A movie Katy says could not have been made in the last decade, which is possibly why I enjoyed it so much. You don’t often see a comedy about high school social strata that includes so much gleeful murder. Christian Slater (same year as Name of the Rose) is the dreamy psycho-killer who drifts into town with his dad, and Winona Ryder (between Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands) is a new recruit to the prom-queen-level social class shared by three girls named Heather. Ryder falls for Slater and semi-unwittingly helps him kill some people, but when he plots to blow up the school, staging it as a mass suicide, she fight back and Slater blows himself up instead.
Writer Daniel Waters went on to help ruin the 1990’s with Hudson Hawk and Demolition Man and director Lehmann (also responsible for Hudson Hawk) did his part with Airheads and My Giant, dragging it out into the 2000’s with 40 Days and 40 Nights and Because I Said So. Lately he’s worked on about ten different well-liked TV series. One Heather, the one who made a brain tumor joke, died in 2001 of a brain tumor, and another costarred in Mallrats. One of the murdered footballers appeared in Ghoulies III and the other in Night of the Demons. So, not a supporting cast that went on to fame and fortune. Good to see Otho from Beetlejuice as a preacher presiding over the wave of teen funerals.