"I AM THE FUTURE" ALICE COOPER AND CLASS OF 1984

I think over the course of the last four years I've made it pretty clear that I was a late night TV junky. Ever since I caught a really bad Christopher Lee sci-fi flick at 3 am, I became obsessed with staying up all hours of the night to see what dark delights the weird old TV gods would bestow upon me. Especially when we got cable in the mid 80s. Especially when I got a little TV for my bedroom and I was able to run a cable splitter from the living room TV to my bedroom. Back then USA, TBS, Fox, WGN, and sometimes even the big three would play horror, action, and exploitation films post 11PM. That's how I spent my weekends, flipping through all these channels to find that sweet spot.
Two of my favorite movies that seemed to play all the time were The Warriors and Class Of 1984. I'll be covering The Warriors later this week, in honor of Waxwork Records' original soundtrack double vinyl release, which I have received in the mail, and holy crap, it's awesome!

Class Of 1984 was my first punk film and featured Alice Cooper's "I Am The Future" in the opening credits. At the point I first watched Class Of 1984, Cooper's Trash had just come out. It was his first really big hit record in some time, but it wasn't a very 'Alice' record. It was lousy with guest spots from Aerosmith and Bon Jovi and veered away from the theatrical rock he was known for and more

towards the poodle head cock rock of the day. Fortunately, Trash was still way better than anything by the flavor of the week pop metal bands and actually still holds up pretty well today. I was new to Alice at the time though and very excited about Trash and played it constantly. So I was already hungry for more, especially since my mom had banned Alice from house for being sick and Satanic.

Catching Class Of 1984 was random happenstance while flipping through the channels. It was just starting and didn't take much to hook me, especially when I saw Alice's name in the credits. If you're unfamiliar with this 1982 cult classic, let me give you a little info; it was written by Tom Holland (Psycho II, Fright Night, The Beast Within, Cloak and Dagger, Child's Play) and directed by Mark Lester (Showdown In Little Tokyo, Firestarter, Commando)-cult film royalty, and starred Perry King (Riptide), Roddy McDowall (Fright Night, Black Hole, Planet Of The Apes, Batman '66) and Timothy Van Patton (who went on to direct episode of Sopranos and Game of Thrones among many other shows) and was even Michael J Fox's film debut. Lester also wrote and directed the, um sequel (?) Class Of 1999, which came out in 1990. If you're unfamiliar with that one too, well go find it!

King plays the new music teacher in a really bad school where the kids run wild and terrorize everyone. He has a pregnant wife at home and has basically hit the shit storm jackpot coming to work here. He befriends McDowall's character, who tries to show King the ropes (like carrying a pistol in his briefcase!). Van Patton is the leader of gang of violent, drug dealing punks who push McDowall to his breaking point and forces King to take some drastic action.

I don't want to give away to much more! Class Of 1984 is a really dark action/exploitation film with the heart of a horror movie. You could certainly draw comparisons to old westerns where the good guy shows up in a town run by a bunch of outlaws and has to bring law and order, but there's no clean hands or white hats and no one rides off into the sunset. This movie puts you through the wringer.

If you listen to "I Am The Future" out of context of the film it just sounds like one of those great Alice rock rebellion anthems like "Department Of Youth" or "School's Out". Applied to Class Of 1984 and it's a dire warning of a future going down in flames, of youth rising up and eating their parents, of a day where you can't run to a teacher or a cop for protection...

When does a dream become a nightmare?

When do we do what must be done?

When do we stand and face the future?

When there is nowhere left to run?

And you've got to learn

Just how to survive

You've got to learn

How to keep your dream alive

Take a look at my face

I am the future

How do you like what you see?

Take a look at my face

I belong to the future

And you belong to me

Class Of 1984 was released on Blu Ray from the awesome Scream Factory. It really is a chilling film even now and recommended for fans of Suburbia (Penelope Spheeris) and The Warriors.

My Heroes Have Been Monsters Part 13

 When I was in the 4th grade my family got HBO. There must have been some promotion/special price, because there was never any money for such extravagence, but we had it and I had something special to go along with it...a lack of supervision! This was during the slasher boom of the 80's and on top of the cable I had a friend named Joey who collected Fangoria and brought them to school all the time, so I was hip to what was coming out and what was worth watching. And by my recollection there was no escaping the tv spots for Friday The 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. Hell, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince did a song about Freddy and Robert Englund appeared on Nickelodeon!

 When I was a teenager I started working my way through my local video store's horror section, finding brilliance and stupidity in equal numbers. Halloween become my favorite of the slasher franchises. For some reason Michael Myers captured my imagination and I continued to love all the sequels up to H2O. I thought the Friday the 13th films were a bit spotty, my favorites being parts 4, 5 and 6. Part 3 was the only one I found to be unwatchable (until Jason Takes Manhattan...bleh).

The thing about these films was that they were cool and sometimes cartoonish, but never very scary. Halloween and Friday both had moments that would haunt me, but I didn't find them to be particularly horrifying. Then I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Leatherface hit a nerve with me and I found myself half buried under a blanket on the couch by myself at two o'clock in the morning hating myself for putting the movie on...but I couldn't turn it off. I had to see how it ended. Gritty and grainy, super realistic. I mean, look at that pic to the left! Freddy's wise cracking doesn't compare. Even though you knew they would be back for another film, Freddy and Jason always got beat in the end. Leatherface was just left on the side of the road pissed off! Free to torture and maim beyond the credits! Nothing new now, but I was only in the 6th grade and had only experienced these mainstream slasher films, nothing so nihilistic.

 Unencumbered by rationale, the Nightmare On Elm Street films were by far the most imaginative and fun. Anything could happen, because it all happened in dreams. Freddy could be anywhere or anything, leaving the series wide open and limited only by the imagination of the writers and directors. Johnny Depp's death scene, in the first film, is still one of the most memorable death scenes I can remember. The only time I found myself disappointed with the series is about half way through part 6, Freddy's Dead, where what started off so promising began to feel like the film was just running out the clock trying to get to the conclusion with standard slasher filler. Wes Craven's return to the series (first time since the first film) with New Nightmare was nice and a fresh take and would have been a good final farewell to Fred, but who can say no Freddy vs. Jason, even if it sucked how could you not see that film if you grew up on these this stuff?

So these days we have all these modern classics getting remade. When they announced the TCM remake I was entirely unenthused, I watched it of course, and it wasn't bad at all, the same with the remakes of Friday, Halloween, Nightmare, My Bloody Valentine or whatever. The remakes are fine movies, sometimes they even improve some aspects of the original (remakes of The Fly, The Thing, and The Blob in the 80's certainly did), but why don't the studios just run the originals in the theatre again? I'd pay to see TCM 2, Nightmare 3, or any of the first five Halloween's on the big screen and I know I'm not alone. The other aspect of the remakes that rubs me the wrong way is that for every remake coming out that's an original film not being made. As a struggling writer I'm not encouraged by the trend of repeating. Of course, how many different Frankenstein films have I paid for? Oh well, when is the Halloween 3 remake coming out?

And just because I don't want to hear any complaining that I didn't mention Child's Play...

...that first one is still creepy!

Keep watching the sky, nerds!