CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE

Well, here I go again, watching sequels before the original.  CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE.  In the first five or six minutes, I understood what happened in the original:  Professor Bob Forest created military battle androids programmed with a Cruela Deville-like sense of maintaining discipline.  Obviously the droids went ape-shit and started killing students.  The students prevailed and it was assumed that all of the droids were destroyed…

The movie opens with a truly humorous scene.  A man walks down the hall and introduces himself to the janitor as the Substitute teacher.  The janitor then points him toward the front office.  As the teacher walks down the hall, he hears voices behind a door.  When he opens the door an arm grabs him.  Seconds later, another man emerges from the room wearing The Substitute’s clothing– it’s Sasha Mitchell, Cody from STEP BY STEP.  When Sasha isn’t beating his wife (thank God for The Smoking Gun), apparently he is acting in bad horror movies. 

So Sasha plays “John Bolen”, a leftover droid from the Professor’s crew, bent on bringing a little discipline into a certain California high school.  You gotta love a movie where all of the high school students look like they are in their early thirties.  C’mon, what 17 year old has crow’s feet??  Sasha looks younger than some of the students he is supposed to be disciplining.   In one scene, a rebel student who has been suspended, shows up to torment hot teacher Jenna McKensie, played by Caitlin Dulany, and he is wearing animal teeth and animal fur?!  Yeah, that’s what the school bully was like at my school.  Nothing like a shark’s tooth to assert your dominance.

So John Bolen kills off the students one by one, until the thrilling climax where John realizes something shocking about himself.  Don’t worry, the ending isn’t worth waiting for as this movie is quite bad.  What is worth waiting for is Jenna McKensie’s various jogs through the forest (wearing her skin tight running pants) and her nude scene towards the end of the movie – just fast forward to it.

Another great thing about B-horror movies is that the actors typically do their own stunts.  In this movie, one of the actors was clearly hurt when he was thrown down a flight of stairs.  As I watched him fall down the stairs, I hit the SLO-MO and noticed that the kid clearly broke character as he fell onto the first step.  Ouch!  I guess the budget didn’t call for a body double.

This movie was not an easy view at all.  It tries to be a cheesy Terminator b-horror movie and in some parts it succeeds as Sasha busts out lines like: “Discipline is necessary to preserve order”, “Now class is dismissed, gentlemen” and “I’m putting you on permanent detention” as he kills each student, but, all in all, this movie isn’t interesting enough to hold one’s attention for too long.

RATING:  * (out of four stars)