Cult Classic Better Off Dead To Have Cast Reunion Screening Next Week

By Russ Burlingame

Curtis Armstrong (Revenge of the Nerds) and Diane Franklin (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), and Amanda Wyss (A Nightmare on Elm Street) will join SCAD professor of film and television Andrew Meyer for a reunion screening of Better Off Dead, "Savage" Steve Holland's cult-favorite oddball romantic comedy. The screening will take place on Friday, April 28, at 7 p.m. ET at the Trustees Theatre in Savannah, Georgia. It also follows on the heels of a 2021 book, Diane Franklin: The Excellent COMEDY of the Last American, French-Exchange Babe of the 80s: The Better Off Dead Movie Tribute Book, the latest in a series of short, autobiographical books by the star.

In that book, Franklin -- who stars in the film as French exchange student Monique Junot in the film -- spoke with many of the cast and crew behind Better Off Dead and wrote an autobiographical take on one of the defining experiences of her professional life. The movie, which was a dud at the box office, has since become a cult classic, garnering hardcore fans, at least in part due to heavy rotation on Comedy Central in the early 2000s.

You can get tickets to the screening here.

"Better Off Dead, to me, is my favorite film I ever did," Franklin told ComicBook.com. "For a lot of reasons -- I love a lot of my work, I really do. I'm very proud of a lot of the things I've done, but Better Off Dead was a film that I would have seen, even if I wasn't in it. It was very sweet and funny and romantic, and there's a sweetness about the film that I love. I love the film, so I knew no matter what I did, that was going to be there. But I was a little nervous about writing it. The other two books I wrote, it was about my perception of the experiences that were happening, and in this book, I felt more of a responsibility, because I'm not just talking about the people that I worked with, but it's also the memories that people feel watching the film, and the expectation of, they want to know extra things, but also, it's got to be about love. The film makes you feel good, so the thing about this book that's different from the other books is, I needed to come at this from the point of view of a fan."

You can pick up a copy of Franklin's Better Off Dead book here. The film itself is available on Amazon, Vudu, and other digital video on demand platforms for rental and sale.

Here's the synopsis for the film:

After his girlfriend (Amanda Wyss, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) ditches him for a boorish ski jock, Lane (John Cusack, HIGH FIDELITY) decides that suicide is the answer. However, his increasingly inept attempts bring him only more agony, not to mention embarrassment. Filled with the wildest teen nightmares, a family you can't help but identify with, and a host of extremely comic characters, BETTER OFF DEAD is an essential 80s classic, and a painfully funny teenage tale.

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