"Hitler had the right idea! He was just an under-achiever! Kill them all, Adolf, all of them! Jew, Mexican, American, White, kill them all! Start over, the experiment didn't work!" — Bill Hicks, during what he called "not a get laid set"
Heathers came out in 1979, and though I’ve never seen it mentioned, its author had to have seen this movie, because it’s basically the same movie minus the late '80s, jaded, seen everything sensibility. I just stole it off of E Mule (don’t get mad, I don’t think there is any legal way I could have found it) and watched it for the first time in probably 20 years. It’s amazing how many scenes were still indelible in my mind. There are probably two reasons it stayed with me so well:
- Despite its amazingly trashy, low budget nature, it may be the best Animal Farm adaptation ever.
- Unlike Heathers, this movie has tons of nudity in it. This ensured that it would be on Cinemax constantly throughout the '80s at 3 AM, which means I probably saw it like 800 times.
This movie totally needs to be remade every decade just to show us how much things have changed over the years. The reason it wasn’t remade in the '90s is that Eric Klebold and Dylan Harris basically decided to make it happen in real life. See, that’s probably a bad idea. I would suggest that in this decade we skip the reality show and just make another movie version.
The movie is sort of maddening because due to its low budget there is some really awful acting and the theme song... wow! This thing opens with just the worst sappy after school special song.
You’re at the crossroads of your life
Crossroads of you life
A runner chasing dreams
That could come true.
It is Paul Anka "You’re Having My Baby" bad. If you played the first 30 seconds of this movie at a theater today people would break out in laughter. You almost wonder whether it was supposed to be some sickening joke. Because I was one of those jaded '80s guys, I’m not sure how to take this movie.
It reminds me of the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One, which tried to come off as a warning about youth out of control, but did nothing but romanticize and advertise its out of control youth. Here you have basically a low budget '70s slasher movie with a ton of nudity in it, followed again by that sappy theme song.
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