With the recent deaths of 1980s heroes John Hughes and Patrick Swayze I’ve found myself looking back on the era with a pang of sadness and a longing for something I can’t rightly articulate. I think this might be because day-glo revivalists like La Roux and Aplhabeat seem to be peddling a bit of the 80s that I never experienced. For me it was a time of conservative government, the outbreak of AIDS, disillusionment at the failed hippy ideals of the 1970s and music that made you want to top yourself like Visage’s ‘Fade To Grey’.

Films that I loved such as The Breakfast Club, Karate Kid and Weird Science seemed so foreign, exciting and romantic that as soon as the credits rolled there would be a gnawing chasm in my stomach at the realisation that my life was so closed, so boring, so utterly provincial and small. But for me there is at least one film from that period that goes some way to portraying the tormented tedium of a suburban adolescence, 1989’s Heathers.

Wallowing in the jet black comedy waters of teenage suicide, Heathers is a skewed morality tale that pitches Christian Slater’s psychotic JD against Winona Ryder’s popular but unhappy Veronica. Driven by a half cocked sense of social responsibility the nefarious pair begin to knock off their classmates, all the while framing the murders to look like suicides. Before long they’ve created a ridiculous media frenzy and committing hara-kiri becomes literally too cool for school.

Slater is the dark heart of the film, effortlessly pulling off the feat of making a serial killer the most likeable character by far. It was this late 80s-early 90s period that really cemented Slater as a big star as he appeared in rebellious teen flicks like Pump Up The Volume and Gleaming The Cube. And so what if he is playing a variation on the character he plays in every film he’s ever been in? He’s great! Just like the one song The Ramones reworked over and over again throughout their twenty two year career, Slater’s presence and Jack Nicholson-esque magnetism livens up any film. Damn, even his appalling English accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is somehow endearing. And let’s not forget Winona Ryder. Ah Winona, she’s just a peach ain’t she? Her performance in Heathers is simultaneously wry, sexy and knowing, more than matching Slater in star quality.

Another element that has no doubt contributed to the films cult notoriety is the abundance of quote worthy dialogue that includes classic zingers like, “Why are you pulling my dick?”, “Get Crucial!”, and the fabulous, “I love my dead gay son”. Add to that a startling array of supporting characters such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Charmed star Shannen Doherty, and Heathers is a pretty enticing property.

The Fox network is apparently touting a Heathers TV show, which could go either way. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and M*A*S*H definitely benefited from the further exploration of themes dealt with in the original films. Although the less said about film spin-offs like Lock, Stock…, Freddy’s Nightmares and F/X: The Series, the better. But for now I for one will reserve judgement and content myself with an ice cold can of Tab Clear, a family sized bag of Opal Fruits and Heathers on DVD.