Steamy Streaming Tonight!

BY: Zak Wojnar

Teenagers are crazy. These children, unsure of their place in the world, worry about questionably relevant trivialities like college, romance, and homework, fight with their parents, make sexy eyes at their teachers, and get drunk like a Supreme Court Justice on the prowl for a non-consensual hookup.

All joking about the end of two hundred and forty years of American independence and the death of Western democracy aside, teenagers are wacky. In real life and on television, they’re always killing themselves. Slasher movies have long been decried as exploitative, but if an insane situation is scarily plausible, is it still exploitation?

After being delayed due to its controversial subject matter, The Paramount Network‘s television adaptation of Heathers is finally going to debut as a five-night, binge-worthy event on the fledgling TV station, starting on October 25. It seems the suits at Paramount finally realized that art has a duty to reflect and comment on society, not run and hide from it for fear they might trigger the easily offended. With that in mind, here are Provokr’s Picks for our favorite stories of beautiful teenagers who sometimes find themselves violently murdered.

Heathers (Netflix)

Teenagers have been killing each other since the dawn of time (or about fifteen years after the first man was born), and the 1980s were full of movies whose entire premise was “teens in peril,” but 1988’s Heathers had a profound impact on American pop culture which persists to this day. Christian Slater shines as a charming and homocidal misanthrope with genocidal aspirations, and Winona Ryder is perfect as his would-be girlfriend who get in way over her head. The great Shannon Doherty also makes a prominent appearance and is set to appear in the series, playing a different character.

Riverdale (Netflix)

While the body count in Riverdale is comparatively lower than most of the other entries on this list, it’s a downright bloodbath compared to its source material. There was little confidence in the series when it was first announced: what is the audience for a sexy, David Lynch-inspired take on the characters of Archie Comics? Against all odds, Riverdale succeeded, thanks to its snazzy aesthetics and binge-worthy murder mystery plot (sorry, Jason Blossom fans!). Riverdale is currently in its third season, but the first two years of the series are available to binge on Netflix.

Scream Queens (Hulu)

While Scream Queens remains one of mega-producer Ryan Murphy‘s least successful series, it’s also one of his best, but that’s just the way these things tend to go, isn’t it?

Though it only lasted two seasons on Fox, Scream Queens was a jolly (and gory) delight, leaning into the tropes of classic 1980s slasher movies with a tongue-in-cheek irreverence and delightfully cheery blood lust. As an added bonus, the show featured Jamie Lee Curtis, arguably the greatest horror icon of all-time, who can currently be seen reprising her role as Laurie Strode in Halloween, the long-awaited sequel to the original 1978 slasher.

Tragedy Girls (Hulu)

If there’s a modern-day successor to Heathers, it’s Tragedy Girls, which takes the core premise of murderous teens, social standing, and disillusionment with the status quo, and updates the setting to include the internet age and social media. Alexandra Shipp (X-Men: Apocalypse) and Brianna Hildebrand (Deadpool) star as high school girls who become serial killers to get more followers for their online blog. Needless to say, it’s not a typical coming-of-age story. It’s hilarious, gory, and full of biting social commentary and the type of pitch-black comedy which makes some people uncomfortable, but is what we just adore at Provokr.

Scream (MTV) (Netflix)

There aren’t many people who can claim to truly be “Masters of Horror,” but the late Wes Craven was one of them. From The Last House on the Left and A Nightmare on Elm Street to The Hills Have Eyes and The People Under the Stairs, the man was a genius in the realm of scaring the living daylights out of millions of horror fans.

His Scream films are famous for their meta sensibilities, with character comparing their predicament to those of their favorite horror movies. However, it’s worth mentioning he had previously taken this approach the the underappreciated Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which applies a similar level of mind-screw to the Nightmare on Elm Street universe. To stress how weird New Nightmare really is, note that it stars Robert Englund as himself, an actor playing Freddy Kruger, as well as the “real” Freddy… It’s gloriously bonkers, and definitely worth a watch, even if you’re not into scary movies.

Following the release of 2011’s criminally underrated Scream 4, Craven worked on MTV‘s television adaptation of the franchise. While not directly based on any of the films, the series continues the movies’ hook of being a “meta murder mystery,” with twists and turns abound, combined with a twisted sense of humor and, of course, plenty of bloody kills. What more could we possibly ask for?