9. Heathers (1988)
A big jump from silent horror to black comedy, but the 80s were dark times plagued with a wave of teen movies and trickle-down economics. Heathers is a film that takes every stereotype of the high-school-teen environment you can think of and stuffs it into one stylishly crafted piece of caustic black comedy. A group of girls, all named Heather, except for the main character Veronica, go through school devising psychological torments for those theyve deemed losers. After being part of Heathers for some time Veronica becomes opposed to the ruling class of popular kids. She meets the new kid, Jason Dean, (J.D., hrmm thats like James Dean) who believes that the extreme always makes an impression. Reluctantly, Veronica, and J.D. soon find themselves in the midst of a spree of murders, all of which are made to look like suicides. In the end, the movie posits two things: high school is a microcosm of the real world, and the only way to escape its social structure is not murder, but death. Why It's A Gem: Writer Daniel Waters conceived his own high school vernacular for this film. Though imitated, its lingo was never as sharply duplicated. Unforgettable performances by Winona Ryder as the an angst ridden Veronica, Christian Slater as J.D. the misguided outsider, and Kim Walker as the Mega-Bitch Heather Chandler. The film is also a rebuke of all the John Hughes teen movies of the 80s.