Initiation of Sarah [VHS]

Initiation of Sarah [VHS]
by Robert Day

Initiation of Sarah [VHS]

List Price: ~~$9.98~~
Category: VHS Video
See more movie releases

Buy Initiation of Sarah [VHS] at Amazon.com

(Click here)

Buy this VHS video movie at online store in your country
Canada

Product details

Actor: Kathryn Grant, Kay Lenz, Morgan Fairchild, Shelley Winters, Tony Bill
Director: Robert Day
Producer: Allan Marcil
Producer: Charles W. Fries
Producer: Jay Benson
Writer: Carol Saraceno
Writer: Don Ingalls
Writer: Kenette Gfeller
Writer: Tom Holland
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, EP, NTSC
Running Time: 96 minutes
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Republic Pictures
Studio: Republic Pictures

VHS Movie Reviews of Initiation of Sarah [VHS]

Movie Review: the best story about initiation
Summary: 5 Stars

This movie is so great it gave me chils when I watched it on a.b.cfamily. This movie is great to watch arouund Halloween time and at sleepover.The best thing about this movie is that it is still great to watch anytine.I do not recommend this movie for kids ten and under.

Movie Review: Carrie With Confidence.
Summary: 2 Stars

This film is about a girl named Sarah who her and her sister go off to college and end up in seperat groups of fraternitys. She is the adopted child of a mother who hasnt loved her very well, her half sister does tho, but her mother used to be in the sorority of the snobs, and wanted her daughter to carry the legacy aswell.

Sarah is considered the outcast, not pretty enough, not the right personality, so she is ignored and teased by the frat her sister gets into. Sarah joins a quite sorority of girls who accept her for her and hate the other frat. There dorm mother is a weirdo who knows voodoo or witch craft or somthing, and she welcomed into the dorm.

Sarah has powers sort of like Carrie, and the story I think is trying to rip off Carrie, but instead of being a full out cast, it's changed to "what if Carrie had friends and more confidence?" really. Sarah goes from being a shy girl to a girl leading the frat to stand up for themselves against the others who haseel them.

A fair few scenes in this are ripped right off Carrie, so it's not just the mystical powers thing. Theres a scene where they lure Sarah outside and throw mud at her, I could almost here the chant, "plug it up"

The movies finale didnt have the edge or charisma it needed. It pretty much unfolds just the way you expect it to. It's not a horror movie IMO, or a thriller, not even suspencefull. Maybe it might scare the weak minded, but it's not scary in anyway.

Perhaps if the ending of it was done a little better and not just relying on candles and wind machines for an attempt at suspence, then it might have worked.

It's a no wonder this was made for TV rather then theatrical release, it just would not have been attended in theatres.

Stephen King recomended this movie in his TV thing, "This is horror"... he must have been paid to say it, because this movie is not horror, it's more, horror-ble.

Movie Review: Best horror TV-movie ever made; Kay Lenz's finest work
Summary: 5 Stars

Yes, The Initiation of Sarah was inspired by Carrie -- but it also surpasses Carrie. For unlike Carrie, The Initiation of Sarah was a TV-movie, hence subject to budgetary and censorial restraints. But it overcame these restraints, even turning them to its advantage by emphasizing story and acting and atmosphere over shocks and gore. It's my personal favorite horror TV-movie, better than the oft-cited and rightly praised The Night Stalker.

The Initiation of Sarah tells a common tale: A young high school/summer camp/college nerd is long picked on, then finally retaliates. In the horror genre, the nerd often employs supernatural powers, or is severely injured in a "prank gone bad" so that he becomes an ?berpsycho.

The Initiation of Sarah, like Carrie and The Craft, follows the former pattern. Like Carrie, Sarah (Kay Lenz) has telekinetic powers, which manifest when she's angered. But as she is unable to control its destructive potential, and being a good-hearted nerdy girl, Sarah suppresses her powers.

The film begins with Sarah and her half-sister, Patty (Morgan Brittany), going off to college. Both pledge the campus's elite sorority, ANS (Alpha Nu Sigma), but ANS only accepts the beautiful Patty, not the mousy Sarah. Instead, Sarah joins the brainy PED (Phi Epsilon Delta -- which the svelte ANS girls refer to as Pigs, Elephants, and Dogs).

ANS is led by the beautiful and bitchy Jennifer (Morgan Fairchild), who pressures Patty into tormenting Sarah. Meanwhile, the timid Sarah finds new friends at PED, including Allison (Talia Balsom, Martin "Psycho" Balsom's daughter, and star of The Kindred and The Supernaturals) and Mouse (Tisa Farrow, Mia's sister, and star of Zombie and Grim Reaper). Several other cast members (some very minor) are the daughters, nieces, and sisters of famous thesps -- a gimmick employed by the film.

