Greg I finally got around to seeing Heathers after all of these years. It is kind of funny seeing the parallels between Chrstian Slater's J.D. and his character on Mr. Robot.The good: It very much captures the teenage angst of the late 80's in pre-Internet world. Slater and Ryder do excellent jobs with their characters. There are many quotable lines and funny moments. This is a very dark comedy and you can tell that tongues or often planted firmly in cheek.The bad: This movie could never be made today with the epidemic of school schootings and teen suicides etc. Slater's character was very prescient in forseeings what would be coming a decade later. One can even argue that poplularization of a film like this spread the message of the anguished, outsider teen who gets glory by attacking a school and killing people. but obviously the filmmakers cannot be held responsible for what happens later.The other thing that bothers me about the film is that it often falls into as many cliches as it avoids. 80's teen films were very homophobic. Here we see the typical set-up: Football players call the protagonist/villain a f*g, he then reciprocates in framing this elaborate scheme in which the boys die allegedly as gay lovers. It is often not clear where the satire ends and genuine homophobia so prevalent in the 1980's comes into play. Yes, it is clearly a joke that the fact they have mineral water, a Joan Crawford postcard etc., which they just carry around, is a sure sign they are gay. It is less clear that the way their day is presented is supposed to be a joke - the town seems to all ridicule the dead boys for being gay and share a common disgust and the audience gets the impression that the gay frame-up is the just reward for having called Slater a f*g in the beginning.Moreover, the film really ends on a bit of a cliched note. Ryder has participated in several murders but just walks away from the attempted mass-murder of the school like nothing happened. This time, she will be nice to the overweight student with zero social life - who was really just a prop for ridicule in this world, so that makes it all ok. Again, this is a black comedy and parody but, again, it is not always clear what cliches of the teen genre they are avoiding and which ones, some greatly unacceptable by today's standards, they fall right into.

matthewjs-56919 This film is amazing its a perfect satire on the "john hughes" type films of the mid to late 80s. While those films are great in there own fun amd quirky ways this is pne pf those that truly captures the struggles and angst of teens at that time and I still think that it applies today. Its the perfect teen satire. A must watch and a must in your movie collection!

Elain-ee Heathers had a really, really well-timed appearance in my life. It came out when I was halfway through my first year of junior high at the end of the 1980s, and feeling utterly bewildered by these outlandish creatures around me: the eighties trendsetters. Their alien styles and feral egotism was captured perfectly in Heathers, depicting the way high school seems when seen through the eyes of a meek, unpretentious beginner. Veronica Sawyer (played by Ryder) is a girl like you, me and pretty much anyone that was ever a junior student, desperate to fit in. But not THAT desperate!The garish style of the characters in Heathers was never meant to be realistic... a fact that seems to have been lost on almost all viewers that were born after 1985. It was a brutal and massive send-up of everything that was hateful about the 1980s - and there was loads! But despite all the exaggeration, Heathers served up a very accurate reflection of way that the secondary school environment really seemed to my dazed, adolescent eyes. And yet shoulder pads were never *that* big, hippies were never THAT f*cked up in class and the bad boy never carried a gun (this was back in the days before the real high school shootings began). We all knew that Heathers wasn't meant to be realistic, at least not on a factual level. It was meant to be realistic on an emotional one, though, and it fully succeeded at that. It was a revenge fantasy flick with a heart: a satirical and strangely sensitive depiction of the awe and shame that all teens feel about their high school experience. Just when Heathers starts to seem like it's turning into a cartoonish, late-night stoner special, the murders begin. And then it gets dark... and awesome. Anyone who's been to a high school where they met their own 'Heathers' will feel alternately euphoric and disturbed about the events that follow. And that's what they should feel: it's a tale that's meant to make you reflect, and question your easy assumptions about the way 'everybody else' is. Even the "Heathers" in your life. It's a shame that Americans have stopped making films that really delve into the ugliest, funniest parts of being a teen the way that Heathers did. Subsequent generations of juniors could have really benefited from seeing more stuff like this. Teens generally have very few chances to really reflect upon their attitudes, and maybe even change them before setting off on a destructive (or self-destructive) warpath. Heathers gave me that chance and I was glad that I had it. Whatever your age, watch this film and you'll learn something that no school can ever teach you about being a teen... and have a laugh doing it.

bkoganbing I think that if any film ever established Christian Slater's reputation for taking on quirky roles it has to be Heathers. As a psychotic kid with a chip on his shoulder he's got one devilish way of leveling the playing field so to speak of the ruling class.Which in this case the female social set is headed in this small town Ohio is headed by a trio of girls all named Heather. Newly arrived Winona Ryder would like to make it to the top, but Heather 1 Pauline Walker pulls some nasty stuff on her.But Ryder does make a friend of Christian Slater who has a mission in life to eliminate those that stand out from the top and bottom. He's nuts, but he's charming. His Jason Dean set his typecasting permanently. My favorite bit in the whole film is him setting up the two dumb senior jocks as a double gay suicide, ruining the memory of these two macho lunkheads forever. This film seemed to be cursed with two deaths of people in major roles. Both Pauline Walker and Jeremy Applegate who plays a scholastic overachiever both died quite young.Even today in middle age Christian Slater still plays variations on Jason Dean. Because he does them so well.