GORILLANAUT

JENNIFER

Theme song from JENNIFER by Porter Jordan

JENNIFER is perhaps the best known film of Brice Mack if you don't count his cock fighting soap opera ROOSTER: SPURS OF DEATH. But after that, definitely his best known. People, myself included, have called it CARRIE with snakes but perhaps a more accurate description, if you're pressed to give one for some reason, would be SCHOOL TIES with supernatural snakes mixed with any of those movies where a lone noble teacher stands up to the rigidity of academia, for the betterment of a single student. These usually star Morgan Freeman or Edward James Olmos, maybe Ed Asner in the seventies TV version. So Bert Convy of Tattletales fame and THE DALLAS COWBOY CHEERLEADERS stars as Jeff Read, the handsome teacher at a prep school for spoiled bitches. All the girls want Mr. Reed's hot ass. But first, wasn't Tattletales great? Where else could you see Dick Gautier and his wife Barbara Stuart compete with Bill and Marcy Shatner or Elaine Joyce and Bobby Van. Marcy Shatner later sued Bill over the freshness of some horse semen used for breeding. Here's another fact, Convy claimed to have the ability to predict the sex of unborn children and said he had been right 34 out of 36 times including correct guesses on all of John Ritter's kids. We can only guess that this ability led to his death by brain tumor in 1991.

So where was I? So Jennifer(Lisa Pelikan) is a scholarship student from a poor Appalachian family whom the rich girls don't like, especially Queen Bitch Sandra ( Amy Johnston, also in ROOSTER: SPURS OF DEATH). There's lots of "that Hillbilly smells" comments. Jennifer appears to live in the back of pet store with her religious snake handler dad played by Jeff Corey. Mr. Price is told by Principal Evilcunt( not her real name, but she's played by Nina Foch wearing Charles Nelson Reilly's glasses) that the "rich are always right" when he sticks up for poor Jennifer who is constantly the heel of mean pranks and plots. Sandra's dad is a senator and she is quite the little whore, having claimed to have fucked Warren Beatty and John Travolta as well as receiving "swimming lessons" ( I can only assume she meant golden showers) from Mark Spitz. You kids remember Mark Spitz right? At one point one snotty girl accuses the other of stealing her Hustler magazine! Man did teen girls love the spread pussy shots of Hustler. But their favorite part was "Chester the Molester". Remember him? He was a cartoon in Husler, a hysterical child rapist.

Back to Jennifer. So there's a disco scene, some swimming pool trauma, cat murder, chubby girl date rape and then kidnapping before Jennifer, looking like a younger Piper Laurie from CARRIE summons up some real snakes and a few fake giant ones to settle the score. By this time Mr. Price has been fired. Unlike CARRIE this one has a pretty happy ending. Jennifer's snake powers are never really explained but we see her in flashbacks at a snake prayer group. Apparently she had "the gift" as a wee child of the hills but was unable to save the preacher's boy when he was bit a bunch of times. It's actually a entertaining drive in picture and Lisa Pelikan is pretty excellent as Jennifer. Convy is brilliant. I should mention I never saw SCHOOL TIES or any of those teacher movies so I could be way off on the comparisons.