Class of 1999 (1990) — Triskaidekafiles

CLASS OF 1999

WRITERS: Story by Mark L. Lester
Screenplay by C.Courtney Joyner

DIRECTOR: Mark L. Lester

STARRING: Bradley Gregg as Cody Culp
Traci Lin as Christie Langford
John P. Ryan as Mr. Hardin
Pam Grier as Ms. Connors
Patrick Kilpatrick as Mr. Bryles
Joshua Miller as Angel
Jimmy Medina Taggert as Hector
` Stacy Keach as Dr. Forrest
Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Miles Langford

QUICK CUT: A kid gets out of jail and struggles to reintegrate back into society, as some new teachers also start their new jobs.

THE MORGUE

Cody - A young man, a gang member, but after a stint in prison, he is trying to be on the straight and narrow.

Christie - The principal’s daughter, and Cody’s love interest. She’s your typical good girl, doesn’t want to upset daddy, but also more than willing to go with the bad boy.

Hector - A rival gang leader, and personal rival to Cody.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Merry Triskmas, Triskelions! And here we are, at the end of 2019, on the edge of 2020, so what better time than to, as the song says, and party like it's Class of 1999? I really have no extended intro for this, so let's just dive right in.

The movie opens up with a geography lesson teaching us how in 1992 there were so many violent attacks in schools, that areas around them began falling to gangs. Eventually, spreading to whole cities falling. Huh, I know things were pretty bad in the 90s, but I don't remember them being THAT bad.

Which brings us to 1999 Seattle, and Kennedy High School, and a new wave of teachers is being brought in to wrest some order back from the brink of chaos.

As we meet the new RoboProfs, we also watch as Cody Culp, a young delinquent, is being released from prison, on an educational release program.

Cody finds his brother Angel outside the prison, and his fellow gang member Sonny, try and drive home, but the route Cody knows best has been taken over by Hector and the Razorheads.

The two groups pile into the only two souped up futurecars in the entire schoolpocalypse, to give us a car chase to spice up the start of the movie.

Wheel covers, the future is wheel covers, I tell ya!

Sonny keeps talking about Cody being back with them, how good it will be, and trying to get him back into old gang banger activities mere minutes out of prison. But to say you can sense Cody's reluctance undersells it. Prison changed him, he legitimately does not want to go back, and wants to have a good life.

I'm sure that will work out well for him!

As the kids get to school, Dr. Forrest heads in as well, and descends into the basement where they keep the cyborg monitoring lab. Geeze, all we had was the boiler room.

Cody settles into his chemistry class and meets his love interest, and the principal's daughter, Christie. The class meets their new RoboProf, Ms. Connors, and it goes about as well as can be expected.

They give her zero respect, get in her face, aaaand she immediately kicks their asses. Which goes some way to winning at least a little respect from most of the students.

Ahhh, education at its finest...with violence!

I’m here to teach students and chew bubblegun.

The next class for Cody is history, where he meets Mr. Hardin, another RoboProf. And he threatens the students with a zero tolerance policy. Not the thing you wanna have with robots, guys.

A fight soon breaks out for, oh it doesn't matter, and Hardin moves in to bust some kneecaps and keep order in his classroom.

He hilariously throws one of the gang members over his knee and spanks him repeatedly and mechanically.

The day eventually ends, and Cody and his brother head home, and his home life is just as awesome as you'd expect. Sonny got wrecked by Hardin, sliced him up real good, and he just needs some drugs to get through.

Angel finds some, but mom wants a hit too, as does Angel himself. Everyone fights over the drugs, and Cody has enough and heads outside to clear his head.

The next day, Cody heads to school, and hears Christie screaming out. He finds her on the verge of being assaulted by another student, and wails on him.

But this is a violation of his release, so he gets a stern talking to from the principal. Fortunately, he is grateful for what Cody did, and lets him off with this one warning.

During the chat, Cody throws shade on the new phys ed RoboProf, but unfortunately that's his next class. So Bryles roughs the kid up a bit during class.

Cody ends up being beaten to a bloody Culp, so yeah, THIS plan is going swimmingly.

Another students stumbles in, sees what's going on, and draws down on the teacher. There have been hints that robots are ex military tech, so THIS goes well. Bryles snaps the kid's neck in an instant.

Doctor Keach, who has been monitoring this the entire time, blurts out "That was a level seven multidimensional decision!" That's a grade 13 level section 9 variety of meaningless drivel!

Sonny arrives late to Hardin's class, stumbles around, and is eventually dragged out of the class to be disciplined.

Hardin takes Sonny to his locker, rips the door right off, and sees the student's drug stash. Seeing a solution to the problem, he forces Sonny to overdose and die right there.

With that taken care of, Hardin heads back and immediately returns to teaching, telling the story of Achilles and finding an opponent's weak spot.. Hmm. I am sure THAT lesson won't ever come back up.

Later, Principal McDowell wants answers, and the RoboProfs are just "Well hey, he was high on drugs, and we did what we felt was necessary! SURE we MADE him that way, but hey!"

Cody knows SOMEthing is up, but there's no way he's gonna jump to robot teachers, so he tries to get answers from the principal. Like everything else up to this point, his concerns get brushed aside.

He next tries to convince his gang, but even they aren't buying it, and a fight breaks out. So, your typical initiation for Angel.

Cody tries again to convince Christie, and this time it works. They cut class to go to Hardin's house, and investigate him. Christie sees on the faculty records that Bryles shares the address, and so doe Connors.

