Class of 1984

Class of 1984 (1982) — watch online on iFILM. Canadian director Mark L. Lester's crime thriller stars Perry King as Andy, a new music teacher who walks into an inner-city school where metal detectors guard the entrance and a student gang runs the hallways.

The gang's leader is Peter Stegman — played by Tim Van Patten — a teenager who is smart, calculating, and operating a drug business inside the school walls. Andy tries to teach. Stegman views that as a provocation. As the confrontation escalates, both men cross lines they can't uncross. Roddy McDowall plays a burned-out biology teacher who gave up years ago, and a young Michael J. Fox appears in an early film role.

Lester made a brutal, no-frills picture — not a cautionary tale but a direct provocation about what happens when institutions stop functioning. That bluntness is exactly why it acquired cult status over the following decades. Stream Class of 1984 online on iFILM.