A Monster Named Jennifer

I was rather shocked that I found so many people hating on the Masters of Horror episode Jennifer. Sure it wasn’t anything too special and was heavily sex driven but it was decent. I say this because it was one of the very few episodes that scared the shit out of me as I watched it (the second one being Fair Hair Child). I figured that Jennifer was some sort of cannibal or serial killer or something along those lines but I was way off. She is some sort of deformed human cannibal or a modern day monster. She is a temptress, manipulator and a fiend. When I first saw the little tidbit of her face I was gawking at the screen. I’ll never forget that scene where she lunges and attacks the cat because it was at that moment I yelled out, “Oh fuck no! Now I’m going to have nightmares” and I did.

For me, it was the way her face looked that sent me over the edge. If it was any other facial disfigurement that seemed natural, it wouldn’t have been frightening but her face is… monstrous, for lack of a better term. Her lips are pulled back and stretched to look like some sort of sloppy harlequin smile. She also had those really slimy, yellow sharp teeth that I just knew was accompanied with horrendous breath. Top all that off with huge, gaping pools of blackness known as here eyes and you have “a face for radio.” It was this overall facial design that made me so scared of her because the rest of her body is beautiful.

Another factor into how this character scared me was the way that she was presented. Throughout a good majority of the episode, you hardly see her face and when you do, its only bits and pieces. It freaked me out because you hardly see anything. Besides, seeing a freaky woman stare at you behind foggy glass with saucer shaped black eyes is quite scary. It’s not until she eats the cat when you see her full face and then after that, it goes back to showing bits and pieces. I don’t think the presentation of the character affected me as much as the character herself. Did. Jennifer is a monster; she brutally kills people and feeds off of men’s sexual desires. I quickly got over her but those first two or three weeks I’ll never forget. Seeing that face smile at me from out my window made me sleep with the closet light on.