Get Your Reps In: Punks Battle Android Teachers in “Class of 1999″

Class of 1999 (1990)

For a neck-snapping, class-cutting, shit-talking amalgam of RoboCop, Escape From New York and The Outsiders, you can’t do better than Class of 1999. This quasi-sequel to the more straight-ahead vigilante thriller Class of 1984 posits a sci-fi American educational hellscape where machine-gun-wielding leather gangs have taken over schools and all surrounding urban areas.

Do students and gang members still have to attend those schools every day, you ask? Absolutely. Especially now that the Department of Educational Defense has engineered three android “super-teachers,” played by exploitation super-actors Pam Grier, Patrick Kilpatrick and John P. Ryan.

With the endorsement of a cat-eyed tech overlord (Stacy Keach) and an overwhelmed Seattle principal (Malcolm McDowell), discipline has a creepy new face. Opposing this “fucked-up George Jetson nightmare” is Cody (Bradley Gregg), a freshly paroled punk who’s trying to exit his gang and date the principal’s daughter (Traci Lind).

Like any good exploitation movie, Class of 1999 carries a dash of truth—about teachers who fancy themselves cops and systems that treat schools as carceral pit stops. You also don’t need those notions to enjoy the snotty one-liners, the overqualified acting and the adolescent fantasy of a student-teacher rumble. Cinemagic, June 2.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: Morvern Callar (2002), June 2-4. Academy: Time Bandits (1981), June 2-8. Cinema 21: Design for Living (1933), June 3. Cinemagic: A Goofy Movie (1995), June 3. Mr. Vampire (1985), June 7. Hollywood: Cleo- patra Jones (1973), June 1. Wild at Heart (1990), June 2. Murder in the Front Row (2019), June 2. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), June 3. Death Becomes Her (1992), June 3. The Crow (1994), June 4. Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), June 6.