Did Mark L. Lester, the man behind Commando, intend us to take Class of 1984 to be a satire of the overblown panic about violence in schools or a gravely serious warning about what he deemed an apathetic, dangerous next generation? Either way, it’s an abject failure even if it does typify Canuxploitation. (Also, he definitely intended us to take it seriously)
This may not be an especially good movie, but I enjoyed it more than My Bloody Valentine or Black Christmas, the latter of which contains some effective bits of filmmaking but is too proto to be an actually effective slasher and doesn’t work as a pre-slasher murder mystery either. I’ve compared Class of 1984 to “Her Smell” in that it helps if you’ve got enough appreciation for antisocial punk misbehavior to vicariously enjoy all the awfulness the characters get up to. You’re right that some of the serious material is tonally an odd fit, but then the later acts of Her Smell when we’re supposed to care about a person who’s been nothing but awful earlier are also a shift (though of course done much better).
I think it helps to understand the backlash against the 60s/counterculture (and young people) if you look at crime stats over the years. It really started going up in the 60s, accelerated in the 70s, plateaued in the 80s, and only came down persistently after 94 (some people theorize that timeline is because of leaded gasoline emissions). For the past few decades we’ve been living in an era where crime has mostly gone down, with the 2014-2016 rise being something of a blip. It’s going up again now, but it remains to be seen if the country as a whole is shifting back to the bad old days.
I don’t think either this or Commando are supposed to be parodies at all. They’re just someone having fun while making a genre movie. Hot Shots Part Deux is an actual parody of movies like Commando.
This may not be an especially good movie, but I enjoyed it more than My Bloody Valentine or Black Christmas, the latter of which contains some effective bits of filmmaking but is too proto to be an actually effective slasher and doesn’t work as a pre-slasher murder mystery either. I’ve compared Class of 1984 to “Her Smell” in that it helps if you’ve got enough appreciation for antisocial punk misbehavior to vicariously enjoy all the awfulness the characters get up to. You’re right that some of the serious material is tonally an odd fit, but then the later acts of Her Smell when we’re supposed to care about a person who’s been nothing but awful earlier are also a shift (though of course done much better).
I think it helps to understand the backlash against the 60s/counterculture (and young people) if you look at crime stats over the years. It really started going up in the 60s, accelerated in the 70s, plateaued in the 80s, and only came down persistently after 94 (some people theorize that timeline is because of leaded gasoline emissions). For the past few decades we’ve been living in an era where crime has mostly gone down, with the 2014-2016 rise being something of a blip. It’s going up again now, but it remains to be seen if the country as a whole is shifting back to the bad old days.
I don’t think either this or Commando are supposed to be parodies at all. They’re just someone having fun while making a genre movie. Hot Shots Part Deux is an actual parody of movies like Commando.