Sarah also comes under the wings of PED's loopy house mother, Mrs. Hunter (Shelley Winters), who teaches "anthropology and belief systems in primitive cultures." Naturally, she's also a practicing witch. The evil Satanic kind.

The film follows the usual trajectory. Sarah is rejected and tormented, encouraged to develop and use her powers for revenge, everything finally culminating in a fiery cataclysm. Yet within the framework of its familiar story conventions, the film offers much.

Its strongest asset is Kay Lenz, whose physical appearance, body language, mannerisms, and expressions consistently capture the nuanced timidity of a girl nerd. Consider Sarah maneuvering silently amid the ANS party-goers. In her dowdy cardigan sweater, the 5'1" Lenz holds herself together, trying to avoid touching anyone as she squeezes past the exuberant taller girls chattering over her. The insecure Sarah strains to be inconspicuous, painfully self-conscious despite the beautiful ANS girls' obliviousness to her. It's a short scene, but The Initiation of Sarah is full of such moments when Lenz shines as Sarah.

The one flaw in Lenz's portrayal is when the ANS girls fling mud and vegetables at Sarah, who stands screaming rather than retreat into the house. But most likely, this was Robert Day's direction. A small mistake, in an overall fine job as director. (No, I don't buy that Sarah was "too shocked" to move -- just as I rarely buy that horror's legions of screaming women are too shocked to move whenever a monster lumbers toward them.)

The rest of the cast is competent-to-stellar. Tisa Farrow is best known to horror fans as the star of Zombie, yet her portrayal of Mouse is her best horror (or even non-horror) performance. In The Initiation of Sarah, Farrow is less spacey and distant than usual -- infusing Mouse with pain, insecurity, trepidation, despondency, and an occasionally distraught edge (Mouse had attempted suicide).

Morgan Fairchild's Jennifer is a proper bitch, more nuanced that most movie/TV bitches, shifting from girlish camaraderie, to coy flirtation, subtle slights, and raw cruelty. Shelley Winters gives a stammering, hyperactive, hammy performance, which is inappropriate against Lenz's realism, but is still mildly fun to watch. Perhaps the celebrated Winters did not think this horror TV-movie was worth a serious effort, but Lenz and Farrow demonstrate that it was.

To fully appreciate The Initiation of Sarah, one should compare it to The Craft (1996), an overrated and inferior film about four nerdy high school girls who employ witchcraft to take vengeance on their bitchy oppressors.

The Craft is a heavy-handed mess, overstated in every way that The Initiation of Sarah is subtle. Both films have stereotypical WASPy blond bitches. Yet Morgan Fairchild's Jennifer knows when to withdraw and feign decency. (ANS girls call it "tact"). Conversely, The Craft's Laura Lizzie (Christine Taylor) is openly racist, brazenly calling a black nerd (Rachel True) "the N word" in public.

Sorry. Whatever she may say in private, I just don't buy that a sophisticated teenager would publicly shout "the N word" in an elite California school in 1996. Maybe in 1956, but not 1996. Even Jennifer, whose film is set in 1978, knows better.

And although Jennifer (like Laura) is vicious, when publicly called on it, Jennifer immediately retreats and says it was "just a stupid joke." The Craft eschews such realism. It "tries too hard" to establish Laura's villainy (and subsequent reformation). The Craft's heavy-handedness, its stark blacks and whites, ring false. Not a problem in The Initiation of Sarah.

Now compare the nerds. The nerds of PED look like nerds. Dowdy, plain, or overweight. Even the pretty Lenz and Farrow manage, through costuming and body language, to portray proper nerds. Conversely, in The Craft, two of the four nerds (Robin Tunney and Rachel True) are way too attractive to be treated as nerds.

(Of the other two nerds, Fairuza Balk can be pretty, but is effectively distorted by her Goth makeup; and Neve Campbell's nerd passes because of her physical -- and resultant emotional -- injuries).

Despite its big studio theatrical budget, and 1990s special effects, The Craft fails in every way that The Initiation of Sarah succeeds.

(The Initiation of Sarah also compares favorably to The Spell, yet another TV movie about a tormented nerd girl with telekinetic powers, who is yet again tutored by an elder woman (played by an overbearing Lelia Goldoni, the mousy wife from The Unseen)).

The Initiation of Sarah also surpasses the average TV-movie in every area. TV lighting (especially in older TV-movies) tends to be flatter than in cinema, as TV screens display a smaller color palette than does film stock. Despite this, The Initiation of Sarah is especially atmospheric (credit to cinematographer Ric Waite), especially in its murkily-lit photography of the PED sorority house.

