The Initiation of Sarah

Spoilers? Yes, there are spoilers.

Tonight in the I Will Devour Your Content Inner Chamber, the movie that flickered across the screen was a 1978 made-for-TV, sororities-'n'-telekinesis tale called The Initiation of Sarah. Sarah is the most recent entry in the delightful, collective movie-reviewing effort known as Final Girl Film Club.

The Initiation of Sarah is pretty standard fare. Although I had a little trouble getting into it, ultimately I kind of liked Sarah, it had its enjoyable moments, but I wanted to like it more. Apparently a big part of Sarah's appeal is the cast, particularly Morgan Fairchild. That's one cult of personality I never joined. Not by design, it's just that Ms. Fairchild never really crossed my radar. I only really remember her in a guest-starring role in the short-lived Fox sitcom That '80s Show (which featured a pre-It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Glenn Howerton).

Another Sarah cast member of whom I have some knowledge is Robert Hays, whom I know from Airplane! (1980), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), and for his occasional role as Hyde's dad in the longer-lived Fox sitcom That '70s Show.

And then there's Shelley Winters. For a woman who had such a long and storied acting career, I know woefully little about her. I know I've seen her in a few other pictures, but as I cast about in my memory, all I can remember is her role in The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Here in Sarah, Winters plays Mrs. Hunter, a satanic house mother for the Phi Epsilon Delta sorority. I gotta say, I don't think she did a very good job. Her line delivery was oddly cadenced and stammering. At first I thought she was being naturalistic, but as the picture unspooled, I really got the impression that Winters was having trouble remembering her lines.

As far as plot goes, I'll nutshell if for ya: Sarah (Kay Lenz) goes to college. The snooty-girl sorority, Alpha Nu Sigma (the one run by Morgan Fairchild's character, Jennifer) rejects her because she's not pretty enough and she's weird, a large part of her weirdness being her telekinetic powers that manifest themselves when she's angry. Attractiveness and social status, not brains or talent, are the criteria for being accepted as an Alpha Nu pledge. As one rejected pledge puts it: "As long as you have looks and bread you could flunk study hall and they wouldn't care."

So Sarah joins Phi Epsilon Delta, the smart-girl sorority. There's a long-standing rivalry between PED and ANS. The PED house mother, Shelly Winters' character, Mrs. Hunter, is some sort of cultist who teaches Sarah how to focus and control her telekinetic rage. She then encourages Sarah to use that power against the hated, snooty, pretty-haired, bitchy Alpha Nu girls. After Jennifer and the other Alpha Nus pelt Sarah with tomatoes in a scene obviously inspired by Carrie (1976), Sarah has no problem using her telekinetic powers to cause Jennifer to age instantly and become ugly. What an ironic punishment, although I'm not sure how telekinesis would cause aging. Maybe Sarah used her powers to extract the 'pretty' molecules from Jennifer's face. Whatever.

Finally, Sarah realizes that Mrs. Hunter is evil, wants to take her revenge even further and commit murder. Sarah is unwilling to go that far, and in an effort to stop Mrs. Hunter from sacrificing one of her sorority sisters to the dark gods or whatever, Jennifer hurls some blazing candelabra into a shrubbery, and she and the house mother die in the ensuing conflagration.

These high points are engaging and well-done. But in between them, there's a lot of talk, standard TV movie stuff about the true nature of beauty, realizing one's self-worth, the difficulties of being different, the true meaning of friendship, and so on. These sections were, in my estimation, pretty flat and uninteresting. We even get, at one point, this little speech from one of Sarah's professors: "Mrs. Hunter is only teaching you how to hate and and hate is the only real evil power. Don't give in to it. Don't let them win after all."

Now, I know I'm not being fair. While here I'm saying that this sort of dialogue in Sarah is trite, I've mentioned in other essays that I frequently enjoy the pedantic and moralistic speeches in many 1950s juvenile-delinquent, drug, and other "teach your children" movies. Wherefrom stems this inconsistency? I can't really say. Maybe its because the 1950s are a more remote era that have taken on for me the sheen of mythology, whereas in the 1970s I was actually alive, marching resolutely and rebelliously toward puberty, and actually had to endure many of those sappy "believe in yourself" pie-in-the-sky speeches, toward which I may harbor a lingering resentment. Perhaps.

Ultimately, then, from the Naugahyde Recliner of Judgement, I claim that The Initiation of Sarah is just OK. Interesting enough to keep watching for 90 or so minutes, but nothing that had me cheering for joy, moistening my trousers, or otherwise getting excited. Sarah is watchable, it looks good, the story is solid if a little clunky, and the acting is fine (except for Ms. Winters), but ultimately it didn't resonate much with me. I'm sure that if you go to the Final Girl website and read some other Film Club entries, you'll find much more enthusiastic responses to the film. I say that The Initiation of Sarah is worth a look, but just one.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Stay tuned to this here I Will Devour Your Content blog of mine for an experiment. Back in the summer when I first started this blog, I tried a little something wherein I compared a movie I'd watched to the book on which it was based. I tried this with House of Sand and Fog, and while that entry is readable, I don't think I did as good a job of it as I could have. Well, now that I've been writing these essays for a few months, I think I've more firmly found my footing and my voice, so I'm going to try a few more of these "Book vs. Movie" essays. I've recently read Jules Verne's classic 1864 novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth and will be comparing it with the 1959 movie version of the story. I've also recently re-read H.P. Lovecraft's 1933 story "The Dreams in the Witch-House" and will be comparing that with Stuart Gordon's 2005 "Masters of Horror" movie based on it. Look for these entries in the next few days.

I am your host, John Bem, signing off for now. Good night and again, thanks for paying a visit.