Heavenly Creatures: the 1954 Parker-Hulme case

Heavenly Creatures is a dramatised representation of events leading to the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder case in which two Christchurch schoolgirls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, aged 16 and 15 respectively, committed matricide, slaying Pauline's mother, Honora Rieper (nee Parker). There are several versions of the film (ranging from 99 to 109 mins) due to a number of deleted scenes in the earliest North American cinematic and video releases. The age and gender of the perpetrators, the intensity of their friendship, the brutal nature of the murder and later revelations about the families of the two teenagers were factors that made this one of the most publicised cases in New Zealand criminal history