The Initiation
Sorority Row
Salutations, sisters! I noticed you weren’t at chapter last night and you’ve neglected to RSVP to the bake sale benefitting bulldogs so I hope you’re doing okay… I’m putting on a little performative placidity because this week I explored a round of Sorority Slashers that perfectly understood how intimidating and complex the world of Greek life can be. In the wake of the nightmarish assault carried out by the Cornell 7 Rapists, I am extra sensitive about the often toxic topic of Greek life and want to be particularly careful in how I discuss it. What happened to Jane Doe is merely a recent tragedy among a vast and dense history of college fraternity violence. Frat boys commit violence against women, they commit violence against each other, and when they graduate and use their brotherly connections to gain power and become a member of the United States Supreme Court, they do violence against women across the country. I have friends, family, and enemies who have experienced it. I won’t include a “this doesn’t include ALL frat boys” statement because I am tired, and if you aren’t a rapist, this doesn’t even apply to you so why would you be bothered anyway? Tonight’s double feature isn’t about frat horror though, that seems to be present enough in real life, so I’m instead focusing on some sinister sorority sisterhoods. Black Christmas is probably my favorite Sorority Slasher, but there are actually a myriad of films that fit this description. Now, I won’t get into my own Sorority Horror experience too much—I’ll save that for the memoir—but I was a part of my small college’s small Greek life, so I can speak to this specific scary premise somewhat. Around this time ten years ago, I was 19, I was a freshman in college, and I was absolutely miserable. I walked to class alone, I ate lunch alone, I went home every weekend, and as someone who’d had a healthy social life all throughout under-under-grad, I was beginning to feel lonely, insecure, and desperate. I was pretty strongly against Greek life coming into college, honestly because it seemed like a lot of work and I’d heard too many bad stories, but as I looked around at the clusters of friend groups out on the lawn, many of them donned in Greek letters, I yearned for connection. So, through gritted teeth and ill-fitting heels, I embarked upon rush season with a friend from my Chinese class, and we braved the Tri Delts, the Alpha Delta Pi’s, the Alpha Xi Deltas, and the Zetas together. Only the frats had houses on campus—this was once thought to be because of an outdated law that classifies any home that houses more than six women a “brothel”, but this has been debunked, so it’s likely just sexism and a lack of funds—but the sorority gals all seemed really happy regardless. They threw costume parties and classy luncheons and they supported each other in their extracurriculars—and the idea of having built-in friends was beginning to sound more inviting. After spending a brief amount of time with some immediately cold and judgy sororities (I’ll let you guess which ones) I found my home at ADPi—where the coolest, funniest, sweetest girls were eager to accept me and hang out with me. There were just a few problems. One, ADPi was one of the most expensive sororities on campus. Two, the activities were increasingly intense and began to pile up quickly. And three, most of the coolest, funniest, sweetest girls were seniors when I joined as a freshman. So when sophomore year rolled around, I was inundated with extravagant activities and plans and responsibilities—and my closest connections had graduated. There was one girl, in the grade ahead of me, who had hardcore recruited me to join. She bragged about her talented sisterhood, all the fun things they got to do, and she brought it up every time we talked—like a good salesperson. She was one of the coolest, wittiest people I’d met thus far, and as a tattoo-covered, well-read, ultra-feminist, she told me that modern day Greek life was progressive. Then, she stopped coming to chapter, and I got worried. When our paths finally crossed weeks later, I asked her where she had been, and she smiled and quickly replied, as if it were obvious, “Oh, yeah, I had to get the fuck out of there.” The girl who pursued me for an entire semester, who told me I’d be a shoo-in if I pledged, who promised me that we’d have the best time together once I joined, had just giddily jumped ship. I had experienced a bait-and-switch for the first time in my life. All of my favorite sorority sisters were gone, I was in the thick of preparing for rush, and getting to see how things worked on the other side—when you’re no longer the prize to be recruited, but the solider doing the recruiting—and I hated it. I hated the discussions of who deserved a spot and who didn’t, I hated the trading and fighting over who our “littles” would be, I hated the color-coordinated dress codes and parameters by which we lived and breathed, and I couldn’t take it anymore. (I also thought it would be witchier!) I lasted about a year in ΑΔΠ before I quit, and I have no regrets. I was desperate for friends, I made some friends, those friends graduated, and I could only take so much of this institution, and the self-inflicted pressures of those who truly lived, breathed, and died by it. I look back at this chapter of my life with the same complicated fondness with which I view my tenure as a ballet dancer—it was an illuminating and exhausting time with some good memories and some traumatic ones too. But this experience built character, thickened my skin, and gave me a greater appreciation for sorority horror movies and the ways in which social pressure can transform you.
