Here we
have an ‘80s slasher that is really a ghost/demon story with a body count and
was made in the ‘90s. I’m very confused. It has music by Anthrax and was
produced by Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment who were involved in some great
movies. I figured my run of good horror movies made in what I thought was a
terrible decade for the genre was going to continue. Not so much…
This is
almost two different movies. The first forty-five minutes consist of us
watching one stupid hazing ritual after another. Many asses are paddled and one
is even branded with a hot iron! Pushups are done and cherries are carried
betwixt butt cheeks only to be later eaten by unfortunate pledges. There is
another frat boy pretending to be crazy so that they can set up a fake stabbing
to further intimidate and scare the pledges. One of the pledges is named
Bonner. His mother tries to get him to not pledge and avoid the hazing. Twenty
years earlier her boyfriend, Sid, died while pledging a fraternity in the same
building as the one Bonner is pledging. See where this is going?
The last
half of the movie is Sid returning from the grave to kill everyone that he
finds in the frat house. But before he kills them he asks for their name. All
of Bonner’s friends, the frat brothers, and some sorority girls are murdered by
Sid in gruesome ways. When he finally gets to Bonner and finds out his name Sid
stops. Seems that is his kid, saw that coming a mile away, and only came back
to protect him. He disappears and everything is okay. You know except for the
dozen or so corpses littering the campus!
I really
didn’t like this movie especially the first half filled with hazing rituals. It
was one boring bit after the other that I think was supposed to be funny, but
wasn’t. Not sure if it was the cast or just that I’m not a fan of stuff like
that but I found it boring. Now had the killings been mixed in maybe it would
have been more tolerable, but all that happens towards the end of the movie. Considering
how there is little to no character development there was no reason to spend
this much time with them before the killer shows up. Plus Sid is doing a
terrible job protecting his son. I mean all sorts of shit, including an actual
branding, had already happened before he even makes an appearance. A little
late my man…
 |
| Acid Sid looks cool |
Initially
the fake crazy guy from upstairs appears to be the killer when he knocks off
the first couple victims. Well the first victim gets his junk ripped off by a
random hand coming out of a toilet, but after that it appears to be the fake
crazy frat boy. But when he is killed Sid crawls out of his body in what is
admittedly a neat looking bit of practical effects work. There are also kills
using a cherry bomb stuffed into one frat boys butt (this movie has a lot of
butt stuff in it…), a girl gets electrocuted with a radio while in a tub,
another frat boy strangled with an intestine, and a snapped neck just to
mention a few. This part of the movie is decent, but not great.
What could
have been an okay slasher/demon/revenge movie gets bogged down with an uneven
script that backloads all the kills in the second half and gives us a miserable
first half of Fraternity hijinks. I don’t recommend wasting your time on Pledge
Night.
© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer
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