The Initiation

The 1980's were a great time for horror movies. The slasher sub-genre in particular enjoyed a plethora of movies during this time. I have no idea how many of these types of movies were made, but I'm still discovering to this day movies from this sub-genre that I've never heard of. The Initiation is one of those movies that I recently came across and watched. Now I'm scratching my head in disbelief of how I've gone this long never hearing of this movie.

The Initiation is about a group of girls pledging to a sorority and part of their initiation is to break into a department store building to steal the uniform of the night watchman. The lead actress suffers from a reoccurring dream and seeks answers from a college professor. While all of this is going someone is stalking them from the shadows, killing the girls and their friends.

I went into watching this movie with no real idea of the story or any expectations. I didn't even realize that it started Daphne Zuniga (Space Balls, Melrose Place) until she appeared on screen. What sold me on watching this movie was the interesting movie poster.

The Initiation was released in 1984 and set in Texas. It was originally directed by Peter Crain, but was later replaced by Larry Stewart. It stars Vera Miles (Psycho), Clu Gulager (The Return of the Living Dead), James Read (Legally Blonde) and Hunter Tylo (The Bold and the Beautiful).

In most horror movies you know who the antagonist is, but in The Initiation it's not clear who the killer is. There are times that you may think you've figured out who it is, but it's not revealed who it is until the end of the movie. Speaking of the end, there is a plot twist that I didn't see coming nor did other reviewers of the movie.

The movie opens up with a young Kelly Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga) sleeping in bed, a storm just outside her window. She wakes up and hears something so she walks down the hall to her parents room. She sees what she thinks are her parents making out in bed, until she realizes that the man isn't her father. She stabs in him the leg (it's not clear where she got the knife) before another man walks into the room and is caught on fire from the fireplace in the bedroom. Her mother carries her out of the room with her looking over her shoulder and the man lying on the floor, fully engulfed in flames.

Kelly then wakes up, only to be in the sorority dorm being hovered over by one of the lead sorority sisters in charge. Kelly and 3 of her friends are the last of 20 original pledge members to Delta Ro Kai and are being lead downstairs where they learn of their fate. They are tasked with breaking into the Fairchild building, which is essentially a giant department store (or mall if you will) that her father owns and where Kelly happens to be working. They are to steal the night watchman's uniform to complete their task. However one of the sisters has other plans for them...essentially to have a little fun at their expense and scare the crap out of them.

Before the night of the break-in, Kelly tells one of her instructors that she wants to do her term paper on dreams. He thinks she is trying to be a brown nose as that is the subject he is working to get is degree in. They strike up a conversation and she reveals to him the re-occuring dream she has been having from her childhood. This is where we also learn that she has amnesia after falling out of a tree house at the age of 12, losing all of her previous memories. This is played up too much, but does factor into the ending.

We also see a private sanitorium that is located 300 miles away from the Fairchild's home (the mileage is given by Clu's character). There an over the top nurse is trying to relay some information to her patients when she sees the gardner out the window. She starts tapping on the window, yelling at him to leave. All we see of this guy is his disfigured face and hands as he takes his large garden trowel and continues to dig into the ground. Later that evening several of the inmates escape the sanitorium, killing the nurse. The next day is when the Fairchilds receive a call regarding the escape. This made me wonder if there was some sort of connection between the two.

The second half of the movie takes place in the Fairchild building, which actually was a real working mall. Much like the crew in the original Dawn of the Dead filmed in the real Monroeville Mall at night, the crew had 12 hours each evening to film before they had to wrap up and get out. This mall doesn't look like your traditional mall. From the outside it looked more like an office building, but as the cast runs around the mall you can clearly see individual stores. The setting helps add to the fun and suspense once the killer shows up. I don't want to say too much more about the movie because it really warrants a view, if not a purchase.

The kills in this movie aren't all that original, but they get the job done. The killer's weapon of choice (for most of the kills) is a large garden trowel, however other instruments of destruction are used such as a knives, a machete and even a harpoon gun! A few of the kills are done on screen with practical effects. The character Alison (Hunter Tylo), one of Kelly's friends probably has the bloodiest, most gruesome kills.

I thought the acting at times was bad, however Vera Miles comes through playing the role of Kelly Fairchild's mother. Clu Gulager is good, however is killed off fairly early in the movie. What I didn't know is that The Initiative was the first cinema role for both Daphne Zuniga and Hunter Tylo. Both of them are great throughout the entire movie.

Lately I've watched a lot of bad 80's horror movies so it was refreshing to watch a good movie for a change. While The Initiative didn't reinvent the slasher sub-genre of horror movies, it did a good job keeping the viewer guessing who was the killer. Now that I've seen it I was able to piece things together from earlier scenes that I originally missed. This is far from the perfect horror movie, but it is a fun movie nonetheless and one that I'm glad I stumbled across on TubiTV. Arrow Video recently released a 2 disc collector's edition Blu-Ray in late 2018 that I may have to track down because I enjoyed the movie that much.