Saturday, September 26

Pledge Night (1990)


Directed by Paul Ziller
90 Minutes / Imperial Entertainment / Cropped from 1.85:1 to full screen

Shit, man. Continuing from yesterday with the raunchy fraternity prank/hazing week where the killer emerges from a toilet-motif, Pledge Night typifies "throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks."

Here's the story in brief. It's "hell week" for a fresh batch of pledges at a fraternity with a dark past of a pledge decades prior mistakenly melted and made dead from a bathtub of acid. The hazing gets so zany that when the drippy mutant returns from said latrine to kill again (through possession of the pledges) everyone believes it's all another joke.

Yeah, this is a pile of wishy-washy supernatural slasher backwash, seemingly cobbled together as the filmmakers went along. The first hour plays out like a piss poor riff of Animal House. Drunk groping of chicks, fugly stripper boobs, ass paddlings, ass cheek cherry races, and all that done-to-death crap. When the killing starts; it's not frightening in the least with the first possessed laughing like a hyena as he kills. The mutant then rips forth from the guy's chest and carries out a few kills before doing the Alien chestburster gag again to another poor soul. He's not scary either looking like a metal punk with pizza smeared on his face birthed from an '80s Mexican horror cheapie. The kills aren't even that bloody (looks oddly "painted on dry") or exciting, but the film is rated R after all. Don't even get me started on the headshaking last twist between the final guy/killer pizza dude. Oh yea, music by Anthrax and cameo by lead Joey Belladonna as the young pledge before his date with the mighty caustic loofah. Skip completely or FF to the 1:08:34 mark.

the best 56 seconds, video from upallnightvideos




VHS Picture: 6/10
VHS Sound: 7/10

1 comment:

KFelon said...

I have the DVD from the Netherlands and this film was a disappointment. I was going through a slasher phase for awhile last year and needless to say this did nothing for me. The kills were very boring and the ending felt over extended.

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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