I'm of two minds when it comes to the smash hit horror-comedy "Pledge Night". One the one hand, it's sloppy, cheap looking, and they seemed to make the story up as they went along. But on the other hand, it has a cherry bomb exploding in a man's buttocks. So I can't make up my mind as to whether I like it or not.
It's about these guys who are trying to get into a fraternity. The hazing scenes, which take up the first half of the movie, are pretty funny. There are cherries up the butt, bug-eating, butt-paddling, poop-licking, and butt-branding. (This movie is very obsessed with men's anuses. A good drinking game would be to sip whenever a guy's butt is shown or talked about, or whenever something is put inside a guy's butt). There are endless conversations about hazing and the meaning of fraternities, peppered with lots and lots of statistics. About forty-five minutes into the movie a Freddy Kreuger-rip off named "Acid Sid" shows up and starts killing the characters. Sid is really dumb. He first appears as a hand in a toilet, which should clue you in to the level of terror in this film. Sid is supposed to be the vengeful ghost of a guy who was killed in a botched hazing prank twenty years earlier. He's also a hippie, so while killing he makes "funny" 60s wisecracks like "Where's the protest?" and "This one's for Spiro Agnew!". (Why would a hippie be joining a frat anyway?)
As stupid as Acid Sid was, I think I liked this movie more than I hated it. All the guys playing pledges are hilarious. My favorite was Silvera (instead of drinking an initiation epicac, he suggests "We could stick it up our @ssh*les, or rub it on our hair and bodies!"). Dirty Pledge Richard Goodman was funny too. Try not to laugh as he wanders around whispering "BODINE?" really loud, while looking straight at the camera. The key appeal of these characters is that they're all played by actors who look like regular guys with 1980s hairstyles. They all look like they could be cruising around my neighborhood in a Camaro, blaring Whitesnake on their way down to the Twist-n-Creme. The women in this movie also look like normal, small-town gals (The female lead is built like a hockey player). This has a certain appeal as well, until they start getting naked. These women should be dental assistants or supermarket check out workers, not showing me their yummies in a horror movie! And I could have done without the world's oldest stripper, who appears in a party scene in which she hits a guy on the head with her gigantic breast (the guy looks and acts just like the Club Scum MC from "Hobgoblins").
In conclusion, this would make for a good evening if watched in conjunction with another, better horror flick. You could enjoy the good movie, then enjoy the first half of "Pledge Night" and doze off whenever Acid Sid is around.
