SummaryA new teacher at a troubled inner-city high school soon ends up clashing with the delinquent leader of a punk posse that runs the school.
Directed By:Mark L. Lester
Written By:Tom Holland, Mark L. Lester, John C.W. Saxton, Barry Schneider
Class of 1984
Metascore
Mixed or Average
49
User score
Generally Favorable
6.2
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
18% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
55% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
27% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
88
It is violent, funny, scary, contains boldly outlined characters, and gets us involved. It also has a lot of style.
60
Violent update of The Blackboard Jungle.
60
Class Of 1984 anticipated Lean On Me, The Substitute, and a spate of other high-school thrillers and docudramas that advocated a fight-fire-with-fire approach to teen violence, but it’s vastly more entertaining.
50
Class of 1984 is sort of crudely funny. The movie's idea of punk culture is also picturesque. But it quickly gets worse and worse until it achieves a degree of awfulness that, though rare, isn't much fun.
50
No matter how much director Mark Lester attempts to hide his sermonizing behind sensationalistic-pedagogic terrorism, he does himself in whenever a jaded cop shrugs his shoulders and grunts, for the umpteenth time, What can we do, they’re juveniles?
30
One of the nastiest movies of our time, it pretends to be horrified by endemic violence in our schools while actually exploiting violence with a coldblooded cynicism that's worse than the violence itself. [30 Aug 1982, p.61]
25
Lester's film is so clearly about getting even rather than about troubled youth or any other societal problem that it seems, like Death Wish II and a hundred others, a waste of that energy. [16 Nov 1982, p.B4]
User score
Generally Favorable
44% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
44% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
13% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Feb 2, 2023
6
Considering this was an eighties exploitation film I was surprised to see that it is still relevant today. The problems in our schools haven't changed in twenty years. I found the political satire truly fascinating and the fear of a school run by a gang of drug dealers and not the authorities that should have been running it a genuine nightmare. The problem is that there are many unbelievable and questionable factors associated with the production. This is entertaining mostly because it shows that nothing changes (except special effects) in a stark way. Deserves a graphic disturbing remake.
Jul 26, 2023
0
Le film très typique qui se déroule dans un bahut de racailles avec son prof ébahi qui débarque là-dedans comme un chien dans un jeu de quilles… sauf qu’il fait la quille, le blaireau ! C’est malheureusement fort pâlot et bien ballot entre clichés maladroits et mal exploités, comédiens à la ramasse (à noter l’apparition d’un petit inconnu dénommé Fox, on le reconnaît à peine !) et situations vues et déjà vues : l’ennui y fait donc son nid très vite. Tout ça tient davantage du téléfilm qu’autre chose, et cette autre chose s’apparente à un un gros navet des familles que le temps qui passe n’a pas arrangé, loin de là ! Non, on trouve beaucoup mieux dans le genre et pourtant de la même époque avec Le Proviseur et (surtout) The Substitute !