Up first is a film that just barely scratches the itch of sorority horror, but is full of sinister sisters nonetheless, this is Larry Stewart’s 1984 film The Initiation. We open on a dark and stormy night inside of a child’s bedroom, where symbols of girlhood are scattered about, though they are just slightly off. There are stuffed animals missing heads, dolls that don’t look quite right, and in the bed, a little girl is jolted awake. She wanders down the hall, into her parent’s room, and finds a man other than her father making love to her mother. The father then barges in, a fight breaks out, someone gets stabbed, and another winds up burning alive in the fireplace. Kelly Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga) then wakes from this nightmare and enters another, as her bed is surrounded by a gaggle of college girls, all clad in lingerie, holding candles and chanting “Delta Rho Chi never will die” over and over and over again until one says, “Rise, lowly pledge. The sentinel calls, it is the hour of the oath.” Kelly and her fellow freshman pledges are summoned downstairs to kneel and listen to their sorority overlord, the dreaded Megan, who informs them of their final task to be accepted into their sisterhood. They must sneak into Kelly’s father’s department store at night and steal the nightwatchmen’s uniform—right down to his skivvies. Megan has whittled down the entire rush cohort to just four girls, and though they are dreading their final humiliation ritual, they seem determined to become a part of Delta Rho Chi. The only deterrent Kelly is facing—other than that nasty bitch Megan—is her reoccurring nightmare that she’s had since childhood, so she pays a visit to a graduate student / campus parapsychologist, a hottie in glasses named Peter (James Read.) Peter begins conducting experiments and dream analyses on Kelly, and his assistant, Heidi, wonders if Kelly’s dreams are actually a deeply buried memory. Meanwhile, at a psychiatric hospital several miles away, a group of patients are becoming restless and cantankerous, leading to a nurse being murdered, and several patients escaping. News of the escaped mental patients makes it to the enormous Fairchild estate, where Kelly’s parents (Vera Miles and Clu Gulager, who are top-billed but barely in this…) are especially disturbed. Kelly’s parents clearly have something to hide, as evidenced by the moment that Mrs. Fairchild gazes at her own haunted but elegant reflection in the mirror, Mr. Fairchild asks what she’s doing, and she responds, wistfully, “Looking at a ghost…” But Kelly is too consumed by her nightmares, her upcoming initiation, and her budding romance with Peter to pay that any mind. When the time comes for the pledges to carry out the final task of their initiation, Kelly has swiped the keys to her dad’s department store and prepared herself for anything, but little does she know that Megan has some more bullshit up her sleeve—as does one of the aforementioned escaped mental patients. As if these hazing rituals weren’t excessive enough, someone is out to get Kelly—and her sorority sisters—and now they’re all trapped in one big, dark, cavernous building. The Initiation is a compelling, campy, slightly bizarre take on a slasher film, that was more of a soap opera than a sorority horror. Apart from the setting of a college in Texas and the maniacal Megan, The Initiation is hardly about a sorority at all, even if the climax revolves around a hazing ritual. Because of this, I feel slightly cheated out of a sorority slasher, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. It all feels a bit strange and oddly-paced, and this is due in large part to the original director—Peter Crane—being fired and replaced less than half way into shooting. All of the trippy, avant-garde, downright De Palma editing techniques were a Peter Crane touch, and everything else was done by Larry Stewart. And we can thank screenwriter Charles Pratt Jr. for this film’s intentionally soapy script, so, uh… thanks, I guess. Overall, I had a good time watching The Initiation (and I love its poster), and now I guess I must watch another film I learned about in my research—The Dorm That Dripped Blood—which also stars Daphne Zuniga as a college student in peril, that came out just 2 years before this one.
