The film stars Perry King, Merrie Lynn Ross (who also served as co-executive producer), Timothy Van Patten, Lisa Langlois, Stefan Arngrim, Michael J.

The film featured various youth fashions of the time, including the punk look and image that was still popular in the early 1980s.

Peter's gang sells drugs and causes all kinds of mayhem, including the death of a student who buys PCP, climbs up a flagpole, and falls off.

They follow Andrew home and taunt him one night, spraying a red liquid on his face.

Andrew is frustrated, but the school principal is cynical and requires absolute proof of the gang's misconduct to act.

During lunch, the gang starts a food fight and forces their friend Vinnie to stab Arthur, causing him to be sent to a hospital.

Horrified by the photo, he runs off the podium in pursuit of Peter's gang; Deneen conducts the orchestra in his absence.

[8] In the United Kingdom, it received four minutes and fourteen seconds of cuts from the British Board of Film Classification, and was refused a video certificate four years later.

[11] Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin described the movie as an "[u]npleasant, calculatedly campy melodrama.

He further characterized the picture as a loose remake of The Blackboard Jungle, with King, Van Patten, and Fox in the roles of Glenn Ford, Vic Morrow, and Sidney Poitier, respectively.

[12] In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote: "Class of 1984 is raw, offensive, vulgar, and violent, but it contains the sparks of talent and wit, and it is acted and directed by people who cared to make it special".

[13] A negative review from 1982 in Time stated that the film "no longer terrifies, or even disgusts, the moviegoers for whom it is made...

Scharpling would often reference the movie on his weekly call-in radio program The Best Show on WFMU.