Celebrate the “back to school” season with Class of 1984. So many movies make high school look like fun. It’s nice to see one that goes over the top in making it look like Hell on Earth. Perry King is the new music teacher at a graffiti-strewn inner city high school that’s lorded over by a gang of drug-running punk-haired toughs. The other teachers all submit, the principal looks the other way, and the police are ineffectual, but you know who WON’T submit, look the other way, and be ineffectual? That’s right. Old square-jawed Perry King. He kicks the bozos out of his class and breaks up drug exchanges in the boy’s room, which quickly makes him a target for the gang. King can only do so much though because his job is at risk if he gets too aggressive and the gang are all under 18 so the law will only handle with kid gloves. Eventually, the punks push him too far and then it’s time for Perry to get creative with that woodshop class table saw. It’s basically an update of Blackboard Jungle from 1955.
Great hateful bad guys in this, with the leader of the JDs played by Timothy Van Patten. The best performance though comes from Roddy McDowell as a hard-drinking veteran Biology teacher who slowly loses his marbles throughout the film, culminating in a classic scene where he holds his class at gunpoint while he quizzes them on the science lessons.
A young Michael J. Fox shows up here as a band class nerd who gets mixed up with the gang.