"My teenage angst bullshit now has a body count."

Never before has murder been so much fun than at the hands of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, perfectly cast as foils for one another in one of the blackest comedies ever put to film. Ryder is the sole "Veronica" in a clique of "Heathers," three stuck-up princesses who run the school and who adopt Veronica as a sort of pet-slash-sidekick. Veronica doesn't kowtow well to their leadership though, and after she hooks up with J.D. (Slater), one Heather ends up semi-accidentally poisoned to death, followed soon after by the shooting deaths of two brutish jocks, famously made up to look like a conflicted, gay double suicide.

J.D. spins out of control (his scenes with his equally psychotic father are classic), but while Veronica tries to extricate herself from the mess she's in, J.D. only gets crazier and crazier, eventually plotting to kill Veronica too. Things get a little corny when J.D. plans to blow up the school for reasons that are never made entirely clear (except that he's just plain crazy), but by then we've kind of stopped caring whether Heathers makes perfect sense.

Dialogue by Daniel Waters is over-the-top hilarious with its deadpan sarcasm and blatant disregard (nay, outright hatred) for authority, and all the leads work together well. Widely imitated, but never equalled, the film is now a must-see for the Gen-X set, a scathing lambasting of the American teen and suburban society in the late 1980s.

Now available on multiple DVD release formats, a new 20th High School Reunion Edition spans two discs and offers commentary from the crew, two featurettes (one newly made), and a DVD-ROM version of the film's original ending in script form.