Heathers (15.)
Directed by Michael Lehman.
Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannon Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker and Penelope Milford. 103 mins. 30th Anniversary release on Blu-ray and DVD by Arrow Video.
A dark high school comedy about cliques, teen suicide and falling for psychopath boyfriends, Heathers is full of baroque outrages – and that's just in the dialogue. Hollywood professionals proclaim that screenplay is structure and scoff at idiot film reviewers who only judge them by the quality of the dialogue, but from the moment within the first five minutes that Heather No 1 utters the line “F*** me gently with a chainsaw” it is clear that this is a movie with a unique way with words. Surely no film since Sweet Smell of Success has been held together to such an extent just by the sheer force and invention of its dialogue. Everything hangs from it and it is almost as if the words themselves are yanking the great performances out of the cast.
Heathers takes you back to those happy times when black comedy still had some levity to it. The film is oddly perky as it follows its heroine Veronica (Ryder) as she is coerced/ tricked/ self-deluded into participating in a series a faked suicide murders of the more obnoxious high school students by her Jack Nicholson channeling boyfriend J.D. (Slater.) Sometime before the film begins Veronica has been seduced away from her role as a sensitive, angsty teenager destined for overwrought crushes on windswept delicate souls to become part of the rich bitch clique of the three Heathers (Walker, Falk and Doherty.) Initially, cliched bad boy J.D. seems to be luring her back to her true self. But when people start dying, she and the audience start to wonder if this is all going a bit far.
Veronica makes for a very subversive audience surrogate because like her we find it very hard to bring ourselves to face the truth about JD, to accept that we can't solve problems by killing off obnoxious people. Even at the end, it is with great reluctance that we accept the error of his ways.
I love Heathers and can remember the thrill of seeing it when it first came out. High school movies meant nothing to me, I didn't have any regard for the works of John Hughes, but this was one of those rare films that seemed to have been made just for you: it was bespoke cinema, except I'd never have had the wit and vision to see that this was the spoke I wanted be.
Seeing it again for the first time in many years I will admit that it didn't quite work for me like it used to, and that was a little heartbreaking. It has a timeless dark genius to it, but the eighties trappings - the tinny music, the look - drag it down a little.
Thirty years on there is a terrible poignancy to it, because you watch this film and wonder whatever happened to Daniel Waters. That's the name of the man who turned up in Hollywood midway through his twenties with this script in his suitcase and if I have a criticism of this disc is that the copious extras (Arrow never skimp on the extras) don't answer that question. We learn about everything leading up to Heathers, almost nothing on what followed.
After Heathers Waters' credits were The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Hudson Hawk, Batman Returns, and Demolition Man. Waters fell in with Joel Silver, a very big fish in those day and creator of crass mindless action movies that sometimes had a little bit of impish devilry to them. First, he pitched in on Fairlane, a vehicle for Andrew Dice Clay, the cross between Jim Davidson and The Fonz who was sweeping the States up to a few months before the film came out. Dice is forced as the rock'n'roll detective and a little lost on the big screen constantly falling back on his stage mannerisms that are not nearly enough to get him through a big screen role. The film though has moments of dark invention.
Hudson Hawk was a chaotic production, made more or less on the hoof with Waters trying to pitch in some gold. The result is an objectively bad movie, but it's the worst movie with the most good ideas in it you've ever seen. How many of those came from Waters or are in Willis' original conception, I couldn't say.
After that, there came his wonderful script for Batman Returns, an absurdly rich, thoroughly perverse operatic vision that remains my favourite superhero film. Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone as a frozen cop waking up in a PC future, is the wittiest dumb action movie of the 90s.
And after that, almost nothing. He has written and directed a couple of movies that sunk without trace – Happy Campers, Sex and Death 101 – provided scripts for his director brother Mark's films, wrote a series of YA undead novels and presumably did plenty of script doctoring, but even the internet is oddly coy about what he's been up to.
With sadness, I notice that Heathers has suffered the indignity of becoming a musical, which has just opened in the West End. There is a horrible Watersesque irony to that – a film about how the American media can suck up any monstrosity teenagers throw at it, has now been so thoroughly consumed by the culture it attacks that now it is the monstrosity being spewed back out in greasepaint and jazz hands.
(There was also a TV version that didn't go down too well and got cancelled.)
Still, we'll always have the original film. Age has dated it, but it is still a marvel. Heathers is the reason why people of a certain age will always have an indulgent soft spot for Winona and Slater. Whatever they do, they will always be forgiven.
Extras.
Too much focused on director Lehmann rather than Waters but still impressive.
• Audio commentary by director Michael Lehmann, producer Denise Di Novi and writer Daniel Waters
• Newly filmed interview with director Michael Lehmann
• A newly filmed appreciation by the writer, actor and comedian John Ross Bowie (The Big Bang Theory)
• Pizzicato Croquet, composer David Newman and director Michael Lehmann discuss the music of Heathers
• How Very: The Art and Design of Heathers, production designer Jon Hutman, art director Kara Lindstrom and director Michael Lehmann discuss the look of Heathers
• Casting Westerberg High, casting director Julie Selzer discusses the casting process for Heathers
• Poor Little Heather, a new interview with actress Lisanne Falk
• Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads, an archival featurette with extensive cast and crew interviews providing an in-depth look at the making of Heathers
• Return to Westerberg High, an archival featurette providing further insight into the film’s production
• Original trailers
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Robert Sammelin
Directed by Michael Lehman.
Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannon Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker and Penelope Milford. 103 mins. 30th Anniversary release on Blu-ray and DVD by Arrow Video.
A dark high school comedy about cliques, teen suicide and falling for psychopath boyfriends, Heathers is full of baroque outrages – and that's just in the dialogue. Hollywood professionals proclaim that screenplay is structure and scoff at idiot film reviewers who only judge them by the quality of the dialogue, but from the moment within the first five minutes that Heather No 1 utters the line “F*** me gently with a chainsaw” it is clear that this is a movie with a unique way with words. Surely no film since Sweet Smell of Success has been held together to such an extent just by the sheer force and invention of its dialogue. Everything hangs from it and it is almost as if the words themselves are yanking the great performances out of the cast.
Heathers takes you back to those happy times when black comedy still had some levity to it. The film is oddly perky as it follows its heroine Veronica (Ryder) as she is coerced/ tricked/ self-deluded into participating in a series a faked suicide murders of the more obnoxious high school students by her Jack Nicholson channeling boyfriend J.D. (Slater.) Sometime before the film begins Veronica has been seduced away from her role as a sensitive, angsty teenager destined for overwrought crushes on windswept delicate souls to become part of the rich bitch clique of the three Heathers (Walker, Falk and Doherty.) Initially, cliched bad boy J.D. seems to be luring her back to her true self. But when people start dying, she and the audience start to wonder if this is all going a bit far.
Veronica makes for a very subversive audience surrogate because like her we find it very hard to bring ourselves to face the truth about JD, to accept that we can't solve problems by killing off obnoxious people. Even at the end, it is with great reluctance that we accept the error of his ways.
I love Heathers and can remember the thrill of seeing it when it first came out. High school movies meant nothing to me, I didn't have any regard for the works of John Hughes, but this was one of those rare films that seemed to have been made just for you: it was bespoke cinema, except I'd never have had the wit and vision to see that this was the spoke I wanted be.
Seeing it again for the first time in many years I will admit that it didn't quite work for me like it used to, and that was a little heartbreaking. It has a timeless dark genius to it, but the eighties trappings - the tinny music, the look - drag it down a little.
Thirty years on there is a terrible poignancy to it, because you watch this film and wonder whatever happened to Daniel Waters. That's the name of the man who turned up in Hollywood midway through his twenties with this script in his suitcase and if I have a criticism of this disc is that the copious extras (Arrow never skimp on the extras) don't answer that question. We learn about everything leading up to Heathers, almost nothing on what followed.
After Heathers Waters' credits were The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Hudson Hawk, Batman Returns, and Demolition Man. Waters fell in with Joel Silver, a very big fish in those day and creator of crass mindless action movies that sometimes had a little bit of impish devilry to them. First, he pitched in on Fairlane, a vehicle for Andrew Dice Clay, the cross between Jim Davidson and The Fonz who was sweeping the States up to a few months before the film came out. Dice is forced as the rock'n'roll detective and a little lost on the big screen constantly falling back on his stage mannerisms that are not nearly enough to get him through a big screen role. The film though has moments of dark invention.
Hudson Hawk was a chaotic production, made more or less on the hoof with Waters trying to pitch in some gold. The result is an objectively bad movie, but it's the worst movie with the most good ideas in it you've ever seen. How many of those came from Waters or are in Willis' original conception, I couldn't say.
After that, there came his wonderful script for Batman Returns, an absurdly rich, thoroughly perverse operatic vision that remains my favourite superhero film. Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone as a frozen cop waking up in a PC future, is the wittiest dumb action movie of the 90s.
And after that, almost nothing. He has written and directed a couple of movies that sunk without trace – Happy Campers, Sex and Death 101 – provided scripts for his director brother Mark's films, wrote a series of YA undead novels and presumably did plenty of script doctoring, but even the internet is oddly coy about what he's been up to.
With sadness, I notice that Heathers has suffered the indignity of becoming a musical, which has just opened in the West End. There is a horrible Watersesque irony to that – a film about how the American media can suck up any monstrosity teenagers throw at it, has now been so thoroughly consumed by the culture it attacks that now it is the monstrosity being spewed back out in greasepaint and jazz hands.
(There was also a TV version that didn't go down too well and got cancelled.)
Still, we'll always have the original film. Age has dated it, but it is still a marvel. Heathers is the reason why people of a certain age will always have an indulgent soft spot for Winona and Slater. Whatever they do, they will always be forgiven.
Extras.
Too much focused on director Lehmann rather than Waters but still impressive.
• Audio commentary by director Michael Lehmann, producer Denise Di Novi and writer Daniel Waters
• Newly filmed interview with director Michael Lehmann
• A newly filmed appreciation by the writer, actor and comedian John Ross Bowie (The Big Bang Theory)
• Pizzicato Croquet, composer David Newman and director Michael Lehmann discuss the music of Heathers
• How Very: The Art and Design of Heathers, production designer Jon Hutman, art director Kara Lindstrom and director Michael Lehmann discuss the look of Heathers
• Casting Westerberg High, casting director Julie Selzer discusses the casting process for Heathers
• Poor Little Heather, a new interview with actress Lisanne Falk
• Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads, an archival featurette with extensive cast and crew interviews providing an in-depth look at the making of Heathers
• Return to Westerberg High, an archival featurette providing further insight into the film’s production
• Original trailers
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Robert Sammelin
