All Rise...

Appellate Judge Mac McEntire wonders why more teenage girls don't play with snakes.

The Charge

She walks in terror, filled with fright. A trail of fear, to fill the night.

Opening Statement

It's pretty much impossible to discuss 1978's Jennifer without also mentioning Brian DePalma's Carrie. Even the movie does it. The original tagline was, "Makes Carrie look like an angel," the Blu-ray packaging twice references the Stephen King film, and the script even contains an in-joke about John Travolta, as he got his start in Carrie. Poor Jennifer cannot step out from under Carrie's shadow, but, nonetheless, is her movie any good?

Facts of the Case

Jennifer (Lisa Pelikan, Ghoulies) lives out in the country, raised by her staunchly religious father (Jeff Corey, Battle Beyond the Stars). Thanks to her excellent grades, Jennifer is accepted at a posh private school. The beautiful rich girls do not like country bumpkin Jennifer in their midst, so the bullying begins. As the stresses intensify in her life, Jennifer taps into a supernatural power she never knew she had, bringing poisonous revenge to everyone who wronged her.

The Evidence

If you came across Jennifer while channel surfing, you'd probably think it some sort of teen dramedy about bullying. Once the horror elements are introduced around 45 minutes in, you'd be all "Wait, what?" It's all a matter of tone and pacing. Even when Carrie is at its campy, humorous scenes, there's still an undeniable feeling of dread. Throughout the whole movie, you know bad things are going to happen—it's only a matter of time. In Jennifer, the movie spins its wheels for huge chunks of the running time, so we go from bullying scene to psycho dad scene to another bullying scene and so on, waiting for something to finally move the plot forward. There are subplots with the school faculty that go absolutely nowhere, a painfully long costume party scene that exists only to get some swingin' disco tunes on the soundtrack, flashbacks to Jennifer's childhood, and other such filler. It's 30 minutes of story stretched into 90 minutes.

Jennifer has one big difference from big sister Carrie, and that's in our psychic girls' power sets. Unlike Mrs. White, Jennifer's dad isn't just any old crazy Christian, he's a crazy Christian snake handler. This gives Jennifer the power to control snakes with her mind. Sadly, the idea of that is way more awesome than what we see on screen. Snake-possession action is fleeting, reserved mostly for the end, and even then Jennifer doesn't truly raise hell the way Carrie did. One or two outrageous snake gags does not a classic killer snake movie make.

Check it out: Burt Convy is in this. Who's Burt Convy? He's most well-known for appearing on several television game shows and variety shows throughout the '70s and '80s. He was one of those paradoxical "TV personalities," whose only claim to fame was that he happened to be famous. In Jennifer, we get to see him acting. He plays a teacher who shows some kindness to Jennifer. He's the "Ms. Collins," if we're to keep up the Carrie comparisons. He's just as amiably inoffensive here as he was when hosting Win Lose or Draw, but you could cut his part entirely and not lose anything—another example of the movie's reliance on filler.

Jennifer looks surprisingly good on Blu-ray, with a clean 1080p HD picture framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, bright colors, and a nice amount of detail. The DTS-HD 2.0 audio is rougher, as the dialogue is flat and somewhat muted, but when one of the disco tunes kicks in, suddenly it explodes out of the speakers. You'll have to keep fiddling with the volume on your remote as you watch. A trailer is it for extras.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

It's not all bad. A few scenes show some real visual style. When Jennifer is locked in a car's trunk (long story), she's bathed in red light while church organ music plays. It's a trippy dreamlike sequence that looks like something Ken Russell might have come up with. The movie's depiction of bullying is oddly prescient given stuff we've seen in headlines in recent years, and Jennifer even recruits an accomplice at one point, something that could have further differentiated her from Carrie, if it had been explored in greater depth.

Closing Statement

There's not much to say about Jennifer. It's an interesting horror flick, but a small morsel compared to Carrie's main course.

The Verdict

Guil—Hey, what's that hissing sound?!

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