Ryan B does Jenifer

Witch? Demon? Succubis? Alien?

Is she an innocent victim, or an evil genius?

Some are repulsed by and frightened of her, while others find themselves drawn to her, spellbound.

What, or who is...

Jenifer?


Well, it's one of the most famous and praised horror comic stories of all time, so ya knew I was gonna have to do it eventually. Does it really measure up to all its hype? Let's just see.

The story begins as our main character makes his way through the woods with a gun in his hand.

"Now that I understand exactly what happened... that there was a definite purpose to it all... it only makes her existance that much more horrifying," he narrates, as a tree with a suspiciously familiar face growing out of it looks on (it's Uncle Creepy). The man continues, "I never imagined in my wildest dreams there was any method to the chain of events leading to my final parting with her. It was all so subtle."

He weaves his way through the trees into a clearing.

"Even that day in the woods months ago, when my hunting trip was interrupted by the soft, plaintive sobbing sounds... even that seemed innocent of design. That was the day I firsts saw her face, first looked into her eyes, first heard her name... Jenifer."

In the clearing he sees a man holding an axe. Below the man there is a woman bent over a log with her arms bound behind her back and her face obscured by her hair. The man raises the axe, ready to behead the woman, but the narrator calls out for him to stop. He doesn't stop, so the narrator aims his gun and fires, blowing a hole through the guy. Then he runs over to the man to see if he's dead. He's not quite gone, and the narrator sees that he's trying to speak. He leans in to hear the man's dying words.

Then he dies. And with this first murder, our protagonist is already drawn into the trap that is Jenifer, he just doesn't know it yet. He remarks that it looks like the man was the one he heard crying a minute ago and that makes him turn his attention to the woman he presumes is Jenifer. He reaches out to help her when she suddenly looks up and we get our first glimpse of her face.

Ya know, there are butterfaces and then there's Jenifer. But maybe she has a wonderful personality, let's just see. After getting over the innitial shock from that mug, the narrator decides that no one deserves this treatment and unties her. He asks if she's hurt in anyway and notes that she doesn't seem to understand him and is most likely retarded. He looks at the body of the man he shot and tries to think of what to do. He knows that even if he pleads self defense and is cleared in court it will still bring a lot of unwanted attention to him and ruin his business, so he decides that since the girl is the only witness and she aint talking, that he'll just bury the guy right there and tell the authorities that he found her wandering lost in the woods.

The lie works, as the narrator tells us, but the authorities he brings her to can find no next of kin or guardian of any kind for the girl, so they're going to put her in an instituition. The narrator says that that's when he first felt her big, watery, black eyes upon him and he couldn't bear to let her go, so he files for papers to adopt her.

The judge is surprised, or even horrified by this (he *chokes* and everything), but allows it and shortly after the narrator brings Jenifer home to meet his wife, Madge, and their kids. Needless to say, Madge isn't too thrilled and neither are the kids. Things don't get off to a great start.

Eventually Madge tells the narrator, Jim, that he needs to get rid of Jenifer, because she's tearing the family apart. Keep in mind that Jenifer hasn't actully DONE anything yet really. She just gives off a vibe. Madge and the kids pick up on it, but Jim is under her spell. He says that Jenifer trusts him too much and getting rid of her would kill her.

"But it was killing all of us, slowly, painfully. Our lives became an endless nightmare with the strain of Jenifer's presence."

Sometime later, Jim is at home when he hears a scream. He runs into the next room to find Madge holding her hand and Jenifer cowering behind a chair. Madge says that Jenifer bit her and calls her a monster and a disgusting little wretch. After this incident things get worse. Jim starts to suffer from insomnia and begins to lose weight. Madge threatens to leave with the kids unless Jim gets rid of Jenifer. The next day he tries to take her to the institution, but half way there she quietly starts crying and he brings her home again, telling Madge that they were full and he'll try again tomorrow. Several months later and Jenifer is still there. Jim and Madge aren't talking anymore and the pressure on the family is reaching a breaking point. Then Jim goes to take a bath one night and finds this...

