 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we are drinking Slawnard Lamb English Bitter. Today we're going to bring to you another Patreon request. This one is by Christine Irene Fedouk, 1978's Jennifer. Jennifer is directed by Bryce Mac, and he's been directed many movies, but he's most notably been a background artist for Disney. Art for Peter Pan, Lady in the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Fantasia, Fantasia, so he worked on some of the great Disney movies. Lisa Pelican is in this, she was in Goolies and Lionheart with Van Damme. Mina Falk is in this, she's a classic actor, she was in Ten Commandments and Spartacus, just to mention two. If you're gonna do two, make it those. Jennifer starts off with that awesome theme song. Jennifer, there's power in your... Makes me wish we had a theme song. We do. Yeah, but with lyrics and all that kind of stuff. We do. Sometimes the basement's perfect, but the movie is at its end. You go grab a beer, something's missing the empty spot that should be a friend. There's beer in the fridge, you call your best friend, there's horror movies playing. I thought that was just a drunken fever dream. No, no, that really happened. Jennifer lives with her dad, and her dad kind of runs his pet store. You can tell right off the bat, he's a bit of a strict man as she's leaving for school, are you about to get all straight A's? Yeah, to make sure my supper's all ready. Can you do your own fucking supper? Find out she's a little bit of an outcast because she is a poor girl, or as the girls call her, a hillbilly, attending a rich girl's school. The reason she's able to do this is because she is damn smart, and she got a scholarship to attend. We meet this group of girls led by Sandra, who's the lead bitch. That was the best way to put it. Bathroom smoking and everything. Anybody got any uppers? Those drugs? Tests coming up and they plan on cheating. So one of the girls is actually able to get a copy of the test. A teacher, who's a newbie at the school, this Tom Jones guy who got super fake looking hair, looking like he's wearing some fucking wig or something. He catches Sandra cheating. Sandra actually kind of tries to put the blame on Jennifer. Jennifer's not going to take that shit. She says no. Oh, she took the test. Look, it's in her bag. Teacher finds a copy of the test in Sandra's bag. Sandra's in hot shit now. And for some reason, so is Jennifer too. Yeah. Principal's kind of taking Sandra's side because Sandra's dad is a senator. Exactly. Teacher Jeff is more on Jennifer's side because he sees it the way it really is. Principal's got to call a senator over and of course he just fucking writes some check. Yeah, donation to the school pays her off. So Sandra gets off scot free. Jeff kind of sees that this is wrong. He says the principal is like, so the rich over the right. She's reply is saying the rich are the right. So now Sandra has it out for Jennifer. She's on a mission to make Jennifer's life a living hell. So Sandra concocts all these little schemes to try and get Jennifer in trouble. Jennifer is pouring soup for everybody in their bowls. And Sandra moves her arm into the way and gets burrs. Oh, Jennifer did this. Yeah, yeah. And Jennifer is really good at swimming. These girls ask her to join a team for them. And Sandra grabs Jennifer's arm and pushes her head down below the water. She tries to kill her. One of Sandra's crew, Jane, stops her. And she gets really pissed off. She's like, don't ever fucking do that again, Jane. Who's side are you on here? Yeah. She stays behind. She takes a shower. And when she gets into the change room to get put her clothes on, they're all gone. And she finds him hanging above the pool with this ladder there. It's all elaborately set up. Obviously it's set up. Yeah. She climbs the ladder to get them. The boys run out and push her off this ladder. And they take a picture of her while she's kind of half naked falling off this ladder. And then, of course, those pictures get circulated around school. Right? On the bulletin board. Yeah. Her home life, too, is a little odd because her dad is really into quoting scripture. Well, the Bible says that you should do this. You should do that. He's always telling her, well, Jennifer, you have the power. You have this power. You must learn to harness. Harness the power. And you see flashbacks. She was a young girl. She was in sort of this snake handling church where if you handle the snakes and you don't get bit, you have a power of some kind. So Sandra and her crew, they start to torment Jennifer more and more as the school year goes on. She starts to have enough of this and she does start to harness this power that she's got that her dad tells her she has. And that's where we're going to end the story. So if you want to see what happens to Jennifer and the rest of this fucking bullshit crew that she has to deal with, keep watching Jennifer. Jennifer sounds like a carry a rip off to you. That's because it kind of is. But it doesn't mean it's a bad thing because it's actually a very, very, very good carry a rip off movie. In some respects, it may be superior to Carrie. This