Dan and I agreed we would take turns reviewing the Showtime MASTERS OF HORROR series. After his resounding praise of the premiere episode, I was eager to set my eyes upon another – and I chose Dario Argento’s JENIFER. It was a somewhat interesting episode and provided some interesting insights into the male psyche, but definitely paled in comparison to INCIDENT.
So we open with a detective (Frank Spivey) who happens upon a mute semi-nude woman who is about to be hacked to death with a meat cleaver. As the killer lay dying from Frank’s bullet wound, he can only muster a gasp of “Jenifer”. When Frank finally gets a good look at Jenifer, he notices that she has black eyes, sharp fingernails, warts on her tongue, bloody lips, but an amazing body – an A-MAZING BODY.
Frank, still a bit stunned from having killed a man, comes home to his horny wife who immediately attacks him in bed. Wait, I am pausing the movie right now and I am going to make the prediction that he sees Jenifer’s eyes as he makes love to his wife. Seen that one before, right? Here we go…okay, I was close, he sees Jenifer’s eyes and then turns his wife around to the same position that he found Jenifer bound and gagged in. The detective then violently has sex with his wife and from her expressions this is clearly not the love making that she had in mind.
Frank then does some follow up on Jenifer and finds that she has been taken to a mental institution. He then decides to pay her a visit, perhaps to get an answer to why he suddenly wants to violently take his wife backdoor against her will. The end result of his visit has Frank taking Jenifer home to stay in his house to protect her(?!). The son loves the new visitor, stating the obvious “She’s fucking awesome and she’s got a great rack.” The wife demands that Jenifer be taken away to which Jenifer demonstrates her disdain for Frank's 'ol ball and chain by biting her on the lips.
So, instead of getting rid of Jenifer, Frank takes Jenifer for a drive and when they pull over she mounts him and rides him like the demon that she is. I actually came to a stark, yet sad realization while watching this movie - Frank made a decision that most males would make, he decides that the 9.5 body outweigh her demonic tendencies, so what the hell? Who cares that she just bit his wife on the lips and drew blood? After their hot steamy sex romp, Frank brings Jenifer home and tries to persuade his wife to keep her. While they are arguing, the howl of a cat is heard and they find Jenifer in the bathroom happlily grunting as she eats the entrails of their cat. Frank’s wife and son understandably leave the house and does Frank run after them? No, of course not. Once again, I must insist that if Jenifer didn’t have perfect pencil eraser nipples, she would have been left at the mental institution and this movie would have a running time of 12 minutes instead of 55 minutes. However, she is Aphrodite personified, so she stays.
Jenifer and Frank have so much sex in this movie that I found myself pressing the “Guide” function on my TIVO to make sure I hadn’t changed the channel to Cinemax by mistake. Nope, still JENIFER. Well, Frank finds Jenifer feasting upon a few different people and, either out of pity for Jenifer’s situation or out of lust for his new sex toy, he hops in a car and takes her to an abandoned cabin in the woods. And what does Frank do after a few minutes in this cabin? Yes, you got it – more hot beastly sex. By the way, he must have really cared about his wife, huh? Man and beast live in a cabin together – isn’t that beautiful?
So, this movie was mildly entertaining, but nothing special. The climax of this movie is pleasing, but terribly predictable. Frank kept Jenifer around even though she was eating cats, people and anything else in sight and unfortunately, I have to say, the writer/director was right on point with how just about any normal guy would react in the situation. It’s the extension of the crazy girlfriend from college who wanted nothing but sex, had a crazy body and you dated for a month or two longer than you should have because sex clouded your brain. Ah, the memories…
RATING *1/2 (out of four)
How did you guys get a hold of this episode? I thought only episode's 1 and 2 have been released so far and this is episode 4.
Posted by: Sam | November 07, 2005 at 03:43 PM
Whoops, you are right! I think Showtime mistakenly released it on the ONDEMAND channel in Manhattan. Oh well, consider it your world premiere! We at AbsoluteHorror.com aim to please.
Posted by: Opening Kill | November 07, 2005 at 04:40 PM
Was Jenifer really a demon? To me, she looked like a REALLY mentally ill person with an iron deficiency.
With eraser-point breasts.
Posted by: Steph | November 29, 2005 at 10:33 AM
Predictable ending? Ha! After the opening scene, I paused it and correctly predicted the ending. I had to google the actress -- those lips were too real looking. Luckily KNB just did a bang-up job again!
Posted by: pmj | January 26, 2006 at 05:45 PM
well, what I cant see is why they blame jenifer. Have you noticed that he doesn't feed her at all through out the movie lol, The chick is hungry, ofcourse she's going to eat people. She is hot though
Posted by: Heather-Rose | October 26, 2006 at 05:24 PM
I liked this episode, but I liked the original story in Creepy back in 1974. It was one of the most graphic comic stories I had ever read at that point. It is pretty tame by today's standards, but it had a big impact on my 11 year old mind at the time.
Posted by: Dave | December 06, 2007 at 06:17 PM
what is this movie rated? is it any good??
Posted by: Megan | January 13, 2009 at 05:29 PM
I have a DVD copy of Jenifer.The make-up effects on her face will certainly make some heads turn away from the TV screen. The guy is a policeman and had a beautiful wife, so I found it impossible to keep Jeniffer even though she had eaten their cat, the little girl and so on.
The ending was indeed predictable.
How many Masters of Horrors are out there? I've got 6 now.
Posted by: Pinoyrocks! | October 16, 2009 at 03:37 AM