Search - Class of 1999 on DVD

Keith A. (Keefer522)
Reviewed on 8/28/2013...

Robotic teachers face off against post-nuclear punks in a war-torn Seattle high school in this early 90s sci-fi/action B-Movie from Mark "Commando" Lester that's basically a mish-mash of "The Blackboard Jungle," "A Clockwork Orange" and a whole lot of "The Terminator." Silly as hell but OH so much fun to watch!!

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

Robert B. (rbrown) from STARKVILLE, MS
Reviewed on 4/22/2013...

Awful film concerns android teachers at a violence-plagued high school. CLASS OF 1999 pretty much sums up everything that was wrong with genre filmmaking in the late 1980s--far-fetched storylines, egregious over-acting, awful costume designs, labored wisecracks...the list is nearly endless. I happened to catch this at a dollar theater when it came out in 1990, and I felt ripped off then. Even the usually-reliable Pam Grier didn't help matters any. I was able to pretty much eradicate it from my memory until I watched it again today. I did notice this time around that there was a Nine Inch Nails song on the soundtrack ("Head Like a Hole"). I must have discovered PRETTY HATE MACHINE sometime after I saw this movie. Watch it if you must, but I'm not recommending it.

2 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

"Inside this school are three inhuman teaching monsters."

Dymon Enlow | 08/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hell yea, CLASS OF 1999! In the future there's a high school were the students openly carry machine guns and shoot them off all the time. Girls raped, nerds knifed, cars armor plated its like "Saved by the Bell" meets THE ROAD WARRIOR.

The Department of Education Defense decides to use this school as an experiment so they send in three "reprogrammed" battle droids as teachers. You can already see where this is going. Now it's like "Saved by the Bell" meets THE TERMINATOR in ROAD WARRIOR world!

Bad hair, futuristic gang clothes, lots of drugs, non stop gunfire, psychotic amounts of screaming and yelling, a drill to the skull, explosions, over the knee spanking, flame thrower violence, car chase, motorcycle chase, an albino mullet, forklift death the only thing missing is mutants and rampant female nudity.

Truly a masterpiece of the low budget action genre, but what else would you expect from the director of COMMANDO! "Let off some steam, Bennett."
"

Almost Time For The Ten Year Reunion

Stanley Runk | Camp North Pines | 09/27/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you were to take Mad Max, The Terminator, The Warriors and Lean On Me, and mix them in a blender, you'd get Class of 1999. It was directed by Mark Lester who made the excellent Class of 1984. This movie is sometimes considered a sequel to that film, but it isn't. Both movies have high schools and violent gangs, but that's where all comparisons end.
In the near future of 1999, violent street gangs have taken over, so bad that the police don't even bother with certain areas of the city(sounds like Death Wish 3!). The damn kids are still required to go to school though! A mullet and contact lens sporting Stacy Keach has taken military battle androids and given them new programs to act as teachers. Three of these androids are given a test run at the worst school in the city where Malcolm McDowell is principal. Meanwhile, ex-gangbanger, Cody, is released from prison and he's off to school. Renouncing his old gang ways, he quickly becomes the target for former gang members and old gang rivals. His brother, Angel, is now in the fold and snorting drugs(as well as his mother!), much to Cody's disappointment(sounds like American History X). Cody gets his groove on with the principal's daughter and tries to stay out of trouble, but he seems to be the only one noticing something odd about the three new teachers. At first they merely beat the snot out of the misbehaving punks, but soon their old military program starts to take over and then it's full out war on the students. Now Cody has to join his old gang and team up with his rival(who looks like Kevin Dubrow from Quiet Riot) to fight back against the android faculty.
Needless to say, this is a fun movie. Not quite as good as Class Of 1984(that movie kicks some serious butt!), but a good time nonetheless. Sure, the subject matter is obviously kinda silly, but the tone of the movie is rather grim and, serious and violent. It's an interesting turn to see the murderous thugs become the heroes of the film.
Aside from McDowell and Keach, we also have Pam Grier as one of the deadly teachers. Most of the cast is made up of actors straight from the "I've seen that guy in movies before, but I can't remember his name" school. The hero, Cody, is played by Bradley Gregg who you all may remember as "Eyeball" from Stand By Me. Or for the horror fans, the unlucky sleepwalker who gets turned into a living puppet by Freddy Krueger in Nightmare 3. His brother, Angel, is played by Joshua Miller, that annoying kid from the vampire bunch in Near Dark. John P Ryan, the father in Larry Cohen's It's Alive is one of the androids. The third android is stock villain Patrick Kilpatrick, who we all know and love as "The Sandman" from the VanDamme prison extravaganza, Death Warrant.
It all sounds like too much fun to even handle, doesn't it? Well, you can probably handle it, so give it a whirl. Of course if you had HBO years back, you've probably seen this numerous times."

Class Of 1999

Crazy Jim | Massachusetts | 07/14/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Mark L. Lester's 1989 sci-fi/action film about a futuristic high school where groups of gangs wearing some of the goofiest clothes imaginable run areas surrounding high schools. These areas known as "free fire zones" are run exclusively by the gangs. In Seattle, a principal of one of those schools hires a defense department operative to build "cyborg teachers" to maintain order in his classrooms. One of the gangs is lead by Cody Culp (played by Bradley Gregg of "Stand By Me" fame), a freshly-paroled gangbanger hoping to go straight and stay out of trouble. The rival gang is lead by Hector (Jimmy Medina Tagert), a Hispanic thug looking to take out his agressions on Cody. This film features performances from such cult favorites as Pam Grier, Stacy Keach, Malcom McDowell, and Patrick Kilpatrick. I first saw this movie on HBO when I was eleven-years-old and I really enjoyed it. It's really just an old-fashioned over-the-top science fiction movie. It doesn't exactly stand up to the test of time in some areas but it's still good for a few laughs and has some of the better special effects you will see from that era of movies. A definite "guilty pleasure" by all means but still thoroughly entertaining. A film with a similar theme, THE FACULTY, was released in 1998. The movie is similar in theme though the teachers are aliens, this time, instead of cyborgs. Not half as good and way too commercial but I will admit that Josh Hartnett kicked [tail] in it (though he's no Bradley Gregg). If you've seen "Faculty", why not go and pick up this little cult film and see if you like it."