Jennifer

Enjoyable 1978 horror film outing with a young Lisa Pelikan portraying a set-upon student at a girls academy who ends up having to use her, uhm, special gifts in order to defeat the big girl bullies who won't leave her alone. Her father, a religious nut (is that the polite term?), insists upon having her as a wife (or sorts) as well as a daughter, and comes to depend upon her, but Jennifer knows what she can do with snakes, and by the end of the film things get pretty interesting.Really, the film is fairly lightweight for a supernatural drama (there are couple scenes where Jennifer is communicating with snakes that are a bit weird, but there are few supernatural moments as there were in "Carrie", for example) and the film runs mainly upon the strength of its performances (from John Gavin to Nina Foch) and its amusing screenplay (by Kay Cousins Johnson). Producer Steve Krantz is credited with the original story, but he apparently had a lackluster relationship with his cast on the set, leading to some fallouts later on (but he is/was the husband of Judith, so at least there was some income in the family that topped the upper reaches of the charts, so to speak). Kino Lorber has once again rescued a rather obscure title, but this time without much in the way of extras (gee, an audio commentary would have been nice for this one). Nonetheless, the picture is pretty good and the sound is fine (but I'm unaware of what it may sound like through a stereo format). In any case, "Jennifer" is not an essential stop along with side-roads of horror movie history but it is nonetheless enjoyable if you need something unusual to watch, and there is the appearance of a rather large reptile at the end that really made the movie for me--and essentially, this one is more dramatically serious than either "Carrie" or "Willard", with some trenchant commentary upon Bible-thumping snake handlers and the like. If you enjoyed "Elmer Gantry", you might like it; if you enjoyed "Stanley" (from 1972), you'll probably love it. There is not an excess of action here, but the story is engrossing, and there are also some cheesecake-style shots of brief nudity in case anyone is wondering about the PG rating. B+

Well since I am a child who grew up in the 70s I can clearly remember cult favorites such as the movie Jennifer.This movie would have never won an Oscar but let me tell you if there was a Cult Horror Award it would have or should have won it.It's a weird movie in a good way ...So for all of you 70s cult movie aficionados out there this is a flick you want in your collection

In this low-budget rip-off of CARRIE (1976), a poor Southern girl named Jennifer (Lisa Pelikan; GHOULIES - 1985) is admitted to the prestigious all-girl Green View School on a scholarship and must put up with verbal and physical abuse by a clique of snotty, uppercrust students, led by Sandra Tremayne (Amy Johnston), who calls Jennifer a "hayseed" and a "hillbilly". As we learned in CARRIE, you can only push a quiet girl so far before she reacts in strange, violent ways and Jennifer is no different. When Jennifer was a little girl, she experienced a traumatic incident in the snake-worshipping church run by her hyper-religious father, Luke (Jeff Corey; MESSENGER OF DEATH - 1988). Jennifer was a child prodigy of the church and people came from miles around to watch her power to control snakes, but when a snake-handling sermon goes wrong and some parishioners are bitten and killed, Jennifer vows never to use her powers again. That won't last very long now that she's attending Green View. Sandra gets caught cheating on a mid-term test by teacher Jeffrey Reed (Bert Convy; HANGING BY A THREAD - 1979), but she tries blaming Jennifer for her mess. Jeffrey is having none of it and sends Sandra to the Headmistress, Miss Calley (Nina Foch), who then blackmails Sandra's rich father, Senator Tremayne (John Gavin), into making a "donation" to the school to make his daughter's latest problem go away. It seems Sandra has always been a problem child and has been kicked-out of several schools for various serious infractions, so Daddy warns her that if she gets into any more trouble, he will disown her and send her to live with her "common" mother. Of course, Sandra blames all her problems on Jennifer and vows to make her life a living hell. Poor Jennifer, not only does she have to put up with Sandra's constant harassment, she also has to go home every night to her alcoholic father, who owns a pet store and constantly reminds her (using fire and brimstone sermons) that she should resume her life as a religious snake-handler. Jennifer joins the school's swim team over her father's protests ("It's sinful!") and when Sandra tries to drown her in the pool, Jennifer says enough is enough and uses her supernatural powers for the first time since the fatal incident as a child to make snakes materialize and then disappear in Sandra's locker, scaring the crap out of her. Sandra retaliates by joining with her boyfriend Dayton (Ray Underwood) in stealing Jennifer clothes while she is taking a shower in the girls locker room, taking photos of her in the nude and plastering the photos all over the school. Jeffrey wants to help Jennifer, but she would rather deal with it on her own. Sandra continues her harassment, killing Jennifer's favorite cat and having Dayton sexually assault ex-clique member Jane (Louise Hoven) for siding with Jennifer. Things take a bad turn when Sandra and her clique kidnap Jennifer out of her bedroom, put her in the trunk of a car and take her to the top of a parking garage, where Dayton and his male friends terrorize her by trying to run her over in their cars. Jennifer snaps and unleashes her snake powers to deadly effect, where we learn the real extant of her powers. No one is going to slither out of this mess, except for Jennifer and new best friend Jane. The parallels to CARRIE are numerous: A teen with psychic powers with a domineering uber-religious parent; a shower scene that proves to be embarrassing to the teen; an understanding teacher who tries to help the much put-upon teen; a climatic finale where the teen suffers humiliation in front of her peers, which forces her to unleash her powers to full effect, resulting in death and destruction; and the title itself, which is simply the teen's first name. Hell, if director Brice Mack (SWAP MEET - 1979; ROOSTER: SPURS OF DEATH - 1983) and screenwriter Kay Cousins Johnson were any more blatant, I'm sure Stephen King and Brian DePalma would have a winnable lawsuit on their hands. While JENNIFER is not a badly made film, it is far too restrained for it's own good. Besides a brief bit of nudity by Lisa Pelikan and a spot of mild violence and minimal cursing, this all plays like some subdued 70's TV movie until the crazy finale, where Jennifer goes bonzo and creates monster snakes with her mind that bite the cast (the giant snake in Sandra's car is a hoot) and then simply disappear, leaving some of the cast dead and others emotionally scarred for life. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is full of inane teen chatter (Where the girls argue over who is cuter, John Travolta or Warren Beatty. They should see them now!), sub-par revenge tactics and very little snake action. If you are going to make a knock-off of an established hit, why on Earth would you make a toned-down PG-rated version of it? It makes no sense. Still, it's nice to see the film finally in its OAR. Also starring Wesley Eure, Florida Friebus, Georganne LaPiere, Sally Pansing, Lesley E. King and Lillian Randolph. Available on DVD & Blu-Ray from Scorpion Releasing/Kino Lorber. Rated PG.

I really like this film. But I can not play it as it is region 1. Only.

Surprisingly this film pre dates the Carrie remake by several decades. I was not aware of this movie until the blu ray release. Having checked it out my advice is to leave well alone. It doesn't hold a candle to the 1976 version of Carrie. All the pupils at the posh school look much older than teens - like the "pupils" in the school in John Carpenters Christine. Ginger haired Jennifer looks (and acts) like a younger version of Piper Laurie. Her religious fanatic father pushes her daughter to reignite her dark power over snakes. Jennifer at first refuses but when bullied by her upper class snobbish classmates the reptiles arise - eventually in the form of plastic ones that 1970's Doctor Who may have used. Sorry acting, duff 70.s disco music and lame "FX" are all that is on offer , Overwrought or not stick with De Palmas take and give Jennifer a wide berth. Picture quality is reasonable for a film of this age Disc is region A locked,