If the sisters in The Initiation were bitchy, then the sisters in tonight’s next film were downright cunty and despicable—this is Stewart Hendler’s 2009 slasher Sorority Row. In this era of horror, everything seemed to be filmed through a grey, gritty filter, regardless of the time of day being captured. The cinematography was chaotic, the music was pop-punk, and the girls on screen were especially mean. This is a film I’ve technically seen before, but I was in middle school hadn’t yet experienced the trials and tribulations of sorority life, so I was curious to watch with a new perspective and, perhaps, a new bitterness. Sorority Row also opens in quite a compelling manner, as we are shown a very large suburban house, where strobing lights and eerie music pulse discordantly. A scream is heard, but as we zoom in on the house, inside the doors, we can see that this isn’t a horror show (yet) but merely a rowdy college party. There is a famous, continuous, Steadicam shot in the film GoodFellas, where we follow Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco down inside a restaurant, then through the kitchen, to the back where his wise guy colleagues are, and I have to imagine that this inspired the opening shot of Sorority Row. We are taken through the foyers and living rooms of this sorority house, and virtually every horrific college concept dreamed up by after school specials is on display: binge drinking, unprotected sex, half-naked pledges having their “fat” circled (a long-rumored trend in hazing rituals), sexy pillow-fights, and though no illicit substances are shown, I can confidently say that drugs are being done, too. We’re then shown our core group of protagonists(?) doing shots in someone’s room. There’s Cassidy (Briana Evigan), Jessica (Leah Pipes), Ellie, (Rumer Willis), Claire (Jamie Chung), and Charlene, whom they lovingly refer to as “Chugs” because she’s an alcoholic (Margo Harshman)—all seniors who are devoted to Theta Pi. Cassidy, one of the only good girls, is horrified to learn of a prank that ringleader Jessica has plotted against a dude named Garrett who fancies their sister, Megan (Audrina Patridge.) Jessica gave Garrett a fake roofie, Garrett gave it to Megan, then Megan proceeds to gag on fake puke as Garrett makes out with her barely conscious body. Jessica and the girls not only convince Garrett that he killed Megan, but they tell him he must help them dispose of her body. All of the sisters, even the trepidatious Cassidy, head to the local abandoned steel mine with the anxious and now sobbing Garrett. The sisters try to stifle their giggles as Megan pretends to lie dead and Garrett panics about what they’re going to do, but just as they’re about to reveal that this was all a weird, cruel prank, Garrett grabs a tire iron and stabs Megan—killing her for real. The pretend panic suddenly becomes real in this moment, and as all the sisters cry and console each other, Jessica tells them they’re gonna have to hide her body so their young lives aren’t ruined. Cassidy tries to call the police, but her Nokia has no signal. In an instant, the sisters drop Megan’s body down a mine shaft, Jessica tells Cassidy they’ll blame her if she ever tells, and they all promise to never speak of this to anyone. Eight months later, the class of 2009 is graduating, and all the Theta Pi’s are celebrating, though Cassidy is several rows away, avoiding her former friends. Cassidy is reasonably haunted by Megan’s accidental murder, but has tried her best to move on, and her Valedictorian boyfriend, Andy (Julian Morris), is supportive—though unaware of what troubles her. Cassidy has clearly distanced herself from Jessica, Ellie, Claire, and Chugs, but because her mother is a legacy of Theta Pi, she is essentially forced to go to Theta Pi’s end of year function. Jessica thanks everyone for coming, she thanks their legendary house mother, Ms. Crenshaw (Carrie Fisher), for taking care of them, and when she gets Cassidy alone, she reminds her that she is required to come to their final rager that night, and that, “earth and fire can’t break the bonds of Theta Pi. After all, we’re sisters.” As if going to one more party with these backstabbing bitches weren’t hellish enough, someone cloaked in a graduation gown begins killing Theta Pi’s one by one, and sending cryptic, Pretty-Little-Liars-esque text messages to our core group. Which sisters will survive the night and which Theta Pi’s will die? You’ll just have to watch for yourself to find out. Sorority Row is a poorly-written, decently-performed, outrageously male-gazey movie that was 50% girl-on-girl bullying and 50% gruesome, gory kills. I had forgotten just how gnarly some of the death sequences in this movie were, and even after a month of exclusively-horror double features, some of these scenes actually made my jaw drop. I always find these kinds of movies curious, because they’re actually pretty decent at pointing out the subtle horrors of being a woman, but they’re also pretty half-hearted and half-assed in their takedowns of such horrors. But this is the case with many campy, sexy, tongue-and-cheek horrors with female leads: their feminist critiques only go as far as their narrow-minded male writers can take them. This is evidenced in the film’s conclusion and reveal, especially, because it all truly felt like an afterthought. Cringe 2009 humor and bizarre 2009 lighting and pacing aside, Sorority Row is an effective slasher because its kills are severe, its mean girls are cruel, and I struggle to imagine how one could be bored watching Carrie Fisher with a shotgun shouting, “Please don’t think I’m afraid of you, I run a house full of 50 crazy bitches!” Well, I’ve relived enough college trauma for one night, but I thank you for following me on this path towards sisterhood. See you at the mixer!!
