Pledge Night (1990) — Triskaidekafiles

PLEDGE NIGHT

WRITER: Joyce Snyder

DIRECTOR: Paul Ziller

STARRING: Todd Eastland as Bonner
Shannon McMahon as Wendy
Will Kempe as Acid Sid
Joey Belladonna as Young Sid

QUICK CUT: A group of pledges at a college fraternity learn the true meaning of Hell Week.

THE MORGUE

Bonner - A young college student being inducted to the local fraternity. He’s always looking out for the underdog, trying to protect his brothers, and not just to curry favour. He actually is a nice guy and trying to help.

Wendy - A love interest for one of the full frat bros, who ends up a love interest for Bonner. Awkward to say the least. But, while you might think she is little more than a love interest, she does manage to have a personality, even if it’s not much beyond surface level. She’s sweet, she’s nice, and she spills a few secrets of what’s going on to Bonner.

Sid - A kid who died in a tragic accident 20 years earlier, and is now back to have his revenge upon…well, the frat he was in got closed, so he’s getting his revenge on the people who just so happen to be the frat in the same frat house. It’s more of an attack upon the Greek system as a whole, I guess.

Dan - A frat brother who is having a rough time, going a bit made, and has a wicked hyena howl of a laugh. But things are not as they seem with Dan…

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are in the middle of September, and it's time to head back to college, with this surely normal look at college life, Pledge Night!

The movie opens up after the credits, well it ACTUALLY starts off with the sound of stuff going down the toilet, and that's never a good sign...but we actually meet Rex who is nabbed by some men in black outfits and masks.

Before he can be tossed into the back of a van and charged with being Antifa, he is tied to a tree, where women lay flowers at his feet, and he is pelted with eggs, flour, paper, and many other things.

This is all part of a ritual because he and his girlfriend are now going steady, and it's just your average college pranks and hazing. In fact, fair warning, much of the first half of this movie is college hijinx. I am going to do my best to skip past most of that and get to the good stuff as quickly as possible.

We next meet the pledges, who are the majority of our main characters, and the canon fodder for the movie. The mainest of main characters is Bonner, and how..how does no one, not once, call him "Boner" throughout the entire movie?

Suddenly horrific laughter breaks out elsewhere in the house, and we learn that frat brother Dan has...issues thanks to a brain tumour. The pledges are asked to keep things quiet though. Hmm.

At dinner, Danny freaks out, and one of the sorority sisters that share the house tries to confort him. Rex tries to get Danny off his girl, and he gets a knife in the gut for his troubles.

Oh, Danny Boy, the knives, the knives are calling…

They rush Rex off to the hospital, and tell the pledges not to say a word, they'll handle it. Once they're gone, Wendy explains to Bonner in private later on that it's all a ruse, Danny is fine, and he was picked to play up the crazy angle to test the pledges. Oh, and Rex wasn't really stabbed, it was all planned.

Bonner and friends are told to head home, grab clothes and supplies and such, because Hell Week is upon them, and they will be staying there the whole time. Bonner does that, meets his mom, and chops up some firewood to get here through the weekend.

We also learn that his mom is against the frat system, since a boy died during a hazing incident 20 years ago previously.

If you're familiar with frats and hazing, either from the movies or personal experience, you probably know what goes on for the next...half hour or so. Seeing who can bag the ugliest girl. carrying cherries with your buttcheeks, general cruelty. The most notable thing is Bonner's honour in trying to be a good guy and look out for others.

And I do wish there was a lot less hazing. It takes way too long to get to the good stuff with the actual plot of the movie. However, it is some of the best presented, and most real, hazing I've personally seen in a movie, so points for that. It is a genuinely hard look at college life. But is this the movie I want it in? I’m not sure.

Something else that would have made it better is if any of this stuff came back into the plot. Like hitting the monster with paddles, or jabbing him with the hot branding irons, ANYthing.

Not long after a branding accident, speaking of, which is then kept quiet, Bonner's mom shows up to tell him more exposition. So we flash back to the sixties to learn about Sid, who was dunked into a "harmless mix of corn flakes, coffee grounds, soda pop, and vinegar" but someone accidentally poured in acid, so when Sid went into the tub, he received such horrible burns he died.

There's a whole lot of fun and games with food, including eating raw eggs, being forced to eat a piece of shit in the toilet that is actually a banana covered in anchovy paste, drinking shakes made with the worst smelling and tasting items they could find, eating worms. Utterly disgusting and horrific to put people through.

We finally FINALLY start to lean into things after 40 minutes, when a hand pokes up out of a toilet before someone can use it. The hand gropes and grabs the first person to come along, and tears apart his dick.

As all that is going on, JD is teaching the scumlings about the history of fraternities, and sends Chip to keep an eye on the screaming.

Chip freaks out, runs into Dan, and tells him what he saw, freaking out that this will end the fraternity, like Sid's death did. Dan starts laughing, because that's what Dan does.

He thinks it was all a prank by Dan, and calms down just long enough for Dan to give him a screwdriver backrub. So I guess it looks like Dan is our killer!

Dan takes a radio up to one of the bathrooms, visits one of the ladies, and drops it in to electrocute her. This sends the whole frathouse into darkness, and JD finally stomps off to yell at people, leaving the pledges locked in the basement.

Bonnie arrives with more groceries for torment, Dan runs into her, and as she babbles on and on and on and on, he grabs the mixer, and grinds it into her face.

JD finds the dead girl's body, tries to call for help, but finds the phone dead and Dan behind him. Wendy finds her soon afterwards, and rushes down to the pledges.

Dan gets JD all tied up, pulls down his pants, and shoves a cherry bomb down his frat brother's underwear.

