BA_Harrison 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.

Coventry What we have here is another entirely redundant and ineptly processed 80's fraternity-slasher that isn't worth watching at all. Okay, I say it isn't worth watching, but somehow I always end up tracking them down because they usually feature at least some good killing sequences and/or a nice trivia-element. The trivia highlight of "Pledge Night" is that it briefly stars Joey Belladonna, the heavy metal singer whose band Anthrax also provided this cheap B-movie with a totally inappropriate soundtrack. Belladonna's part is small but important, as he appears in a flashback as a fraternity member that accidentally got killed during an initiation prank involving an acid bath. 18 years later, the vengeful spirit of Sid returns (now played by another actor) to kill the members of the new Phi-Epsilon-Nu fraternity and protect his own son from getting pledged. "Pledge Night" is a truly typical 80's slasher-picture, meaning that the emphasis lies more on vulgarity and toilet humor than on suspense and a decent script. This movie even exaggerates with its humorous overtone, as it takes nearly 45 minutes before the first actual death scene occurs. Before that it's just a very long series of, admittedly inventive, crazy pranks and demented initiation rites. The new members of Phi-Epsilon-Nu are forced to race with cherries squeezed between their butt cheeks (and then eat them, of course), eat worms & other unappetizing stuff and undergo spankings with a wooden paddle. It's all fun at first, but after half an hour you do start wondering when somebody will finally get killed! I actually feared that the murderer wouldn't show up at all and that the whole movie would just be a predecessor to such rancid teen-comedies as "American Pie" or "Van Wilder: Party Liaison". Director Paul Ziller too seemed to realize his film was lacking a point, and suddenly the killing sequences follow each other at fast pace. Most of them are lame and happening off-screen, but there are a handful of deaths scenes that undemanding horror fans might appreciate. One poor girl has a blender shoved down her throat and another guy (the token black guy) gets strangled by a human spine. The poorest sucker of them all dies when a cherry bombs is planted up his ass; ouch! The effects are incredibly cheesy and especially the whole make-up job on "Acid Sid" wouldn't even scare a five-year-old girl. The 'emotionally touching' denouement is retarded and completely misfits the comical tone of the overall movie. The acting performances vary from really bad to downright terrible and it came as a real relief to watch some of them insufferable characters dying. "Pledge Night" is a genuine turkey, only recommended in case you absolutely want to see every inane slasher movie made in the 1980's.

Vomitron_G I simply couldn't resist picking this one up, mainly because it's the only movie ever starring ex-Anthrax vocalist Joey Belladonna. And, as I expected, you can't really tell if he can act or not, cause he's only in it for like 2 minutes. One minute has him reading a text from a piece of paper, the other minute he dies a vicious death in a bath-tub filled with acid. Still, it was worth seeing him in this ludicrous movie. This one is as bad as 80's slasher movies can get, and at the same time, it's equally entertaining... mostly for the wrong reasons. The first 45 minutes are ridiculously demented: Nothing else then one sick, gross and perverted pledge-test & fraternity joke after the other. We're talking squeezing-cherries-between-butt-cheeks race, eating worms, piggy-party events, eating gross-looking fake floating turds directly from the toilet, drinking undefined substances,... And of course there's lots of female boobage and even male buttocks to be admired. And also, the aforementioned flashback death-scene of mister Belladonna.Then finally the killings start. And I must say, the film-makers made the okay decision of not showing the first deaths on-screen (but we do get to see the results). Just when you start thinking "Lame!", they start showing more and more of the killings. And For what it's worth: the death-scenes are pretty original. Cheesy, bloody & gory with bad effects, yes, but very much fun indeed. For a moment the director even tried to make you question the identity of the killer. Is it a crazy frat-boy gone insane? Or is it a frat-boy possessed by the spirit of Mr. Belladonna? Or has Zombie Belladonna really returned from the grave? Just watch it yourselves and find out! Just don't expect any answers or explanations. But do expect an extremely lame and laughable conclusion... and then prepare for the obligatory final "it's not over yet"-scene (with another totally free extra super small titties shot).One more comment on the soundtrack: It features some old-school Anthrax songs, repeatedly played on mostly inappropriate moments. Fun to hear them, but certainly not their best stuff. The rest of the more... ehrr, "orchestrated sound-effects" i can't really describe. It's sounds weird and bad (but that, on the other hand, made it very appropriate). It might have sounded a bit like when Claudio Simonnetti got his very first keyboard/sampler thing way back in the early 80's, then went on a bad LSD-trip and just pushed some random buttons on it. If this sounds like I'm making fun of Simonetti, then I take back that statement... don't wanna give this movie too much credit anyway. Boy, this movie was trash. Loved it!

ram-33 This is quite an amusing horror/comedy. I loved the 7O's zombie's comment -"thats for Spiro Agnew!" Story revolves around a guy who was accidentally killed in the 70's in a Uni initiation ceremony. Years later his zombie/ghost body comes up to wreak revenge and havoc on the latest class of freshman who erroneously believed the worst that could happen to them was eating worms. They were wrong!!!