In the 1980s, director John Hughes dominated screens with his coming-of-age teen dramas, films like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, but none of them had quite the same effect on society as Michael Lehmann’s Heathers.
The film stars Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, a troubled teen who becomes sick of a group of girls called The Heathers, her so-called best friends. The Heathers, all share the same first name, they all wear big shoulder pads and wear brightly coloured scrunchies in their hair.
She meets JD played by Christian Slater, a privileged outsider who carries a variety of weapons to school. There’s a ‘lethal attraction’ between the two and JD soon persuades Veronica that the only way to get rid of her friends is to ‘accidentally’ kill them one by one.
The film covers and makes light of a variety of issues like suicide, self-harm and eating disorders and was the main reason upon the film’s original release; was met with a lot of criticism.
Every School has Their Heathers!
Heathers was director Michael Lehmann’s first film, alongside first-time writer Daniel Waters. The two had spent time looking at the films that were being released at the time and believed that a certain picture was being painted of life as a teenager in the 80s, that wasn’t at all true.
Speaking on Hughes’ work Lehmann commented:
“We were looking at the John Hughes films and saying, ‘This is bullshit!’ The movies are fun, we like them, but we didn’t think they really represented the truly cruel nature of interpersonal behaviour in high school.”
They understood that each school had their own version of The Heathers, their own version of Veronica and instead of taking a serious stance on these issues, they would poke fun at them; in hopes that their audiences would relate.
Needless to say, not everybody agreed with Lehmann and Waters and Heathers was not a box office hit. With an estimated budget of $3,000,000, on its opening weekend in the US, the film made only $177,247. Reflecting on this, Michael Lehmann said:
“People were outraged: ‘How dare you make a comedy about teenage suicide?’ Well I didn’t make a comedy about teenage suicide”
It’s interesting to see what the audience’s opinions were, as no-one actually commits suicide in the film, they are all murdered. Lehmann went on to say:
“There were plenty of people at the time who thought the humour was irresponsible, and that the choice of subject was not something that should be put up for satire and, you know, I just rolled my eyes and said the most horrific topics should be the ones that are best suited to satire.”
Heathers for a New Generation
The Columbine high-school shootings in 1999 and the many that sadly followed have meant the darker elements of Heathers may not have fared so well with some audiences, but that hasn’t stopped Paramount retooling the film into a TV show. Some of the original troupes were kept the same, but other areas like the setup of The Heathers have changed, with one member of the clique was a guy.
The show was due for release in March of this year but was pushed back after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Three months later in June, the television show was pulled completely after the wake of the Santa Fe school shooting.
Paramount felt that the release of the TV show would be inappropriate and the combination of a high-school drama with such dark moments was not right at the time. A musical of the same name was launched off-Broadway in 2014 and it’s recently opened on the West End in London earlier this month.
Thirty Years on it Still Cuts Like a Chainsaw
Despite the criticism the film has received over the years, I’ve always been a fan. Having been a child of the 90s, I’m unable to relate to the fashion in the film and some of the references, but that doesn’t mean I can’t relate to the issues covered within the film.
Every school, workplace or any social setting really has their own Veronica, their own JD, even their own Heathers. These are things that are repeated through history, time and time again.
So whilst you may need to take the film with a pinch of salt, just enjoy it for what it is and not for what it’s trying to say.
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