Heathers (1988)

  I have returned from my sojourn down South!  It was unseasonably warm, which was the nicest present I could have gotten.  I missed yesterday's post (again) because I was traveling all day and had no opportunity.

Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) hates her friends, the poisonous Heathers, but especially ringleader Heather Chandler (Kim Walker).  Heather delights in making everyone around her as miserable as possible to reinforce her own popularity.  But Veronica's boyfriend, J.D. (Christian Slater), has the perfect plan to put Heather in her place:  kill her and make it look like a suicide.  Veronica soon finds herself caught up in a rash of teen suicides (both real and staged) and starts to think J.D. may not be the most positive influence.

I love love love this movie.  Always have.  Always will.  The more times I see it, the more I'm impressed with its fucked up brilliance.  This was the movie that gave me my schoolgirl crush on Christian Slater, which lasted an embarrassingly long time.  He was exactly the person I wanted to date in high school, murderous impulses and all.

If you liked Mean Girls but thought it could use a lot more death and destruction, this is the movie for you.  The hair and costumes scream the 80s but the underlying snark over how high school enforces the law of the jungle, lemming-like social behavior, and blatantly disregarding someone's actions in life in favor of tender eulogies are still very prescient today.