Wonderful character development!

best movie i've ever seen.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

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.

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!

This is one of those movies that shows you how cheese can be great. It has cherries & cherry bombs up the @SS, turd biting and the greatest line ever. When the pledges are faced with the prospect of having to drink a nasty concoction one of them says with all seriousness " hey we could stick it up our @--holes!" The cheese goes bad however in the last half of this movie right after the hand comes out of the toilet. It is at this point that all the cool schlock goes to hell. This movie's last half takes what had been a great movie where we learned lessons like "Never show up a brother" I do recommend you rent this movie though but you must stop it after the hand (trust me) if you want to keep from despising it.

Pledge Night was a horror movie night selection for me and my friends. We expected a college campus horror flick, which it is and that part sucks. The first part was a hilarious, entertaining riot. It ruled!!!! up until the point it became a lame slasher flick with an uncool killer and a terrible end. How could the director let this laugh riot turn into a crap fest. It was the most amusing college phrat flick I've ever seen and ranks up there with Animal House. It had awesome dialogue and those wacky pranks rocked, but when you see the hand come up out of the toilet part stop the movie and let that be the end. You and your friends will thank me, if not they may beat the living crap out of you and you'll deserve it if you read my warning and didn't listen. Pledge Night was a good idea that could have been a great comedy about the lengths one goes through to become a member of a fraternity, but fell way short in its attempt to copy all other slasher flicks, I applaud its originality and humor in the first half.