Class of 1984

A new music teacher takes a post at an inner-city school where the punk kids run a protection racket, deal in the toilets, and answer to a coldly clever ringleader smarter than every adult in the building. For a while it plays like an after-school panic reel about Kids Today, then it curdles into a full vigilante revenge picture once the gang goes after the teacher's pregnant wife. Mark Lester shoots the escalation with real nasty energy, a young Michael J. Fox turns up as a doomed student, and Roddy McDowall steals the film as a burnt-out colleague who brings a gun to biology class. It is exploitation wearing the mask of social comment, and much more fun than the sermon it pretends to be. Trashy, mean, and weirdly prophetic about how these arguments still sound today.