REVIEWREVIEWS
With its first release in 1988 (although IMDB says 1989), Heathers failed to earn its $US3 million budget back, but in the ensuing decades it has come to be regarded as a cult classic. In many ways, it changed the game for many teen-oriented films that followed it. We probably would watch it now a little uneasily, for its tale of poisonings, shootings, psychopathic killers, attempted suicide and bomb threats in a fictitious Ohio high school parallel more recent, real-life events in American schools a little too closely. But, if you such thoughts aside, this film can be regarded as a dark comedy about the consequences of the social structures of American high schools (hierarchies we have become accustomed to through innumerable American movies). As Desson Thomson in the Washington Post (April 14, 1989) writes about Heathers, “Wickedly funny. In fact, Heathers may be the nastiest, cruelest fun you can have without actually having to study law or gird leather products. If movies were food, Heathers would be a cynic’s chocolate binge. (Geoff Lealand, Hamilton Film Society, Feb 2020) A discussion on the film available here (theguardian.com) |
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGSHamilton
Monday, 29 June, 8:00pm |