The Drifting Classroom (1987) User Reviews (9)

Also in it

[Fliction · 5/10 · 22 June 2006]

Hello,

I was in the movie too but only as an extra. I was part of the group of kids from NAS Kamiseiya & Atsugi. It was a great learning experience and lots of fun. Everyone from the Director on down was polite and energetic. I'm hoping to get lucky and get the movie again because I gave a copy to my friend to record before I left Japan but never got it back. I remember the person who played Kenny and was glad to see someone had at least left comment on the movie :D When we saw it on opening night I remember seeing several people get emotional towards the end of the movie. Was really good to see that everyone's effort had impressed the

I was in the Movie

[Fenix-8 · 6/10 · 17 March 1999]

The filming of it was fun and a great learning experience for me. My family and I watched the premiere on opening night in Tokyo, Japan. The movie is interesting in storyline content, and one that leaves the ending to the viewer. Its Science Fiction content would leave any open minded writer the room to expand and possibly create another world within that the character's are thrust into. It is about a band of kids who attend an international school. An unusal warp gate pulls them into an unknown future, and one that isn't so friendly in the beginning. It deals with a boy who must break away from the ties of being irresponsible, to lead the survivors. As I said, the ending is left to the viewer. And for the time period that the movie was released, left a couple of tears trailing from audience members.

Drifting plot and story.

[thomas-korn · 6/10 · 5 March 2021]

I guess the movie lives up to the title as the story, plot and characters drift around. You have no idea exactly what is going on. I have been informed it is based on a popular Manga ...where the director toned down a lot of the dark creepy stuff.. remember, this movie does have soem dark creepy stuff happening! The manga is volumes long. They tried to condense the massive story into 2 hours. That usually doesn't work out as in this case.

Would I watch it again, sure. Would I recommend it to anyone.. .maybe. But only because the name Ôbayashi does tell me some effort into making it good is usually there.

The best time of my high school years

[artgjohnson · 20 June 2001]

My name is Arthur Johnson, and I was in the movie. I played the role of Kenny. It was a great film from beginning to the end. Even though special effects wasn't that great back then. But all the slob, mud, sand, and fire, we had to endure. I think was well worth it. Especially the huge cock roaches we had to battle in the classrooms. I'm glad I had that experience of doing that movie, because I am currently living in California, trying to revamp my acting career. Even though I am in a 14 yr drout. lol I don't think anybody who was in the movie is going to read this. Since it was in 1987, and filmed in Japan. A lot of people in the states never even heard about it. In american, the movie was called Drifting Classroom. I don't know why everybody post the Japanese translation. It was also an honor to work with Troy Donahue, and all my other high school classmates.

Drifting Classroom

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 18 April 2024]

The Drifting Classroom is based on a horror manga series written and illustrated by Kazuo Umezu, who also had his work turned into the movies The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch and Tamami: The Baby's Curse and the TV series Umezu Kazuo: Kyofu gekijo. The series was originally serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1972 to 1974 and is about a school building that has been mysteriously transported through time to a post-apocalyptic future.

Directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (who not only directed House, he was also the man who made the Charles Bronson Mandom commericial) with a cast of untrained actors who were actual students at the Kobe International School, this film takes the sprawling story of the manga and tries to turn it into a condensed film. It avoids one of the major points of the original story as the adults almost all go mad and literally go to war with the young children who have to fight back.

I also have no idea why they shot this in English with Japanese subtitles instead of just making it in the native language. It isn't like there was a huge crowd in the U. S. dying to see an adaption of a manga made two decades before outside of some hardcores. Maybe they thought that Troy Donahue was still a big deal?

As if it were bad enough that Sho and the other students have traveled through a time slip, this end of the world situation also has monstrous cockroaches that go wild and attack the school, killing many of the children. Yes, a movie that holds back nothing while also having song and dance numbers every few moments. As you can imagine, I'm fascinated by this film.

There's also a friendly little alien that feels badly that the children have no water to wash their faces, so he urinates in their faces. Where else are you going to see that? Or a child ride a tricycle into the next reality? I'm not saying this is great, but it's weird and sometimes that's better than great.

Outstanding

[dauber2 · 10/10 · 21 June 1999]

I am seriously biased about this movie as I was in it. My character piggy was a great comical relief as the schools' world became a sandy mess as they were catapulted into the future. So of course I would rate this movie a ten

A classic in its own right

[claytonian-1 · 9/10 · 2 December 2006]

I voted 10 for excellent, but let me be clear; this movie is bad in the best possible ways. Almost Manos, Hands of Fate bad. You will laugh your self hoarse. The movie really is confused about itself; it doesn't know whether it is a horror movie or a light-hearted kids movie. And what ever happened to the adults? We only really see one or two die. they just disappear. The plot holes only add to the hilarity. The ending of the movie is the funniest part, though to its poor Japanese writer, it was probably very touching before he translated it to English.

Man, I would love to interview Arthur Johnson or some of the other stars from this movie to see what the bilingual process of movie making is like. That would be A-grade movie blog material.

I was in this movie also

[csanpedro · 10/10 · 14 August 2005]

I was also in this movie, it was the best experience I've ever had growing up in Japan. I went to school in Yokosuka and later moved to Atsugi attending Zama, but I'm a Yo-Hi Devil forever!!! Any who, I was not a main character I was playing two different characters (as an extra), we spent all our free times just hanging out waiting for our turn to shoot our scene...got treated to McDonalds a lot :-)

This movie is your typical Japanese "Godzilla" like movie and the special effects back then were cool...notice I said back then! If you were to watch this movie now, you'd think differently, so if ever seeing, please keep in mind that this movie was made back in 1987. I would love to hear from the other two that has posted a comment on this.

drifting between space and time

[froouv · 9/10 · 13 January 2023]

A great story that melts together different moods and genres, starting first as a teen comedy, later merging into apocalyptic survival diary somewhere in between space and time. The movie takes us to a journey to the unknown, where one gets to think of relationships, joys of ordinary, tiredness from hierarchies, as well as other dimensions and possibility of co-existence with non-human beings. Loved the ending since it doesn't have an expectable finale, and invites viewers to think of narrative continuation by themselves. Also! Nobuhiko Obayashi's imagination and his ways to build visual effects always brings a sense of magic.