Rush Week

Low budget cross between "Porky's" style college high jinks combined with "Prom Night" style stalk & slash.

Plot involves students who moonlight doing naked photos for the seedy college chef, who then get their come-uppance from an unknown killer. Toni is a trainee journalist ( and by the far the least attractive female on view ), whose coverage of the ongoing Rush Week gets her involved in the killings.

To say the least there is nothing new here, but if you like the formula it is well paced and derivative in an interesting way. The violence is relatively non-graphic and the sex is limited to a few tits n' asses. Film pays homage to its better known predecessors with a "Hills have Eyes" poster and somebody in a Freddy Krueger mask.

Rush week is when fraternities and sororities recruit new students: the guys at Gamma Alpha Epsilon take this matter very seriously, which makes them an obvious target for the wild boys of Beta Delta Beta, who enjoy playing juvenile pranks whenever they aren't partying. Assigned to report on the tradition is ambitious journalism student Toni Daniels (Pamela Ludwig), who sniffs out a much better story when several young women on the campus go missing...

An attempt at blending Porky's style humour with slasher horror, Rush Week fails on both counts: the comedy is cringe-worthy, the Beta Delta Beta guys being a thoroughly unlikable bunch of douchebags whose idea of a good time is to ruin everyone else's fun (their supposedly funny tomfoolery includes sabotaging a bicycle race and tricking a hooker into sleeping with a corpse!); even more disappointing is the scary stuff, which is frustratingly 'dry', the action cutting away whenever the films killer, wearing an old man rubber mask and hooded robe, gets choppy with his axe.

Thankfully, director Bob Bralver loads his film with big breasted girls who are only too happy to strip for the camera, which helps the time pass less painfully. If only the gore had been as plentiful as the boobs...

4.5/10, generously rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

It's a B-movie, so obviously you can't expect much of it. Yeah, the effects, what few there are, are awful, and there are a couple of editing problems, but it's actually fairly enjoyable for the most part. Some of the actors do a pretty decent job, especially considering the fairly standard slasher plot they're given to work with. It has a pretty decent soundtrack, which surprised me quite a bit. Basically it's like having the first Friday the 13th movie set at a college with an Animal House backstory going on. For those who enjoy the occasional B-movie, I'd say give this one a shot, it's better than most.

'Rush Week' is a late 80's slasher that came out during the dying days of the genre, it's a likeable effort yet very average with plenty of T&A but not enough gore or suspense. The majority of this flick plays out more like a teen comedy than an effective slasher film and could have done with better kills and more tension.

The plot = Toni (Pamela Ludwig) a young journalism student transfers to a new college, where several female students begin to disappear during the campus's rush week where she meets Jeff (Dean Hamilton) the head of the Frat fraternity and begins a relationship, while at the same time investigating the disappearances, which makes her a prime target for the killer.

Despite the movie's flaws its entertaining enough if you're in a certain mood, as it boasts a decent budget, solid performances and a killer soundtrack, but these positives doesn't help it rise above its faults as the mystery element is very predictable and the kills are very boring and mostly off-camera, plus there's too much time devoted to the boring romance sub-plot and the Frat house pranks, which doesn't add anything to the overall story.

Pamela Ludwig makes for a decent and likeable final girl, she's intelligent and handles the movie quite well. Dean Hamilton also makes for a decent leading man, he's interesting and charming in his role and has good chemistry with the female lead. Kathleen Kinmont was also a fun addition to the cast in her small but memorable role.

Overall 'Rush Week' is light on gore and thrills but has just enough cheesy 80's charm to make for an okay time waster.

~Spoiler~

Rush Week is another uninteresting slasher from the late 80's. This time our killer dons a cloak, an "old person" mask, and a double edged axe. So it's nothing groundbreaking. It seems like the filmmakers wanted to make Animal House into a slasher movie. Much of the running time consists of college pranks and the typical hijynx that goes along with that. The problem with this movie, other than the glaring predictability, is that the death scenes all occur off-screen. There's plenty of nudity to speak of, but no gore whatsoever. So I guess you could say they got it half right. One very strange aspect of this film is the casting of Gregg Allman in a minor role. He seemed very out of place and very wasted. Also watch for Halloween 4's Kathleen Kinmont and Friday the 13th 5's Dominick Brascia.