Metacritic reviews

You gorehounds will enjoy this one. Forty-two dead bodies. Two motor-vehicle chases with one crash-and-burn and one crash-and-plunge. Neck-snapping. Fireballs. Arm-ripping. Skull-drilling. Terminal spanking. Flaming supporting actor. Brutal push-ups. Student cut in half. Puke-a-rama. Six fistfights. Attempted rape. Kung Fu. Junkie Fu. Robot Fu. Forklift Fu. [22 Nov 1991]

A trashy teen derivative of The Road Warrior, Blade Runner, RoboCop, and every other retro-future fantasy that director Mark L. Lester could cram into the compactor.

Class of 1999 swiftly short-circuits on unspeakable, incessant brutality and bloodshed.

Class of 1999 is the paranoid student's dream movie, full of absurd battle scenes and failed attempts at dark humor.

Blood surges, splashes, drips, gushes, swamps, floods, swells, swishes, rains, slushes, shoots and smears over everything. The rest of the special effects -- a mechanical arm melting, a school chemistry lab bursting into flame, a head being twisted off a torso -- are nothing to write home about. [11 May 1990, p.E7]

This SCI-FI swill is the brain-child of director Mark L. Lester (Class of 1984), who says it’s really about “kids and the future of urban public education.” No, it’s not. It’s about kids and teachers kicking ass for two benumbing hours. What a waste.

Class of 1999 gets a D for dumb, dull and derivative, and so what if director Mark Lester, who made "Class of 1984" eight years ago, is borrowing from himself? The latter was just a punked-up version of the original rock-and-roll high school film, "Blackboard Jungle." For this new venture, Lester has simply tacked on elements of "Westworld," "RoboCop" and "Terminator" in a blatant attempt to enroll the action faction.

Not so much a sequel as a reworking of old nonsense, CLASS OF 1999 is a thuddingly dull B movie that borrows its few thrills from other, more satisfying films.

The violence of Class of 1999 is so extreme, so redundant and so meaningless that Lester ends by nullifying his own message - it seems that brutality in the name of law and order is wrong, but that brutality in the name of entertainment is just fine. [11 May 1990, p.E]