Before he can light the fuse though, he stumbles back, falling to the floor. Hands rip out through Dan's chest, and a seared and crispy Sid climbs out of the body, our real killer revealed, who was possessing Dan, I suppose?

And that’s when the movie went from good to great.

The pledges hear the cherry bomb go off, and try to leave, forgetting they're locked in the basement. Rather than find a way to leave and face whatever is out there, they decide to hunker down for the weekend, and get out when things settle down.

Unfortunately, the cheap prop coffin that JD was using for his story, opens up and Sid steps out. One of the frattys try to punch him, but when Sid grabs the kid's hand, it starts burning. Oh good, acid ghost.

Cagle grabs the sword that was also being used for theatrics in the story, and tries stabbing Sid, but that goes about as well as you'd expect with an undead hippie frat bro.

...I KNOW THAT'S INTESTINES, let me have my silliness. But he then uses those guts to strangle Cagle to death.

Bonner very quickly puts things together that the murderous thing is actually Sid, back from the dead.

For some reason, Silvera expands and bursts in the stomach because of Sid, so he's at least getting started finally.

They finally grab a hatchet and go all Here's Johnny on the door, then Zahn runs off to find a working phone, to call in the cops.

Which doesn't go so well, because you try telling the cops some undead acidemon is tearing through pledges and disappearing in a puff of nothing?

After he gets off the phone, Zahn gets grabbed by Sid, and bashed against the wall until he's dead.

Two more pledges stumble in, Sid scares them, and we get to spend some time chasing around the frat house. It gets very Scooby Doo for a bit, and that is not much of an exaggeration.

Goodman is the next to find Sid, and he gets his neck snapped all the way around.

Why did no one tell me my ass was this big??

Bodine is the next to have an encounter. He tries to use the sword, because that was so helpful last time.

It is just as effective this go around, and Sid then proceeds to grab the kid, and shove him into the repeatedly stabbed hole in his gut. Wow. Shove into a man's gut and burned with his acid reflux.

You are such an ass, Sid.

So that just leaves Bonner and Wendy to have their meeting with Sid, and we can wrap this movie up.

There's a bit of a sword and bat fight, lots of property damage, and eventually Wendy comes in with a fire extinguisher which actually seems to stop the monster.

For good measure, Bonner crams the sword down his throat, and heads off to get help, leaving Wendy behind for very poor reasons.

Surprising absolutely no one, Sid stumbles onward and chases Wendy until she passes out from fright.

Uh oh, someone brought a bat to a sword fight.

Throughout this movie, the pledges have been asked, Who are you? and they have to give various degrading answers to their brothers.

Having been through this system himself before his bath, previous to killing people, Sid asks the same question. The answer never seems to please him though, and he keeps killing.

That is, until he confronts Bonner when he returns, and asks him the question.

No no no, you have to keep your neck straight!!

When Sid hears the name, he reaches out, touches the boy's shoulder, and says he came back to protect him. Yep, if you hadn't pieced it together yet, Sid was Bonner's dad.

And so with his son 'safe' from the fraternity, saved through brutal murder, the spirit disappears. Awwww.

...For all of five seconds until he reappears with Rex who is about to bang some woman that is not Wendy.

BUT since she's been snogging Bonner, I guess that's okay. However, daddy deadest appears and kills the couple.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Not too bad, about what you would expect for late 80s.

Audio: Sounds pretty good.

Body Count: Pretty respectable amount, even if they come after the first half of the movie.

1 - Danny knifes one of his brothers almost 7 minutes in...but it's fake.
2 - But then Tom gets groped by the thing in the toilet, for real this time, 44 minutes in.
3 - Dan stabs his brother Chip in the back with multiple screwdrivers.
4 - And then Dan kills one of the sisters in the tub.
5 - And THEN he mixes another sister's tongue.
6 - And finally he sticks a cherry bomb up JD's ass before...
7 - ...Sid rips out of Dan's body and finishes the job.
8 - Sid strangles Cagle with guts.
9 - Silvera burns with acid I guess?
10 - Zahn gets bashed against the wall.
11 - Goodman gets his head twisted off.
12 - Bodine gets shoved into Sid's guthole.
13 and 14 - Sid double penetrates the screwing couple.

Best Corpse: Hmmm. Hard to top tearing your way out of a person’s body. Always a classic!

Blood Type - B: Very solid use of blood, some good splats, and the makeup on Sid isn’t bad.

Sex Appeal: Quite a few bits of nudity throughout the movie.

Drink Up! every time Bonner comes to the help of his fellow pledges.

Movie Review: The problems with this movie are all in balance. The story is actually pretty good. Boy killed in a fratcident, comes back for revenge, with a bunch of creative kills, silliness, and blood. The problems come with how long it takes to get there. I feel like that first half could have been trimmed up SOMEhow. Especially with how uncomfortable the hazing is. Still, it does set up everyone as assholes, it’s just too much, without some balance. But once the movie is going, I love it, and Bonner is a good character, Sid is a fun killer. I have issues, but overall this is a well made, well told movie, that just needed some changes to their storytelling. Three out of five coffee ground baths.

Entertainment Value: I do like SOME of the hazing and pranks, and it’s fun stuff, especially the branding scene is a well done accident. But it needed to play into the plot more. Dan’s howling laughter is both iconic, memorable, and annoying. I love and hate it. It is this great sound, but overdone. It at least plays well into things when JD gets annoyed. Sid is a fun killer with some silly quips, but nothing SUPER topical or memorable like a Freddie. But, there was potential there. If you can get through the long first half, a very fun second half awaits you. Three out of five hand mixers.