Madge doesn't take the drowning of the family cat so well and immediatley takes the kids and leaves. As soon as she's gone, Jim turns on Jenifer and tells her that this is all her fault and he'll get rid of her soon enough now.

"But I didn't get rid of her. I couldn't. Everytime I tried, everytime I threatened, she'd look up at me with those eyes. Then one night the situation approached insanity... the night she came to my bed..."

Talk about getting your FREAK on.

And speaking of which... Jim soon decides on one last plan to get rid of Jenifer. He goes to a traveling carnival and speaks with the man who runs the sideshow. He tells him how he wants to give Jenifer to him, but can't bring himself to bring her there in person. He says he'll give the carny the keys to the house and then all he has to do is "break" in and take her. The carny reluctantly agrees and three days later, Jim returns to a seemingly empty home. Thinking he is finally free from her spell, Jim heads to the fridge to grab a beer and begins to imagines how he'll call madge and get her and the kids back and his life will finally start to return to normal. Buuut this is in the fridge...

I guess it's more of a SLICE box than an ice box now. Har har har.

So that tears it. Jim now has to bury another body because of Jenifer, then he sells his house and the two hit the road. He seems to have resolved himself to the fact that he'll never be rid of Jenifer and doesn't even seem to want to be anymore as the two spend their days travelling and their nights in cheap motel rooms.

Eventually the two take up residents in an old abandoned farmhouse. Jim becomes an alcoholic and is kept on the verge of life and sanity only by the brief periods after love making where Jenifer sleeps and he's able to take some alone time and go for long walks at night. Even when she sleeps, he says, she keeps her hold on him. and there is always more alcohol waiting for him when he comes home.

Then one night while out walking, Jim comes across a newspaper with a headline about a missing child. Something in him just knows and he runs home as fast as he can. Up until this point you could probably chalk up Jenifer's killings as circumstantial. Maybe the cat was an accident, the carny self defense, but when Jim gets home and opens the door to the cellar and looks down to see Jenifer eating the intestines out of a little kid like a lion with a gazelle, he finally snaps and sees her for what she is: A monster, like Madge had said in the begining.

In a furious haze, Jim runs through alleys and streets until he comes to a hardwear store where he breaks a window and steals an axe. Jenifer is somehow right behind him starring as always with her big, black, watery eyes. The next minute they're in the woods and he's tying Jenifer's hands.

"It was then I realized her full power, her full devestating potential... I tried to scream. My throat wouldn't work. I choked on my tears."

He pleads with Jenifer as he raises the axe. Behind him a hunter comes into the clearing and sees a man holding an axe. Below the man there is a woman bent over a log with her arms bound behind her back and her face obscured by her hair. The man raises the axe, ready to behead the woman, but the hunter calls out for him to stop. He doesn't stop, so the hunter aims his gun and fires.

"There was no way to explain... no time to explain... barely the strength to utter a feeble warning as her power faded and night closed in forever..."

So what is jenifer? A witch? A demon? A succubis? An alien? Is she an innocent victim or an evil genius?

I say she's all of those things and none. She's whatever you want her to be. She's an enigma. Beauty and the beast in one. You can attach whatever traits you want to her, because she has no personality of her own. She isn't maliciously evil, but she does kill and hurt and destroy lives through just being. If you want to get especially philosophical you could say that she's the ultimate scapegoat. Her beautiful body lurs you in and keeps you there, but her hideous face shows what a monster she is. So whatever evil she or you perpatrate on her behalf is clearly "her fault". She's like a siren. She's, she's, she's... just Jenifer.

Does this story deserve all the praise it gets?

