Pledge Night

In 1968, a young hippie frat pledge was killed in a hazing mishap, burned to death in a tub of muric acid. Two decades later, his demonic corpse returns to the frathouse during "Hell Week"(wherein hazing rituals take place). As bodies pile up, the new pledges are left to determine if the grisly goings-on are a terrible reality, or just a mean-spirited prank intended to further debase them.

The first half of this gonzo slasher mess is devoid of horror elements, and plays out like an edgy gay porn flick with a hazing theme(okay, let's face it...there's always been serious homocore in the whole fraternity thing anyhow). I think it's safe to say that this is the most ass-happy horror film of the ages, and even features a death scene which involves a small explosive lodged in a dude's ripe punani. Once the bloodshed starts, however, there's actually some fun to be had here(and the sheer lame-brainedness of it all is clearly intentional). Don't expect a high quality product(like you really would, right?), but if you put your brain on pause for 90 minutes, you might find yourself enjoying this slice of very 80s cine-crap. 4/10

Pledge Night isn't even a B-movie. It's worse. Apparently, the writer had only written porn before and it shows.

I watched it for two reasons: the setting and the soundtrack.

As a "townie" and Rutgers alum, I appreciated the scene in Greasy Tony's, a now gone New Brunswick, NJ landmark. It was cool knowing they filmed it right down the road from me, although I knew nothing about the movie until now.

Anthrax providing the soundtrack was my other reason for watching. There were a few familiar tunes and I enjoyed lead singer Joey Belladonna's cameo as pre-acid Sid.

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It's great Vinegar Syndrome keeps unearthing forgotten b-movies. Here (meaning Finland) most of their releases are not just obscure, but films that were never released at all. Although I must say the excitement of seeing something new makes the experience kind of fragile. You forget a bit too easily that most of these titles are straight from the bottom of the barrel.

That being said, Pledge Night is not that bad, or at least not in the same pile as their worst releases. The actors actually feel like students, they have a chemistry, the movie has a point and an understandable structure and the sets feel believable plus there's surprisingly many outdoor shots, which boost up the mood since there was a snow blizzard during filming. The original soundtrack cues and Anthrax songs fit in nicely plus Joey Belladonna plays a cool cameo.

Considering the budget, the effects are pretty cool and creative too, although you can tell how they've made most of them. I'm not sure if some of the effects shots were never re-discovered or if the budget just wouldn't budge, but they set up some of those scenes so the viewer is waiting for it to escalate, but then cut into something else, which is a bit of a drag. Surprisingly some of the frat boy stuff is actually more gross than the bloodshed, and it's been reported that writer Joyce Snyder researched the subject thoroughly, so that part of the suffering was real!

So if you go in with zero expectations and realize that what you're seeing isn't exactly spectacular, it is an enjoyable horror comedy. It feels like they really tried to get out the best of it and had a lot of fun.

As a silly frat boy prank Young Sid is boiled in a tub of acid.Years later he returns to wreak havoc on the new generation of brothers in his old fraternity.Young Sid is played by Joey Belladonna,the vocalist of thrash metal band Anthrax.He later appears as Acid Sid,an undead pledge who died many years ago in the same house."Pledge Night" is a wonderfully silly and vastly enjoyable fraternity slasher with some grotesque death scenes and plenty of nudity.The story doesn't make a lot of sense and there are some absurd moments of blatant stupidity.If you like trashy heavy metal related slasher flicks like "Rocktober Blood" or "Terror On Tour" give "Pledge Night" a chance.7 cherry bombs out of 10.My favourite kill scenes:a boy has a cherry bomb shoved up his ass and a hand comes up out of a toilet to kill another sorry loser.

Anthrax were always the most playful of thrash metal's 'big four', so it wasn't a big surprise for me to find that supernatural slasher flick Pledge Night, in which Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna has a blink-and-miss-it cameo, is far from serious. In fact, the first 40 minutes or so comprises almost entirely of juvenile hell week pranks perpetrated on new pledges by the brothers of the Phi-Epsilon fraternity; there's no horror whatsoever! All of this is really quite tedious and not in the least bit amusing, so it's a relief when the blood finally begins to flow, no matter how cheesy it all happens to be.

The fun really starts when Phi-Epsilon brother Dan (Arthur Lundquist) becomes possessed by the spirit of Sid, a fraternity pledge who died twenty years earlier when a hazing prank went horribly wrong. Controlled by the malevolent spirit, Dan kills a bloke sat on the toilet, stabs another in the back with screwdrivers, electrocutes a girl in the bath, rams a food whisk down another's throat, and blows up some poor sap's butt with a cherry bomb. These deaths are relatively gore-free, but the film eventually delivers a few cheap but entertaining splatter effects after Sid emerges from Dan's back, Freddy Krueger style, and goes in search of more victims: we get strangulation with large intestine, an exploding stomach, a 180 degrees head twist, and one victim who is killed by having his head pushed into Sid's gaping stomach wound!

On top of all this incredibly silly horror nonsense, Pledge Night also manages to deliver that other staple of the genre, gratuitous female nudity, serving up a grand total of six pairs of breasts, and a metal thrashing mad soundtrack courtesy of… you guessed it… Anthrax!

3/10 for the woeful hazing antics of the first half; 6/10 for the second, horror-packed half. That's an average of 4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.