The Initiation (film)

Screenwriter Charles Pratt Jr. wrote the script for the film after being asked to produce a low-budget horror film for producers Jock Gaynor, Bruce Lansbury, and Scott Winant for New World Pictures.[3]

According to Pratt, he initially cobbled together the concept of the sorority initiation pledge taking place within a department store, but the concept had to be reworked when the film scouts were unable to find a suitable location in Dallas available for shooting.[3]

Lead actress Daphne Zuniga was cast in the film following her minor role in the horror film The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), and was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles at the time of being cast.[3] Recalling the experience, she said: "It was a great part. I got to play twins: a good sister and an evil sister. I got shot in the back on-screen. It was pretty heavy for a first role."[2] The majority of the supporting cast were local actors from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Hunter Tylo and Joy Jones, both of whom were students at Brookhaven College.[4]

British director Peter Crane signed on to direct the project, and Vera Miles was cast after a meeting with Crane.[3]

The Initiation was filmed on location in Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1983.[5] Director Peter Crane began filming material on the production.[3] Many of the early point-of-view shots in the film and the footage at the insane asylum in the beginning of the film were shot by Crane.[5]

After several days of shooting, the shooting schedule had already fallen behind, and Crane was fired and replaced with Larry Stewart, who completed the rest of the film.[5] The difference in technique and style between the two directors explains slight aesthetic differences from some of the film's earlier footage.[5]

The multilevel Dallas Market Center served as the location for the Fairchild department store,[6][7] and the crew shot the film during evenings while the building was closed. The campus scenes were filmed at Southern Methodist University, while the dream-lab sequences were shot in an abandoned Holiday Inn hotel, where the production design had refitted a maid's closet to appear as the room.[4]

The Initiation first screened in the United States in the spring and summer of 1984, with showings in Philadelphia beginning on April 28, 1984,[lower-alpha 1] and in Silver Spring, Maryland, beginning on May 12.[10] In some midwestern cities, such as Bloomington, Illinois, it was paired as a drive-in double-feature with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).[11] It was released several months later in Baltimore on September 7, 1984.[12] In several southern U.S. cities, such as Shreveport,[13] Pensacola,[14] and Jackson,[15] the film opened on December 7, 1984.

The film was largely overshadowed at the U.S. box office by Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, also released in the fall of 1984.[16] It screened sporadically throughout the country, playing in one- or two-week runs.[16] Although it passed the MPAA's restrictions without being cut, the British Board of Film Classification cut nearly a minute of gore from the film, specifically from Hunter Tylo's gruesome death scene.[16]

Joe Baltake of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote that the film was "convoluted, contemporary, and evil...  This is a Freudian slip-of-a-horror-film, far more complex than truly frightening."[8] Rick Lyman of The Philadelphia Inquirer likened the film to its contemporary "sorority girl slasher movies," concluding: "All of this is tied up in a surprise denouement that's about as surprising as, well, a knock-knock joke."[9] The Baltimore Evening Sun's Lou Cedrone wrote that the film was "not so gory as most of the slice-and-dice genre," comparing it to Friday the 13th (1980) and Sleepaway Camp (1983), but added: "The Initiation may be a little better than similar features, if only because it is a little less bloody."[17] In a subsequent review, Cedrone characterized the film as a "Friday the 13th clone," and added: "Vera Miles and Clu Gulager are performers caught in this hapless mess."[18] Candice Russell of the South Florida Sun Sentinel awarded the film one-and-a-half out of four stars, referring to it as "an uncomfortable pastiche of scenes we've seen before," and likened elements of it to Brian De Palma's Sisters (1973).[19]

Film Threat gave the film an unfavorable review, writing, "The Initiation is the latest forgotten horror film to receive the Anchor Bay DVD treatment, and I'd be at a loss to tell you why."[20] Film School Rejects, however, said the film "has all the hallmarks of being an awful movie without being an awful movie... it’s fun, and that should count for something."[21] Film.com gave the film a negative review, calling it "a bad movie with bad ideas that are badly executed,"[22] while TV Guide summarized the film as "boring slasher stuff," noting that "Top-billed [Vera] Miles and [Clu] Gulager barely appear in the film, which would make a terrifically dreadful double bill with the similar The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1983), also featuring Zuniga."[23]

In Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movie, Jim Harper called the film a "lackluster effort that never quite lives up to the abilities of its cast," further noting: "Even with the soap opera ending, the film isn't entirely successful, mostly because of the terrible script. There's a wealth of unnecessary jargon and cheap dialogue, not to mention some notable inconsistencies. Zuniga does her best to rise above the bad material and turns in a great performance, but Gulager and Miles sleepwalk through their parts."[24]

Irrespective of the film's critical reception, it has garnered a contemporary cult following.[16]