There’s a new addition to MVD Entertainment Group’s popular “Rewind Collection” Blu-ray line of products heading home on June 21. This would be none other than the Blu-ray debut of writer/director Don Murphy’s 1990 direct-to-VHS releases of Class of Fear.
What? A one-shot director with a direct to video release through Monarch Home Video back in 1992 somehow gets the coveted “Rewind Collection” status?
The answer is that there is a method to the madness of MVD with this lost gem being plucked from the dust bin of VHS history and being resurrected for a Blu-ray. You have to understand who Don Murphy is to connect the promotional dots on this one.
Don Murphy is a very bright guy, who, way back in the 1986 was on the fast track to becoming a high-powered corporate-type attorney. The education, the grades and connections — Georgetown University, a degree in business, his father ran an ad agency and he was on his way to law school … when he suddenly decided to run away to the circus! He shifted his grad-studies to USC and its film school.
His classmates were the likes of Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men, Bohemian Rhapsody, etc.) and Jon Turteltaub (While You Were Sleeping, National Treasure, The Meg). Either while still attending, or shortly thereafter, he produced, directed and wrote Monday Morning, which was finished sometime in 1990, and retitled by Monarch Home Video to Class of Fear when it arrived on VHS two years later. It would be the only film that he would direct.
Sometime in the early 1990s he optioned a screenplay titled Natural Born Killers from a writer by the name of Quentin Tarantino. Whoa, what, Quentin Tarantino? Yes, that Quentin Tarantino!
Murphy then parlayed that option into a producer’s credit on director Oliver Stone’s film production of Natural Born Killers. He followed that by teaming up with former classmate, Bryan Singer, to produce Apt Pupil in 1998. A few additional film productions later Murphy hit the motherlode with Transformers … and then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen … and Transformers: Dark of the Moon … and on … and on.
You get the picture, from film school to Hollywood power broker. But he had to start somewhere and that was with Monday Morning, which is exactly why MVD has given this film “Rewind Collection” status.
Monday Morning stars Noah Blake (Teen Witch, Trapper County War … as Brett in the Harry and the Hendersons sitcom) as Bobby, a high school kid who finds himself holding his biology class hostage with a gun. A gun that has been used to kill a teacher! Sounds like a pretty crappy day at school for Bobby.
How did this come to be? Rewind back to his arrival at Oceana High School. He’s an outsider, his family moves around quite a bit, but he meets a beautiful young woman by the name of Noreen, played by former Gold Metal Olympic Gymnast Julianne McNamara (Saturday the 14th Strikes Back) and they hit it off.
Things are looking up, until Noreen’s brother, James (Brandon Hooper) gets a whiff of Bobby, who clearly does not measure up to his standards. His big plan is to bring a gun to school and intimidate this “loser” … things of course go south, dead teacher and Bobby looking guilty as hell!
So, does Bobby walk out of that classroom alive? June 21 and the “Rewind Collection” debut of Monday Morning on Blu-ray (also available on DVD) from MVD Entertainment Group to find out that answer!!
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