Initially intended by screenwriter Daniel Waters as a vehicle for Stanley Kubrick (the opening cafeteria scene is a homage to Full Metal Jacket), Heathers took a grenade to the rose-tinted high school movies of the 1980s, crafting a bitter black comedy about teenage suicide, and the totalitarian rule of three teenage girls all called Heather.
The Heathers are three pompous, pretentious prom queens from Westerburg High School in Ohio who set the social standards for power and popularity among the other students. Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) is the undisputed queen of the gang; Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk) is her cheerleader enabler, and Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty) is their designated whipping girl.
Winona Ryder is their new protégée, Veronica Sawyer. She’s an IQ boost for the gang and another tool for Heather Chandler to use in her attempts to take over the world. She’s also rich, arrogant, and beautiful – but she’s a rebel.
After falling for the school outlaw JD (scruffy weirdo Christian Slater channelling his inner Jack Nicholson), she decides the cruel and abusive Heathers and the dumb jocks they hang out with are expendable.
So they feed one girl a bottle of liquid Drano, blast the football heroes with bullets, and justify each murder with “well, football season is over – they had nothing else to offer.”
By the time Veronica realises you can’t kill people just because they’re creeps (or “Swatch Dogs” or “Diet Coke Heads”), JD has become a real psycho hell-bent on blowing up the entire school.
It’s a bleak movie. The adults are clueless at best and no help at all. Veronica’s parents are relentlessly peppy but fundamentally don’t listen; JD’s father takes a little too much delight in demolishing buildings as part of his construction business, and JD watched his mother walk into one of them in her own suicide.
It’s dark in other ways, too. At least two Heathers are victims of date rape, and JD also attempts to rape Veronica when she tries to break up with him. Veronica is definitely an accessory to murder if not a murderer herself, and her boyfriend is a true sociopath.
In the end, what begins as a neat satire on moronic teenage movies ends as another horror flick gross-out and the black comedy backfires.
Needless to say, the movie absolutely could not be made today.
Veronica Sawyer
Winona Ryder Jason “JD” Dean
Christian Slater Heather Duke
Shannen Doherty Heather McNamara
Lisanne Falk Heather Chandler
Kim Walker Pauline Fleming
Penelope Milford Father Ripper
Glenn Shadix Kurt Kelly
Lance Fenton Ram Sweeney
Patrick Labyorteaux Peter Dawson
Jeremy Applegate
Winona Ryder is their new protégée, Veronica Sawyer. She’s an IQ boost for the gang and another tool for Heather Chandler to use in her attempts to take over the world. She’s also rich, arrogant, and beautiful – but she’s a rebel.
