Macabre…ish Horror Review: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute
Class of 1999 II: The Substitute, 1994/ 1 hr 27 min
A battle droid escaped Dr. Forrest’s (Stacy Keach) lab after the disaster at Blissfield and turned up at a school in Bend, Oregon, taking the place of a substitute teacher as John Bolen (Sasha Mitchell) After having a physical confrontation with some delinquents in the hallway, he is called into the principal’s office and kills him when he enquires about his work history.
In the parking lot, Bolen finishes the gang off after he’s shot, point blank at his chest, with the car chained shut, he tosses a grenade into the car and kills them all.
Later, John Bolen arrives at an even worse school, in Monroeville, California with worse and more violent students. But also, in this town, is a military museum that he’s interested in. Almost immediately, a kid gets sent out of class and Bolen follows him to the roof and later the kid is found hanging from a flag pole.
Meanwhile, a man, GD Ash (Rick Hill) is investigating Dr. forrest’s work and program and he has realized that one of the programs android’s is missing and he’s piecing together what happened at Blissfield High and following the android’s back trail of destruction.
And at Monroeville, a teacher, Jenna McKenzie (Caitlin Dulany), is being terrorized by students who she witnessed shoot another student. And she is set to testify against him but doesn’t feel supported by her boyfriend, Emmett (Nick Cassavettes), owner of the military museum. And John starts getting rid of the troublemakers.
GD Ash is hot on John’s trail and figures out John has secrets that even he doesn’t acknowledge.
After Jenna’s house is shot up, she’s over it. She quits and changes her mind about testifying. She and Emmitt spend the night together and a jealous John Bolen destroys Emmitt’s bunker.
The next day during paintball, it really gets dangerous, John is killing kids and Jenna is still in danger because the gang plans to finish her during the game. But she has her own secret.
This 90s horror action was directed by Spiro Razatos. This movie, while it was meant to be a direct continuation of the first, lost that apocalyptic feel and seemed to be about a dangerous substitute teacher making the rounds to schools for troubled teens and killing students as he went. The fight scenes and effects were ok.
There was a few stalled moments and some inconsistencies that were explained at the end of the movie. Many of the lines were unfortunate and unintentionally hilarious. There’s a pretty long adult scene. The end is left open for a third movie, so while it seemed longer than it was, it also felt incomplete. It’s a nice nostalgic flick but you might not like it if this is your first time seeing it.