Sheen was older and known for darker, more mature roles in films such as Platoon and Wall Street. That small difference perfectly encapsulates the tonal disconnect between Fran Rubel Kuzui, who directed Buffy, and Whedon, who went on to create the series that would eclipse it.

But in Whedon’s original script, the marriage wasn’t to Christian Slater it was to Charlie Sheen. I don’t know who changed the line-the one about graduating, traveling to Europe, and dying. For me, the film was so formative that to this day I still use expressions such as “unwashed masses” and “chill lozenges.” The doofy cheerleading chant “How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose?” still occasionally bubbles up when I shower.

I remember copying Buffy’s costumes-brightly colored shirts over tank tops, big jeans with small hoodies-and endlessly playing the soundtrack’s poppy beats: Susanna Hoffs, Matthew Sweet, Toad the Wet Sprocket. I still remember my shock at seeing Dylan McKay-still on his hog, still the outsider love interest, but without his big hair and clean shave.

The result was an unfussy pre–Spice Girls girl-power fantasy for a 12-year-old kid. When a slayer trainer named Merrick (played by a laughably staid Donald Sutherland) informs her of her vampire-slaying birthright, she misses nary a beat as she sports neon spandex to learn to fight, trading in her jock boyfriend for a biker ( Beverly Hills, 90210’s Luke Perry) and her miniskirts and heels for plaid and boots. This was a pre- Clueless, Skittles-tinted ode to California ditz as the screenwriter Joss Whedon wrote of his heroine, played by Kristy Swanson, “She is blonde (in nature as in name).” But she wouldn’t hesitate to slash your hot dog in two if you crossed her. It had gloss and edge-but more gloss than edge. But something about this particular movie was bewitching to a tweeny bopper with an alternative undertow. Of monsters.īuffy arrived right before it became cool for teenagers to brood about real things like depression and the cost of Doc Martens. The line captured the glib effervescence of a bubblegum B-movie in which a cheerleader discovers her destiny as an assassin. That’s why it stood out to me as a prepubescent girl-before I got my period, before I got existential, before I stopped caring about vampires (if I ever did). “A ll I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.” That line, from the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, may have been spoken by a teenager, but they were the words of a child.

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