I’ll Always Love the Original <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em>

“All 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. 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). The line captured the glib effervescence of a bubblegum B-movie in which a cheerleader discovers her destiny as an assassin. Of monsters.

arrived right before it became cool for teenagers to brood about real things like depression and the cost of Doc Martens. But something about this particular movie was bewitching to a tweeny bopper with an alternative undertow. It had gloss and edge—but more gloss than edge. This was a pre-, 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’s Luke Perry) and her miniskirts and heels for plaid and boots. The result was an unfussy pre–Spice Girls girl-power fantasy for a 12-year-old kid.