movie is less flashy than Carrie, right? Carrie is all Hollywood. This movie is far more down to earth. You can really relate to the characters and her school life and also maybe a little bit of her home life too. Maybe not so much with the Bible, but the fact that her dad doesn't want to listen to her. Your dad's strict, super demanding of her, not just in school but at home too. Yeah. And she has problems that she needs to kind of offload and there's nobody there to listen to her. The characters really carry this movie and damn, the characters are great. Specifically Sandra and the bitch crew. Let's call it. This movie is almost just as much about Sandra as it is about Jennifer. But to have a good protagonist and Jennifer, you need a great antagonist. Man, do you hate Sandra? Oh yeah. You hate her guts. The things that she does to get to Jennifer are horrible. Buys a cat from the store that Jennifer's dad owns and runs and kills it and leaves it in Jennifer's locker. Yeah, and then blames Jennifer for killing her cat. Yeah, and pretends that it was Sandra's cat, her cat. Why did she do that? Poor Jennifer is all alone in this whole fight. She doesn't even have any support from the school because the school just wants and sees money. It's so corrupt. What do you do when your back is to the wall? You harness your power. You harness the power of the snakes. Another horrible thing that Sandra does is she gets her boyfriend to rape Jane. Crazy. Whoa. The character of Jane is actually a really good character too because she starts on this side and she slowly moves to Jennifer's side and there's that scene where after Jane is raped, she calls her mom on a pay phone and tries telling her this and it's a heart-wrenching scene. It's acting so good. It kind of sticks to you. This movie does such a good job of invoking emotion in you. And again, it comes back to the way the characters are acted out, the way it's written for the characters. It's amazing. It's not a flashy movie whatsoever. Until the end, the final act gets kind of flashy a bit with some special effects and stuff like that, but for most of it, there's no crazy effects. It's just all drama. The commentary on the rich and the poor and how corrupt schools are is great. We can relate. We went to a school which was kind of the same way. Our high school was kind of corrupt in that way. Not necessarily about the rich people, but if you're on the fucking football team, you get away with murder almost for fuck's sakes. And why? Because the football team did very well. I don't know. And it makes you really feel for Jennifer even more knowing that not even people in authority are on her side. The pacing for this movie is a little bit weird because it is slow. It's intriguing. And because it's intriguing, it keeps you watching and so it's paced very well. But it's actually paced kind of slow. It's definitely a slow burn. Even though you're waiting for Jennifer to get her revenge, I think it's going to come and you know it's going to come. It's also entertaining watching these bitches torment Jennifer too. So that's what most of the movie is, watching a poor girl being tormented. You're also waiting to see what these bitches are going to do next. How are they going to top what they did before? Yeah, because they keep fucking outdoing themselves. When is Jennifer going to snap? Because she needs to. She has to snap. And the neat thing is she doesn't really snap. No, she just smartens up. It's not really snapping. It's like, okay, I've had enough. I'm going to deal with it. Yeah, exactly. It's more that she comes to her senses rather than snapping in a way, really. And I like the mystery of Jennifer's background. The dad alludes to it a bit about this weird church they attended. Up in the hills. Up in the hills, this hillbilly church with the snakes and they were kind of run out of town. And he keeps saying, well, when your mama died and she's like, mama didn't die. She left because you're nuts. Yeah. But like, that's all you get. And the rest is kind of like a bit of a mystery. And I like that. You get a big payoff at the end with some effects driven scenes. But for the most part, it's an extremely simple movie. Very simple. The most amount of effects in the movie are in the disc attack with the lights. Basically, yeah. We're at Sanders wearing that sick, that shower cap thing, that glowing shower cap. Like, what the hell is this? The fifth? You just want to punch her right in the face while she's wearing that thing. That discotex scene, man. That DJ booth is this big, epic, like, bowl. They don't make them like they used to. No, that's for sure. So, yeah, if you want a really good 70s supernatural revenge type story, which is very kind of Carrie. Yeah. Or Ann Dominique. Yeah. It's very Dominique style. And actually too, I was thinking, Christine as well. A little bit. I was thinking this is a lot like Christine with the bullies. Underdog story that's supernatural based, really. It's great. I think it was a fantastic movie. I like it way better than Carrie. I prefer this over Carrie. And that's saying a lot. Check out 1978's Jennifer. And until next time, keep drinking.