The Initiation (1984) **

I freely cop to enjoying this slasher trope assemblage more than most of my peers. I wouldn't dismiss necessarily that it doesn't exactly slip out of the genre's horde and make the case it's much different. But I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a favorite of mine within the genre it rests comfortably, knowing exactly what it is. I think it takes a little here, a little there, patchworks the different pieces into a film that came together enough to satisfy me personally. I also must admit that it includes pretty much all the elements of the slasher formula from the many films you're familiar, which is why I find it mostly irresistible. Looking for anything resembling some work of art I can't obviously in good conscience agree. But following the beautiful Zuniga isn't difficult, loving her dark mascara, long black hair, and choice of purple wardrobe in one scene, she's stunning to me. Hunter Tylo isn't recognizable and her thick Texan accent wasn't disguised so this film before her soap opera career took off will be only of significance to the genre enthusiasts and aficionados. She's fully nude after a shower at her sorority and later in Gulager's multilevel department store takes her top off again for a shirt that matches her shoes. She's adorable roller blading down floors in the store. She dies horribly, perhaps the most likeable potty mouth sex addict the genre could produce. If she returned a howdy in that accent I'd be hers to do whatever she so desires.

But it actually for me takes some of the the tropes and improves upon them. How often do I watch "Friday the 13th" (1980) and want to actually see the bow and arrow scene play out. You get that here. It does just mimics the hatchet to the forehead, though, and Zuniga does find a victim with throat cut in a bathroom so there are deaths directly pulled from the highly influential 1980 slasher. There is the sorority pledge process, the big party with co-mingling sorority sisters and fraternity brothers, many costumed such as one guy as a cock and balls! There's the repressed memory that involves dirty family secrets, another guy badly burned, an evil twin causing mayhem for her sane sister, use of hypnotism to unlock buried details causing the lead heroine nightmares, a particular setting with its own personality (the huge store, with escalators and elevators), plenty of areas to hide easily especially since there are so many displays, racks, mannequins, and inventory, an assortment of weapons (long blade knife that stabs torsos repeatedly along with a three prong garden tool), nudity (Tylo quite comfortable nude), sexual hijinks (lots of horny college students talking about, looking for, and sometimes finding hookups), chase scenes, a hero hoping to rescue his romantic interest but failing (the killer cleverly hides behind her twin's identical face), the escaped lunatic fleeing the asylum, the mother forbidding her daughter to date someone she feels is not suited for her, trauma associated with the lead, POV through the eyes of the killer (the killer confronting Clu and the security guard especially), and even a tragic admission (a friend tells of her molestation at the hands of a much older creep when she was twelve which sort of took me off guard). All plucked from one slasher or another or quite identifiable as a slasher designed to attract the genre crowd. Most critical of this slasher really zero in on its seeming inability to be a completely unique slasher all its own. I can't really dispute that. Zuniga does equip herself well.

But if I'm honest, it's how 1984 it feels why I seem to find it so appealing. I feel plopped right into the year, reliving that period of time experience with the characters. And I like Zuniga and the girls. And all the sleep study, dream logic, Freud and Jung name dropping, Read as the handsome grad student working on his doctorate with an assistant always arguing with him, gives the film some gum to chew.