-and-coming hip-hop artists Kid & Play and a hip-hop soundtrack at a time when the genre was breaking into the mainstream in a major way and opening to largely positive reviews, and being just a fun, funny movie in general, it makes sense that it would turn out to be a huge hit. Call it the exception that proves the rule. After a few years of disparate one-offs like Dazed & Confused and School Ties, all of which took place in the past, it was Amy Heckerling's Clueless, another film geared towards an underserved audience, teenage girls, that would break the trend in 1995, ushering in a new wave that continues to influence popular youth culture today).
With Hollywood making big-budget films with exploitation elements and lower budgeted, less auteur-driven genre films moving direct-to-video or cable, a cheap and more aggressive movie like Class of 1999 might have come off as obsolete when it came out. If it had been released a decade later, it could have ridden the wave of stylized violence of the Matrix (and other films influenced by the Corman-influenced mainstream genre films of the 1990s), or been lauded as the same kind of knowingly trashy agitprop as the Purge films (it definitely shares DNA with the Purge sequels, especially Anarchy and Election Year) and other self-aware, gory genre films like the John Wick series, Upgrade and Nobody, all of which received positive reviews and did well financially, or at least films like Punisher War Zone and Dredd, which got some favorable reviews and developed cult followings despite failing to break through to a larger audience (they were kind of the canaries in the coal mine for the wave of hugely popular comic book movies that would soon follow). In 1990, Class of 1999 managed to be both simultaneously old fashioned and ahead of its time, all at once.
Why I Kinda Liked It
Since my first viewing of Class of 1999, and in the many times I've rewatched it since, I've always enjoyed it, first and foremost, on a basic, primal level. It's a "cool" movie- stylishly visual with punk and cyberpunk influences; relentless pacing; over-the-top action sequences and gore; knowingly camp performances from the adult performers; relatable and earnest performances from the younger actors that, at their best, evoke the kind of unpolished authenticity of more serious youth films like Over the Edge and River's Edge (the film's least appealing performance may be its lead, Bradley Gregg, but even he believably evokes a certain kind of self-serious teenage boy I would definitely encounter many times as a teenager with an interest in punk rock and getting high in the 1990s); and a consistency of internal logic in the world the film creates- if you can buy and appreciate the overall premise, Class of 1999 never asks you suspend disbelief further than you already have.
Though it's not a rigorously intellectually demanding film, Class of 1999 is rewardingly dense and realized in its world-building and visual aesthetic, and it manages to balance contradicting elements in a satisfying way- it's a brutally violent film that's also fun, a dark film that's also colorful and a film that knows when to take itself seriously and when to play things tongue-in-cheek. Even the humor remains consistent throughout, and never betrays the tone of the darker elements. The adult actors may ham it up, the younger performers may lean towards camp in their sincerity, but Lester never throws in anything out-of-left-field, no sudden bursts of slapstick or aggressively sophomoric teen humor. It's all of a piece.
Rewatching Class of 1999 to write this, I realized that the film also does a good job of encapsulating the gulf between teenagers and the adults who make the decisions that control their lives, which is perhaps one of the deeper reasons it resonated with me so much when I first saw it, and why it's stuck with me since (according to Letterboxd, I've watched it three times in the past six years, and probably a good half-dozen times before that since seeing it in the theater, and have at various times owned it on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray. I think I also have the poster rolled up in a tube somewhere). Authority, in Lester's film, operates much the same way it does in real life, especially when you're young, with a vague idea of "the greater good" superseding the actual greater good of the people its inflicted on, a sense that it's okay to sacrifice the lives and safety of people in the name of expediency and the status quo. In the case of Class of 1999, the students are placed under the watch of humanoid, but ultimately inhuman, androids- what expectation could there be for them to do anything but dehumanize their students?
Education, in Class of 1999, is not about nourishing students' minds or expanding their horizons, but rather about maintaining control. It's evident not only in the film's plot, but in the tone of the interactions between the adult and teenaged characters as well, especially Grier, Ryan and Kilpatrick, who play their militarized androids in a way that's just slightly off, looking at their students without ever really seeing them as anything other than targets to instruct or discipline. It's an apt reflection of how teenagers view adults, never fully trusting them even when they're smiling at saying they have your best intentions at heart, and also how adults treat teenagers, always at a slight remove, engaging on a surface level but with barely disguised bemusement and condescension. Both sides see the other as alien and threatening. In Class of 1999, Cody and Christine discover that the teachers all live together is a sparse apartment, reflecting the mystery that adults, especially authority figures, and especially especially the authority figures who take the most disciplinarian stances, pose to children.
Watching Class of 1999 in 2022, the film's themes feel more relevant than ever. There's the fear of artificial intelligence taking on a life of its own, superseding its intended use with an agenda beyond human control and using its technological advantage in ways that are difficult for humans to counter. There's the militarization of law enforcement and the ways in which the mindset of "us against them" and "might makes right," without empathy or the vision to look at the reasons for discontent, have eroded the trust in institutions for the people they're supposed to serve and protect. In 2022, this mindset has become so prevalent that it has bled over into a large portion of the general population, especially on the right. Over the past few years, we've seen anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, election deniers and the January 6th rioters, those who violently oppose common sense gun control and abortion putting their own interests above those of anyone else's. And as this mindset spreads like a virus, it's almost always children who wind up suffering from its repercussions the most.
While we may not live in the grim, hyperviolent dystopia of Class of 1999, we are living in a grim, hyperviolent dystopia of some kind, threatened by hyper-militarized authoritarianism, and automation implemented thoughtlessly and without empathy. I definitely did not intend for this to get so political or end on such a heavy note, but here we are! It took A LOT longer to write this than I thought it was, but I'm glad it's done. The seal is broken. If you liked it, check back for more soon and check out the I Kinda Liked It podcast, which features me talking to other people and the movies they kinda liked (the first episode of about the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie): https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/0Tmmyk729tb
