REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)
By:
June 10, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of “offbeat” movies from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
HEATHERS | MICHAEL LEHMANN | 1989
You have to start by setting aside how deeply cringey it is to watch Heathers in a post-Columbine world. It’s a given that the movie is wildly tone-deaf regarding the school massacres that began with the attack on Columbine in 1998 and continue with beyond-alarming frequency; approximately 400 school shootings have occurred in the US since. But if you can get past greasy-haired Christian Slater in a black trench coat picking off his fellow students and strapping explosives to the school’s bleachers, and just let yourself time-travel back to an era when a mentally unstable teen plotting to blow up his high school was slapstick, then Heathers will reward you with some of the most potty-mouthed high-femmeness ever seen on the silver screen.
We enter the world of Heathers with an aspirational quote from the blondest, most shoulder-padded of the film’s three eponymous Heathers: “Real life sucks losers dry. If you want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn how to fly.” Though perhaps clues are to be found in her ability to maintain perfectly coiffed hair through a frat party blow job that she clearly disdains bestowing on its recipient, we sadly never quite learn her strategy for flying and fucking like an eagle… because Heather #1 dies so early on. But not before her brightest-of-red-lipsticked lips emit with driest deadpan delivery what is surely the film’s most vivid linguistic blossom: “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”
Scorsese may hold the record for dropping the most f-bombs on celluloid, but strings of expletives alone cannot match the pure crudeness of china-doll-faced Heather #2 (Shannen Doherty) asking ingénue Winona Ryder (who was 16, and at her girliest, when she played this role): “Veronica, why are you pulling my dick?”
The satisfying aesthetic uncanniness of wholesome-looking cheerleader types talking like wizened sailors is reason enough to keep Heathers from that trashbin marked “does not stand the test of time” — but if you’re on the fence, hold out a little longer because there are some moments of truly unadulterated weirdness sprinkled throughout this chalkboard noir.* For example, a casual allusion to a “sexually perverse photography exhibit involving tennis rackets”; analog electronic equipment like turntables and stereo systems inexplicably encased in cement; and a dream sequence with a mashup that is exactly 50% the 1983 cover of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and 50% the seasonal Easter aisle of a big box store. By the end I’m sure you’ll agree that if not a classic, Heathers is at least — as Veronica and the Heathers regularly say — very “very.”
* Shout-out to Rita Kempley of The Washington Post for coining this phrase in her Heathers review.
REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Annie Nocenti on AFTER HOURS | Lynn Peril on BRAZIL | Mandy Keifetz on BODY DOUBLE | Carlo Rotella on ROBOCOP | Marc Weidenbaum on GROUNDHOG DAY | Erik Davis on REPO MAN | Mimi Lipson on STRANGER THAN PARADISE | Josh Glenn on HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING | Susan Roe on HOUSEKEEPING | Gordon Dahlquist on SOMETHING WILD | Heather Quinlan on EATING RAOUL | Anthony Miller on MIRACLE MILE | Karinne Keithley Syers on BETTER OFF DEAD | Adam McGovern on WALKER | Ramona Lyons on MILLER’S CROSSING | Vanessa Berry on WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? | Elina Shatkin on NIGHT OF THE COMET | Susannah Breslin on MAN BITES DOG | Tom Nealon on DELICATESSEN | Lisa Jane Persky on RUMBLE FISH | Dean Haspiel on WEIRD SCIENCE | Heather Kapplow on HEATHERS | Micah Nathan on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA | Deborah Wassertzug on ELECTRIC DREAMS | Mark Kingwell on WITHNAIL AND I.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!