The Heathers are a clique of bitchy classmates in this dark comedy from 1989. The film itself was a good showcase for Winona Ryder, the Queen of Teen in the late 1980s, playing a high-school girl forced into the social world of "the Heathers", and Christian Slater, doing his early Jack Nicholson thing. While Ryder's character muddles over the consequences of giving up one set of friends for another, her association with the new boy in school (Slater) turns out to have deadly consequences. Director Michael Lehmann turned this unusual film into something more than another teen-death flick. There is real wit and sharp satire afoot, and the fusion of horror and comedy is provocative in itself. Heathers remains a kind of benchmark in contemporary cinema for bringing surreal intelligence into Hollywood films. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com