They find not much, literally. The house is very empty, the fridge is filled with nothing but cannisters of liquid, and cabinets are filled with WD-40.

Christie notices things are particularly off with Connors' room, as if the lack of beds wasn't enough. But there's almost no...stuff, there.

The investigation gets cut short however, when the RoboProfs return home, and the kids run off. But being military killbots, the teachers know someone was there, and chase them down.

Cody escapes on his bike, while Christie hides in the bushes. The teachers try and run him off the road, and eventually sail off a bridge into the river.

The teachers begin to seek vengeance, and oh shit oh shit, they go after Angel. The stalking and hunting of the kid, not to mention going to those lengths, that specific targeting, is kinda chilling.

While that's going on, they also go after the Razorheads by grabbing one of their members while he's getting pizza, setting him on fire, and flinging him through a window.

This has the results of pitting the two gangs against each other, which is pretty classic military maneuvers.

Razoerhead gang members, delivered hot in 30 minutes, or your money back.

At least this leads to a fun sequence where the two factions (three, but the robots are working in secret) go at each other in the most violent round of paintball ever.

Eventually, Cody finds Hardin lurking in the building, and blows him away. Well, he tries to, but being a killbot, it does nothing, and Cody runs off before he can join the rest of his fallen brethren.

Principal Langford is NOT happy at all the murder going on, and tries to get out of the deal. But Keach is having none of it, since he sees this as a good thing. Learn or be killed!

And since he's a threat to the program, Langford gets terminated instead.

Meanwhile, Hector gets a phone call from Cody, calling him out and challenging him to a one on one fight. Shortly afterwards, Cody receives the same.

But when the challenge is to be at school, Cody KNOWS it's not really Hector, because Hector would NEVER be caught at school after hours! Pfffff.

Cody and Hector show up at the school, and Cody tries again to convince someone that the teachers are the ones behind everything. But once he brings his brother into it, he convinces them. At least long enough to check things out. And if there aren't any teachers, then the truce is over.

We get a nice long sequence of the gangs splitting up and wandering the school, causing chaos, and it's lots of fun watching bikes roll through the halls.

Puppet Master 1999, featuring the new Torch!

They find Connors who goes all arsonist on them. They corner her in the chemistry room, turn on the gas, and she blows herself up. See, the importance of learning!!

Cody finds Christie, and makes Hardin eat some bullets, literally, blowing his skull to tiny metal fragments.

With those two down, naturally they run into Bryles, doing his best Terminator impression stakling them through the school.

Hector draws his attention, while Cody and Christie find a bus, hotwires it, and runs down the killing machine.

Then the Razorhead gang leader hears a noise so they rush off to check it out. What remains of Bryles pulls himself out of the fiery bus wreckage and follows them.

What they all find is Forrest looking to protect his investment, holding Christie at gunpoint to try and make his escape.

And that's when Bryles shows up, misreads the situation, but pulls a trick and does something right. He punches his fist right through Forrest, ending the threat.

Well, that still leaves the threat of Bryles, but thanks to some help from a forklift, they rip him in two, and now they're done.

So the movie comes to an end, and the gang war is over, pretty much for the sole reason that the entire gang population is DEAD.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: This is on an eight movie collection, with three other movies. So under those circumstances, it doesn’t look bad. Crisp and clean, and while there’s room for improvement, it’s not bad at all.

Audio: Sounds quite good.

Sound Bite: “You gotta lay off the steroids coach. I hear they shrink your penis.”

Body Count: There may be lots of deaths, but it’s hard to give the movie TOO much credit, since most of them happen all during the same scene.

1 - 35 minutes, coach snaps Mohawk's neck.
2 - Hardin forces a kid to OD
3 - Angel gets beaten up by the teachbots.
4 - Noser flung through the window on fire.
5 - Coach chokes out a gang member
6 - And snaps another's neck
7 - Then Foxy Brown snaps one
8 - One gang banger gets shot down
9 - And another
10, 11, and 12 - Also gunned down
13 - And ANOTHER
14 and 15 (at least) - Get grenaded
16 - Hardin rips Reedy in half
17 - Coach strangles the principal
18 through 21 - Dead techs seen as we pan by.
22 and 23 - Connors torches some bikers
24 - Kid gets drilled in the face by Hardin
25 - Hardin gets blown away
26 - Connors gets exploded'
27 - Hector gets shot
28 - Coach punches out Forrest's guts
29 - Cody rips apart coach.

Best Corpse: My fave death might be Reedy getting ripped in two. Besides that, maybe the kid getting his faced drilled into.

Blood Type - B: Some very solid creature effects with the killbots, and the movie is not entirely shy about blood being thrown around either.

Sex Appeal: Do bare technologic roboboobies count?

Drink Up! Every time someone says Blackheart

Movie Review: I didn’t know what I was in for, the idea sounded silly, the title even more so, but…I ended up quite liking this. The world feels mostly lived in and real, although a bit over the top, and nicely extrapolated from where we were in 1990. The acting isn’t great, but the stars are solid, the big names put on better performances than this movie deserves, and for the most part, the movie works. Four out of five cans of WD-40.

Entertainment Value: The movie is so camp. The gangs look straight out of the EIGHTIES, not even the 90s. The plot is based on reality and extrapolated out, but is also so over the top for what it is. Cody hams it up, chewing scenery and overacting, but he’s nothing compard to Keach. If anything, McDowell is the most restrained actor in this, But the movie is weirdly entertaining for all its silliness. Four out of five hijacked school buses