Though an impressive headline pairing alone ought to make James Ashcroft's The Rule of Jenny Pen appointment viewing, this unusually thoughtful genre exercise’s comment on tyranny and the absurdities indulged in its service lingers even after the thrill of watching John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush eviscerate each other has subsided.
The film’s central character is appropriately a judge—a safekeeper of enlightenment ideals stranded in the lawless abyss of a countryside senior care center. Sadder than the insipid cafeteria food and unsupportive staff are the fading souls still waiting to be retrieved by family that’s long ago abandoned them. Following the stroke that traps him there, Stefan Mortenson (Rush) proclaims to anyone who’ll listen that his convalescence will be speedy and followed by prompt reinstatement at his bench. No use, therefore, wasting time befriending the nurses or making small talk about trash fiction with his well-meaning but dim rugby has-been roommate (George Henare).
But the honorable judge soon finds himself stripped of agency and entirely at the mercy of Jenny Pen, a plastic hand puppet—or rather the sadistic pervert, Dave Crealy (Lithgow), who nurtures Jenny Pen like a child and wields her like a scepter (or gavel).
Mortenson thinks pride separates him from the cowards who enable Crealy by staying silent, but in a moment of poignancy atypical to a meat-and-potatoes B-sploitation flick, he realizes that pride is precisely the thing they have in common. The indignities of age are abundant; better to endure a lunatic’s whims than admit total defeat.
Crealy’s unchecked ability to roam about a modern-day facility and terrorize residents with impunity might raise a brow or two—an ‘80s setting would probably have probably made the story more credible—but the requisite bit of suspended disbelief feels insignificant compared to the twisted pleasures of seeing two legends in a bone-chilling cat-and-mouse thriller that’s (mostly) worthy of their talents.
The highly specific fear evoked by Jenny Pen (as Crealy pushes her toward us and red light reflected from the curtain behind which his shadow looms like Orlok’s swells between her empty eyes) is in part similar to the nerve hit by Oz Perkins’ Longlegs (and, to a lesser extent, his recent Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey).
What if you suddenly found yourself subject to an entity as garishly silly as it is omnipotent? No matter how ridiculous a deranged clown belting a rock ballad may seem, he demands to be reckoned with: Let me in now, and it can be nice. Make me go now, and I’ll…come back as many times as I like.
One could easily picture Crealy, or one of Lithgow’s wicked creations from Brian De Palma’s Raising Cain, shrieking something similar. The actual command he gives Jenny Pen’s victims after they’ve pledged their fealty is shocking, hilarious, and never less than absolutely horrifying. Exiled from any kind of sane social order, how would you resist genuflecting to the imagined regency of a vulgar doll?
After all, everyone in the mad king’s court ultimately becomes a jester.
Director: James Ashcroft
Cast: John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush, Nathaniel Lees
Writers: James Ashcroft, Eli Kent, (based on the short story by Owen Marshall)
Producers: Catherine Fitzgerald, Orlando Stewart
Cinematography: Matt Henley
Editor: Gretchen Peterson
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