Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #136: Heathers (1988).

If you've ever dreamed of doing away with the glamorous but bitchy airheads you went to high school with, you might want to meet Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder). She's part of the "in" crowd at Westerburg High School in Sherwood, Ohio, alongside three girls named Heather, but she's practically sick to death of her scene, and with much justification. When she meets new boy J. D. (Christian Slater), who has an anarchic streak and a tone like Jack Nicholson, Veronica is taken with his dark and proudly outcast nature. After one of the Heathers shames her at a party, Veronica vows revenge and ropes J. D. in. But what was meant to be a simple break-in at Heather's house to make her vomit turns into death by drain cleaner which J. D. passes off as a hangover cure, and this is the first of several very suspicious suicides which turn the whole school, and particularly our main duo's lives, upside down.

When it was released in 1988, Heathers unsurprisingly proved quite controversial with its depictions of youth suicide, school violence and faux-homosexuality and was a box office flop. But the critics loved it, and time has vindicated them because today Heathers has deservedly attracted a huge cult following; so much so that's its now been adapted into a TV series and a hit musical. While some of its aesthetic elements may seem dated now, this is a mercilessly satirical and realistic study of adolescence and modern schooling. Director Michael Lehmann and writer Daniel Waters pull absolutely no punches in mockingly holding a mirror up to the world of high school - its power structures, discourses and psychology - in order to expose why so many of its pupils academically or socially fall through the cracks. It can be seen as rather like a more political antidote to the contemporaneous works of John Hughes, because where his movies (several of which I still love, though) focus on these failures through the student protagonists' eyes and with a more slapstick comedy style, Heathers quite openly and broadly indicts the school's administration and popular kids for making high school so cruel for everybody else.

But at the centre of this viciously funny farce is Winona Ryder in her first major role. Suffice it to say, she proved her genuine talent this early on by managing to make a line as simple as "Because you're an idiot" amusing, and with a faked sweet manner. Slater also gets numerous laughs as J.D., simultaneously filling him with a very convincing swagger and world-wearing. Over 30 years later, Heathers remains a highly relevant satirical riposte to contemporary school systems, and a deliciously entertaining foray into subversive mischief.