Jennifer (1978)
Jennifer is a private school student who, after being merciless tormented by her classmates, uses her psychokinetic powers to exact revenge. If this sounds similar to Stephen King’s Carrie, which was released two years prior… it is. It’s exactly that movie.
The bullies in Jennifer are a group of snotty prep girls who torment Jennifer because she’s an outsider, what with her southern drawl and all. The leader of the prissy pack is Sandra, the daughter of a senator and a particularly cruel girl who derives great enjoyment from bullying Jennifer when she’s around, and everyone else when she is not. Despite being a less than ideal student, Sandra comes from money, and money buys a lot of favors in this prep school.
Jennifer’s complaints about the bullies to her father Luke fall on deaf ears. Luke’s a crazy old religious zealot after all who believes his daughter was blessed with the ability to talk to, control, and materialize snakes.
(She can.)
Revenge movies don’t work unless the entire audience agrees that the mean kids deserve what’s coming to them, and Jennifer goes out of its way to make sure they won’t sympathize with anyone except Jennifer (and eventually one lone defector, Jane). Sandra and her squad aren’t just cruel to Jennifer. During swim class, Sandra straight up tries to drown her. Later that night, Sandra and her goons hide Jennifer’s clothes up a ladder and take naked pictures of her. In another one of Sandra’s schemes, she kills her own cat and hangs it Jennifer’s school locker in an attempt to frame her. When one of the girls in Sandra’s posse (Jane) starts to fall out of line, she tells her boyfriend to rape her. In the final act of the film, Sandra and her friends kidnap Jennifer, throw her in the trunk of a car and take her to the roof of a parking garage to torment her.
Well, the joke’s on them, because — ha, ha — Jennifer can not only control snakes but has the power to materialize them out of thin air. In a manic and psychedelic sequence, Jennifer summons a multitude of venomous snakes that proceed to bite and strangle every last one of those prep school jerks. I didn’t go into Jennifer thinking I would be rooting for poisonous snakes to kill a bunch of teenagers, but that’s where I found myself. The following day when the headmaster tries to pin the whole thing on Jennifer, MORE SNAKES.
Sometimes when a horror movie ends, I like to imagine what the following day might be like. Even the dullest detective is going to be asking how a dozen people in two different locations suffered snake bites, and if the school thought they were getting pressure from a senator before, wait until someone calls to tell him his daughter wrecked her car, burned to death, and was strangled by a snake all at the same time. The odds of any of those things happening seem slim; all three happening simultaneously seem astronomical.
It’s difficult to find a deeper meaning in this film. Luke, Jennifer’s crazy old father, knew Jennifer had the power all along. The one teacher who stuck up for Jennifer is run off. At least a dozen people have fresh holes in their necks. If Jennifer has any lesson at all, it’s beware of who you pick on, because they might be a crazy psychokinetic who can create and control snakes.
Tags: halloween2020, horror