Heathers 1988 ****

Coming on the back of John Hughes’ success, essentially creating the teen movie as a genre that didn’t rely on sex or schmaltz, Michael Lehmann’s 1988 film brought a new black humour and spiky with the high school. Veronica (Wynona Ryder) struggles to deal with the cliques at her school, notably the trio of girls called heather who have a tight control over the social scene. JD (Christian Slater, doing his best Jack Nicholson) feels the same, but has a more direct approach; bumping off those who get in his way. The wave of high-school shootings has soured the joke of Heathers to some extent, but Lehmann’s film is more of a comic parable; with acidic and quotable dialogue (I’ll call you when the shuttle lands’), it’s the jumping-off point for everything from Mean Girls to Easy A.