The film has some plot holes, or at least raises issues that remain unaddressed (e.g., the fate of Sarah's birth mother; and where is Mr. Hunter?). The classrooms are underpopulated (trying to save money by hiring few extras?). Gore is limited, this being a TV-movie.

Even so, The Initiation of Sarah is an underrated horror gem. An engrossing (if familiar) story, performed by a talented cast. Kay Lenz's portrayal of the nerdy Sarah would alone be enough to make The Initiation of Sarah worth seeing.

Movie Review: GREAT MOVIE, NOT SO GOOD PAYOFF
Summary: 4 Stars

I, like most of the reviewers here, first saw this movie on television in 1978. It is great fun with stellar performances by the entire cast. Shelley Winters turns in a wickedly "funny-hammy" performance which borders on the ridiculous at times. Kay Lenz as the scapegoat girl with telekinetic powers (ala Carrie)is superb. Morgan Fairchild as the lead villainess and tauntress of Lenz is equally fine.

The payoff at the end, for me, is disappointing. Instead of following the "formulaic" horror theme where the heroine dies to sacrifice herself, I wish the writers had taken another route, namely, to have Sarah visit Jennifer who has been horribly disfigured into an ugly old crone and make her realize that cruelty and laughter at the expense of someone else doesn't pay. I would have loved to have seen the after-effect...that would have been great. That is why I give this movie four stars instead of five.

Movie Review: KAY LENZ WAS TERRIFIC IN THIS MOVIE,
Summary: 3 Stars

AND SHELLY WINTERS AS THE HOUSEMOTHER IS TERRIFIC. I SAW THIS MOVIE YEARS AGO ON TV. SO THAT'S HOW I'M REVIEWING IT. I'M SURE THEIR ARE SOME PARTS THEY COULDN'T SHOW ON TV THAT THIS VIDEO WILL HAVE. IT'S ABOUT 2 SISTERS, PATTY AND SARA, WHO GO OFF TO COLLEGE. PATTY IS PRETTY, POPULAR AND OUTGOING. SARA (PLAYED BY KAY LENZ) IS MORE PLAIN LOOKING, NOT POPULAR AT ALL AND VERY SHY, OH AND SHE IS A WITCH. MORGAN FAIRCHIELD PLAYS A GIRL WHO IS THE HEAD OF A SOROITY THAT PATTY GET INTO. SHE TRIES TO PULL THE SISTER APART. SHELLY WINTERS IN THE HOUSEMOTHER OF THE SOROITY THAT SARA IS IN AND SHE IS ALSO A WITCH. SHE TRIES TO GET SARA TO USE HER POWERS TO DESTROY THE PEOPLE WHO LAUGH AT HER AND DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO HER. THIS WAS BEFORE CARRIE AND ALTHOUGH THE STORIES ARE SIMILAR THIS ONE IS MORE TAME. IT IS ALSO WITHOUT THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS. THIS IS STILL A GOOD WATCH-MAYBE TO RENT. NOT TO OWN.

Write your own review

General Video

Video Genres

Movies most talked about in General Video

The Raven [VHS]
Good Times Video; Release date: 2003-09-16; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $24.99

Bloodline [VHS]
Paramount; Release date: 1994-01-26; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $44.50

The Keep [VHS]
Paramount; Release date: 1998-11-11; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: ~~$19.95~~

The Uninvited [VHS]
MCA/Universal Home Video; Release date: 1998-01-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $75.99

I Married a Witch [VHS]
Warner Home Video; Release date: 1993-01-27; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $64.50

Island of Lost Souls [VHS]
Universal Studios; Release date: 1997-09-16; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

Animorphs - The Invasion Series, Part 1: The Invasion Begins [VHS]
Sony Pictures; Release date: 1999-02-16; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

Ghost & Mrs Muir [VHS]
20th Century Fox; Release date: 1991-03-21; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $4.07
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Disney Mini Classics) [VHS] Image

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Disney Mini Classics) [VHS]
Buena Vista Home Video; Release date: 1993-09-07; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: ~~$12.99~~

Ghosts (VCD) Image

Ghosts (VCD)
Video CD; VHS Video
Best price: $23.49

Similar Video, DVDs, Audio CDs

Dangerously Close [VHS]
Media Home Video; Release date: 1990-06-06; Published: 1987-05; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $24.95

National Lampoon's Animal House (30th Anniversary Edition)
BELUSHI,JOHN; Release date: 2008-10-28; DVD
Best price: $11.75
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Haunting of Molly Hartley
TCFHE; Release date: 2009-02-24; DVD
Best price: $3.64
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~