Pledge Night (1988)
3/10
Big sword-swinging Zombie Belladonna stand-in kranking it up!
11 October 2006
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!
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