Heathers

PLOT:

The film centers on high school student Veronica Sawyer (Ryder) who is part of the most popular clique at Westerburg High School (named for singer Paul Westerberg) in Sherwood, a fictional suburb of Columbus, Ohio. In addition to Veronica, the clique is composed of three wealthy girls with the same first name: Heather Chandler (Walker), Heather Duke (Doherty), and Heather McNamara (Falk). These mean-spirited girls play croquet with each other, use their own unique slang, and even purge together. Even though they are adored by most other students, the Heathers despise everyone outside their clique and continuously bully socially awkward classmates such as the overweight Martha “Dumptruck” Dunnstock.

When a new student, a rebellious boy named Jason Dean (Slater), or J.D. for short, pulls a gun on school bullies Kurt (Fenton) and Ram (Labyorteaux) and fires blanks at them, Veronica is intrigued. They meet and have sex. To avenge herself on Heather Chandler, who she feels mistreated her the night before, Veronica and J.D. jokingly prepare a cup full of drain cleaner to bring Heather as a morning wake-up drink. Veronica decides on milk and orange juice as a suitable form of revenge, as the combination can induce vomiting. J.D. distracts Veronica with a kiss and Veronica takes the wrong cup to give Heather. J.D. notices the mistake, but does not inform Veronica; Heather Chandler drinks the drain cleaner and dies in front of them.

J.D. urges Veronica to protect herself from suspicion of murder by forging a suicide note in Heather Chandler’s handwriting. Based on this note, the school and community look on Heather Chandler’s death as a dramatic, yet somehow hip, decision made by a popular but sadly troubled teenager. Heather Duke soon steps into Heather Chandler’s former role as clique leader, and begins wearing a red hair bow that had belonged to Chandler.

Several weeks later, the oafish Kurt and Ram spread a false rumour about Veronica giving oral sex to Kurt and Ram at the same time, ruining her reputation at school. J.D. proposes that Veronica lure them into the woods behind the school with the promise to “make the rumors true”; then, they will shoot them with special bullets that will knock them unconscious but not kill them. J.D. will plant “gay” materials beside the other boys, including a gay porn magazine, and a suicide note saying the two were lovers in a suicide pact. Ram is shot but Veronica misses Kurt, who runs away. Veronica realizes that the bullets are real, though originly smiles and says “it’s not a problem, it was worth it to see the looks on their faces”, then JD runs after them to when she notices that the intent to kill them was real.; J.D. chases Kurt back towards Veronica, who panics and shoots him dead. At their funeral, Kurt’s father is seen wailing, “I love my dead gay son!”, and the boys are made into martyrs against homophobia.

Other students begin mimicking the perceived behavior of the popular dead kids and attempting suicide themselves. Martha Dumptruck pins a suicide note to her chest and walks into traffic. She survives but is badly injured.

Veronica tells J.D. that she will not participate in any more killings. He plans to kill Heather Duke next, and subtly threatens to do the same to Veronica if she does not cooperate. Veronica instead tricks J.D. by using a harness to make it look like she has hanged herself. Heartbroken, he reveals his plan to blow up the entire school during a pep rally. A petition he has been circulating, via Heather Duke, to get the (fictional) band Big Fun to perform on campus was actually a disguised suicide note. Most of the students had already signed, so the mass murder would appear to be a mass suicide instead.

Veronica confronts J.D. in the boiler room where he is rigging timed explosives. She attempts to kill him when he refuses to stop the bomb. As J.D. collapses, he accidentally stops the timer. Veronica walks out through the pep rally with everyone cheering, unaware of their narrowly-missed demise. The severely injured J.D. follows her outside, looks at her as if to say, ” We could have been together…” and detonates a bomb that is strapped to his chest. The final scene of the film is of Veronica, covered in ash and bleeding slightly, walking through the school halls.

REVIEW:

To this day, I still don’t understand why they have Heathers billed as a comedy when there is nothing funny about it.

This  film was released at a time when high school movies were all the rage and many of the stars were on their ay up.

Winona Ryder gives a good performance as Veronica. One that would rival her more serious works. she brings to the screen that moody, teen angst that was highly popular at the time, while at the same time keeping an air of innocence about her. I liked how she seemed to be the popular girl that still talked to all the regular folks, even though Heather #1 was doing everything short of beating her on the head with a club to do what she said. At film’s end, though, we get a glimpse of what things would be like under the Veronica regime when she actually talks to Martha “Dumptruck” Dunnstock. A little  while earlier, she was playing croquet with her childhood friend, Betty Finn. Maybe they all went on to become the next Heathers?

Christian Slater looks like he was a bad boy in high school, so the task of taking on the role of J.D. was not brai surgery. He turns in the best performances of the film, from the the time we first meet him carefully observing Veronica to his psychotic plan to blow up the school at the end of the film, he seems disturbed, the perfect man for Winona Ryder.

Shannen Doherty starts out the film as the quiet, good-girl Heather, characteristics we’ve only seen from her on screen during the early days of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Little House on the Prairie. However, after some training with J.D., she takes over the role as chief Heather from the now deceased Heather Chandler. As the new Heather #1, we see Doherty as the bitch we know her for on-screen.

This film bombed at the box office, but has garnered a real big cult following. Can’t say I blame them, its not a bad picture. Personally, I wasn’t that into it and felt like it was dragging on in parts. However, as far as story/plot goes, its not half bad and is worth watching. Of course, if you’re going to watch it, I would suggest doing it quickly before your memories of the original are still pure and not poisoned by the upcoming TV-series remake of this.

3 out of 5 stars

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