Black comedy Heathers, starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, and Shannen Doherty, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 36 years ago. While it is now a cult classic, at the time, it was so controversial that it nearly cost Winona Ryder her career.
The black comedy followed Winona Ryder’s downtrodden high school student who falls in love with Christian Slater’s misanthropic newcomer. The only girl in her clique, not called Heather, Veronica Sawyer, and J.D. Dean, go on a murderous rampage against the popular students who wronged them.
The film has maintained its cult classic status, still connecting with younger generations. Despite its pop culture legacy, which also includes spawning a musical, it wasn’t an immediate hit upon release.
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At the time, it wasn’t particularly well-received by the critics. When it debuted at the 1989 U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as Sundance, the Los Angeles Times film critic Sheila Benson wrote: “No amount of production sheen or acting skill seems excuse enough for the film’s scabrous morality or its unprincipled viciousness.”
But, the film acted as the perfect cynical anecdote for the peppy John Hughes movies like Pretty In Pink and The Breakfast Club. It hilariously examined the cruelty of teenage girls and forced us to confront our own relationship with our own behaviour in high school.
Underneath the camp and cynicism, Heather highlighted numerous difficult subjects that still resonate with viewers today. It looked at real issues that teens face daily, like bullying, eating disorders, homophobia, and self-harm.
It was these resonating topics that nearly lost Winona Ryder her career. “I was told I was never gonna work again if I did Heathers,” she told Elle last year.
Ryder told the magazine that she had landed a role in The Freshman alongside Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick, but after the filmmakers saw Heathers, they revoked the offer.”
“They thought it was making fun of teen suicide,” she recalled. “They were deeply offended and, yeah, they revoked the offer.”
The director, Michael Lehmann, defended the film against these claims in a 2016 interview with The Denver Post.
“The more horrifying or disturbing human behavior is, the more opportunity there is to mine it for certain types of comedy,” he explained. “You click it a few notches in one direction or another to make it absurd, and it allows to you to understand human behavior better, because people do horrible things with the best intentions.”
While Ryder previously told Harper’s Bazaar that her agent “literally got down on her knees” to beg her not to star in Heathers she thinks she “made the right call” in making the movie.
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