udar55 Pledges find out that "Hell Week" is nothing when they are trapped in a frat house with ghost killer Acid Sid, a 1960s hippie who was accidentally killed in a pledging ritual gone bad. Now what a hippie was doing pledging a fraternity is another question. This is one of those 80s horror flicks that is just there for the killing and from a porn producer trying to go legit. The Sid stuff is semi-interesting, but never fully explored in favor of pledge initiations. It is also never explained/shown how he came back to possesses a dude, only to later burst through his stomach in DEMONS-esquire fashion. Sadly, lots of the gore (highlighted in the pages of Fangoria) was cut for the US home video release. So you will have to continue to hope a film does "Death by eggbeater" justice. The film ends with a silly bit with the hero pledge finding out Sid is his father and the ghost was just back to protect him. In the 60s flashback, Sid is played by Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna (someone else plays him later under all of the burn make up). Belladonna's band also supplied some tunes, which seem to have been crammed in and don't fit the scenes they play over at all. As a film, this carries on the long horror tradition of fraternity brothers and pledges being offed. Which, of course, begs the question, "Who would win in a fight - PLEDGE NIGHT or RUSH WEEK?" My money is on HELL NIGHT, suckas!

RTheManF89 Definitely not the worst movie ever made, but I still found this movie to be ridiculous. I was intrigued to buy the VHS based on the cover, which is probably the only redeeming factor of this film, either that or the soundtrack by Anthrax. By watching this, I wasted 90 minutes of my life that may never be lived again.Sidney "Acid Sid" Snyder (Played by Anthrax's Joey Belladonna) accidentally died in a fraternity prank gone horribly wrong in the 1960s. 30 years later, new pledges are going through initiation rituals. In spite of his mother's warnings, one of the pledges, Larry Bonner still wants to join. During the weekend, Don, one of the senior pledges goes bananas and kills one of the fraternity brothers. Turns out, he was possessed by none other than Acid Sid, who later bursts out of Don's stomach. How original...not. Sid is basically a hippie version of Freddy Krueger who just goes around cracking jokes that I could tell better myself. Sid's real purpose in the movie, revealed at the end was a total joke.I have noticed that people have a soft spot for this film, and while I respect that, I just simply cannot begin to understand why. This was director Paul Ziller's first film, and I can understand that as well. However, it does not excuse the fact that, as CritconOnline.com said, Ziller copped out and displayed the victims' bodies after the murders. Thankfully, this film has yet to receive a DVD release.I would probably only recommend this to hardcore horror fans as well as HARDCORE (And I mean hardcore) fans of Anthrax. Otherwise, don't bother.EXTRAS: Grow some hair on that chest as a trailer for No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990) appears at the beginning of the tape. This time, it's family!

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!