Hell yes it does! This story is one of the primest examples of what the medium of comics can do when handled by two masters like Bernie Wrightson and Bruce Jones. Both are masters of their craft and are at the top of their games here. Jenifer is one of, if not the best horror stories you'll find in the pages of a comic book or even a regular book for that matter. It's original and complex, with no clear hero or villian. In many ways it is Lovecraftian in the none specific, yet very visceral dread that it creates. You start to feel as drawn to Jenifer as the narrator is, yet you are continuosly repulsed by her and know she's bad news, but you can't look away and don't want anything to happen to her, because she seems so innocently naive.

So even though it might seem as though I've given in to her myself, I give Jenifer a very rare 10 out of 10 Werthams.

Who could possibly do justice to a live action version of a masterpiece like Jenifer? Why a master of horror like Dario Argento of course!

That's why in 2005 he was tapped by Anchor Bay to direct an adaptation of Jenifer for their television series, Masters Of Horrer, airing on the Starz channel. Jenifer was the fourth episode of the first season and was written by/starred actor Steven Weber of Wings fame, who already has horror comic cred for appearing in the episode, Mournin' Mess, of HBO's Tales From The Crypt back in 1991.

He gets even more here, in my opinion.

According to the audio commentary on the DVD release, Weber says that he was always a monster kid at heart, growing up with the old EC and Warren comics as well as Famous Monster's Of Filmland. He says that he had always been a fan of the Jenifer story in particular and wanted to adapt it as faithfully as possible, so that he did.

Dario Argento felt the same way himself after reading the story once it was brought to him by Weber and co. He even used the original comic as storyboards for many scenes.

Of course, as faithful as the movie/episode is, it is still an adaptation and therefore does change and expand upon the source material, albeit in only minor ways to fill a ninety minute running time. In this version, the main character, Frank Spivey, is a police officer who is on a lunch break with his partner at the begining. He wanders away from their car alone to get some fresh air and that's when he witnesses a man dragging Jenifer under a bridge to decapitate her. It plays out the same as in the comic, with him shooting the man dead before he can explain anything.

Then Frank get's his first look at Jenifer.

The makeup on Jenifer is very good, although can in some lighting look very "makeupy". Actress Carrie Fleming, who plays the titular character, really sells the prosthetics, though, and gives Jenifer the right blend of vulnurability and menace that she seems to eminate from the page. You totally feel for her and can't understand why everyone, including the police and Frank's family once he takes her in, are repulsed by this poor creature. And then she kills the cat.

Not a simple drowning like in the comic. This time Jenifer is much more brutal and feral from her very first killing. This should come as no surprise being an Argento piece, but the gore and sex is turned up to ten here and in the commentary Weber says that it was the perverse blend of both that the director was most interested in exploring and what attracted him ultimatley to the project.

After untieing her at the begining, for example, Frank cuts himself on Jenifer's ropes. She then proceeds to kiss and slobber on his wound and from then on it is heavely implied that his obsession and bond with her is some sort of transmutable disease that she has infected him with. This idea is in the comic in a way, but not as literally as it is represented here.

Ultimatley things play out the same way, with Frank's family leaving him and him paying a carny to get Jenifer out of his life, which ends the same way.

She eats a neighborhood kid and the two run away together to a shack in the country and for a brief bit of time the story get's a little draggy as it begins to hint that maybe Frank can break Jenifer's spell and turn his life around. Of course he can't, and winds up taking her into the woods to kill her with an axe when he is shot by a passing hunter, thus setting up the first scene in the actual comic book story.

So was the man who shot Frank at the end of this film version Jim from the comic? If so, how do you explain the similar details in both men's stories like the cat and the carny and the dead kid? Does the story play out the exact same way with all of jenifer's victims? Who knows. It's a Twilight Zone type loop and the film version represents this beautifully by having the final scene be Jenifer playing the wounded deer again as she cuddles up to her new rescuer/victim the same way she did with Frank, letting you know that indeed it is all about to start all over again.

My final analysis is that this is one hell of a good adaptation. Anyone out there who has read jenifer, or is planning to do so in the future is well advised to watch this afterward. In a way it feels almost like it completes the story. Although, considering the story of jenifer is an endless loop of misery and death, is there ever really a completion?