If "Miss American Teen Cult Classic" were a pageant, the runaway winner would be Drop Dead Gorgeous. The underrated ‘90s film, which was released 25 years ago today, was once reviled for its dark humor but, in the years since, the mockumentary thankfully has been given the 10/10 scoring it deserves for its campiness and satire of female beauty standards.
Written by Lona Williams and directed by Michael Patrick Jann, Drop Dead Gorgeous is a rare ‘90s movie that was wildly ahead of its time. Led by a cast of already-established actors (Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Kirstie Alley) and then-emerging stars (Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Amy Adams, Brittany Murphy), the film documents a high school beauty pageant in a rural Minnesota town during which each contestant dies off one by one under mysterious circumstances.
