Heathers
In the long gone era known as the 80s, a man named John Hughes managed to successfully bottle teen angst and sell it on the mass marketplace, making a legend for himself and giving teenagers an antidote for their anxieties to this day. But there was one movie from 1988 NOT made by Hughes that raised the bar to a whole new level, this black comedy that both mocked and embraced the bullshit of growing up, and thus probably holds up today better than any of The Master’s work. It started off with an incredibly witty, articulate script by Daniel Waters which he intended to sell to Stanley Kubrick as being “his” type of film, and wound up being a lower profile piece directed by journeyman Michael Lehmann that still made an enormous impact upon release. Telling the story of a teenage girl (Winona Ryder, long before her dippy hippie shoplifting scandal tanked her career entirely) who longs to be popular, and thus enters the process of inducting herself into The Heathers, a trio of girls (all named Heather) with beautiful faces, bodies, and fashion sense, who rule the high school they attend almost solely because of that beauty they possess, hypnotizing the guys and bowing the heads of the girls who wish they could be them. Eventually she meets and falls for an outsider rebel (Christian Slater in a turn that made him a Legend to this day), who gets her wrapped around his little finger and then hatches into a grand plan: start killing off the most popular and entitled people in the school, then disguise it to look like a suicide, thus making the victims more popular than ever and in an indirect way bringing the different cliques and walks of life together in the school, not to mention glamorizing the act of teen suicide to the point that it becomes thought of as a literal option for troubled teenagers with nowhere to turn. THAT is literally the conceit that makes the whole enterprise so brilliant, so much so that in many ways this could NEVER get the greenlight to be made today in the era of political correctness and climate of gay and other teens killing themselves in the wake of bullying. In the lead role, Ryder is to be commended for her easily relatable, down to Earth nature, getting caught up in a scheme of murder and madness and yet never losing her likability, but it is Slater who entered the pantheon of unforgettable movie characters with his Jason Dean, a twisted, psychotic, yet charismatic figure who only needs Ryder at his side to carry out his grandiose plans, even going so far as to have backroom dealings to manipulate and control the power of the social infrastructure at the school. The irony that Slater at the time was said to be mimicking Jack Nicholson in his performance has now been thwarted all these years later by the fact that his acting here almost seemed to look ahead to Heath Ledger’s Joker in terms of style, attitude and seeming bent towards anarchy in his nature, and today seems nothing at all like anything Nicholson did. In other roles, we have Kim Walker as the incredibly beautiful and equally bitchy leader of The Heathers, perfectly epitomizing the spirit of the film and sadly uttering the famous line “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” when she herself died a number of years later from just that (also notable is the fact that an actor playing a minor character shown praying to not let himself commit suicide – played by Jeremy Applegate – did just so with a shotgun years later). Then we have Shannen Doherty as the heir apparent to The Heathers’ throne, locking in her hateful spoiled bitch reputation that followed her through her years on 90210 and making her one of the most disliked female stars of all time, along with Lisanne Falk as the deeply insecure cheerleader Heather, one shot Oscar nominee Penelope Milford as the idiot hippie teacher who leads the movement to bring the school together as one, and Glenn Shadix as the overly dramatic preacher who oversees the funerals of several characters. The anything goes storyline and wild climax leaves the viewer breathless, and as said, the vernacular of the script is so verbose in and of itself, showing both a deep sense of articulation and a tendency to create its own new lingo for the teen culture (some of which caught on) while still giving the crazy (and now proven true) impression that American teenagers are almost alien in the way they think and see the world from the rest of us, thus locking this in as a Classic For The Ages, every bit the essential viewing for young people that The Breakfast Club is, and a gutsy, daring attempt at black comedy that succeeded on every level…
10/10