Genre: Comedy
Director: Michael Lehmann
Starring: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannon Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker
The Movie
High School is deadly, and Heathers realizes this. This flick has a Winona Ryder as a popular girl who finds herself rebelling against the other popular girls, the "Heathers." She winds up dating an outsider as they muse about fantasies of killing the Heathers, until they one day take it a step too far and one of the Heathers dies from drinking drain cleaner. They cover the murder up as a suicide, but after the most popular Heather in the school "kills herself," the idea of suicide starts to become glamorized at the school, leaving it easier to cover up further murders.
Heathers is an interesting comedy, which isn't funny in a laughter kind of way, but more of a wry and dry dark humor. If the movie had a face, it would constantly have a smirk on it, as if it found itself more amusing than the audience does. While I'm not entirely enamored with Heathers, I get it. There is a lot in this film to digest, and a lot of it is truthful. It's a smart parody of social circles, the tiers of popularity, and the envy of those beneath. The bullshit melodrama of high school is called out in this movie, which plays with the "live ends at high school" vibe and takes it a step further. When the most popular girl in school commits suicide, suddenly death is "in." Combined with the goth curiosity of life ending, people begin to romanticize her death, some even ponder imitating so they can be remembered as fondly as her for even a brief moment.
While the undertones are the more fascinating part of the film, the film is heavily reliant on the turbulent relationship between Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, which snowballs in intensity as the film goes on. They have an interesting dynamic, but as their affair gets edgier it also grows more outrageous, so does the film. The movie gets more animated as it goes along, and there is a bit of a zaniness to its final act that almost makes the movie feel to be more of a cartoon by the end. Heathers is nothing if it's not attention baiting, much like the popular girls of its title. It's always doing something interesting and it's difficult to not be interested in how it plays out. While I can't say it's a movie that will ever become a favorite, I can't take what it does right away from it.
The Drive-In
Joe Bob throws us a curve ball with our second film, which on first look might be a bit of an outlier for a Last Drive-In feature. But upon closer inspection, Heathers is a movie about a pair of serial killers and/or a woman stuck with a sociopath. It's different tonally than a lot of Last Drive-In features, because it's a dark comedy high school movie, but then again, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is tonally different than other films featured on the series as well, and that's one of the best Last Drive-In episodes that I've seen.
Unfortunately, while Joe Bob has some juicy tidbits about Heathers, he doesn't pop up nearly as often as he usually does. I didn't count the number of Joe Bob segments in this episode, but they did seem fairly low and movie sections run rather lengthy. This episode also features a movie that's roughly twenty minutes longer than the previous film, Maniac, while the Last Drive-In episode is roughly the same length (of course, that episode had a guest star to bounce off of). Joe Bob does praise the flow of this movie, especially the first act, so it's possible he doesn't want to interrupt it too much. I'm curious whether this was a conscious decision, because in your average Last Drive-In episode, Joe Bob usually pops in after big dramatic scenes or memorable setpieces, and Heathers is structured mostly as a snowballing build up to a big scene and repeat. His appearances in the film seem calculated.
Whatever the reason may be, Joe Bob clearly loves Heathers quite a bit, deeming it the "high school flick that outclassed all other high school flicks" and risks angering the almighty Mail Girl, Darcy, by pointing out that there might not be Scream without Heathers. He talks a bit about how John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) ruled the genre during the 80's but the screenwriter, Daniel Waters, found the screenwriting to be "unrealistic," and set off to make some sort of anti-John Hughes movie with the idea of "What if Stanley Kubrick directed a John Hughes movie?"
Well, to answer that question, I'd say production would have taken twenty years and thousands of youth labor laws would have been violated so he could do a billion takes of each scene.
If I were to point out an observation of this creation method, it reminds me a lot of how the sitcom Married...with Children was originally pitched, as it was made by people who hated The Cosby Show (nowadays everybody hates The Cosby Show, but for different reasons) and desired to make a show that was the exact opposite. It's an interesting method for creators to carve their own niche into a genre.
Heathers was a box office bomb upon original release, which Joe Bob attributes to lack of advertising due to being released just before its distributor, New World Pictures, started folding its feature film division. But it found life in the booming home video market.of the 1990's, which turned it into a cult classic. Joe Bob loves to dig his teeth into a cult classic, and he analyzes the smallest details, such as Christian Slater's supposed "Ich Luge" bullets to the real life tragic deaths of supporting cast members Jeremy Applegate (who died of suicide, like he is thought to in this movie) and Kim Walker (who died of a brain tumor, and delivered the line "Did you eat a brain tumor for breakfast?" in this movie). He even touches upon how it impacted pop culture, including the term "Geek Squad," which is currently a job title at Best Buy.
As for the film's stars, Christian Slater and Winona Ryder, Joe Bob rides Slater pretty hard as "desperately trying to get Jack Nicholson to notice him." There are so many epic pot shots at poor Christian during this episode. Leave the man alone! He was in Broken Arrow, and that movie was moderately entertaining! Ryder he seems to have more respect for, as she seems damn proud of this movie. "I don't think I'll ever make another movie as great as Heathers." she was once quoted as saying. Joe Bob ponders whether or not she still believes that, after all the movies she has made since (hell, she's currently riding high off of Stranger Things, but granted that's not a movie). Personally I like Beetlejuice more, but to each their own.
Taking all of this into consideration, Heathers is a pretty interesting watch, even if it isn't a typical Drive-In movie. And if you're going to watch it, you might as well watch it with Joe Bob, so having it on the show is a win.
Joe Bob's Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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