I unabashedly love Anthrax – The band, not that white powder shit that kills people. The reason I must use the term ‘unabashedly’ is because amongst the “true metal” crowd, this has been considered a controversial take. I’d get called a poser by mouth-breather metal dudes on the regular for my ‘Spreading the Disease’ back-patch I sported as a teen. I get it – You like Metallica, and think Anthrax isn’t heavy enough or whatever the fuck. I cordially invite you to listen to their undeniable banger, ‘Medusa’. You can thank me later.
Silly dudes aside, I’ve dug the hell outta Anthrax since I was a tater tot. I’d get jazzed as all hell whenever Madhouse came on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (How fucking good was V-Rock, though?!) and I can recall several occasions when my dad picked me up from junior high cranking ‘Anti-Social’ because I hated everybody I went to school with (“This is your song!”) With all of this put into consideration, y’all can only imagine how stoked I was to discover a horror flick starring Joey Belladonna while perusing the pages of an old issue of Fangoria. Pre-dating the film’s release, the feature on it didn’t really get into specifics. Wasn’t sure if it’d be good or bad, but I knew I had to love it either way. Alas, my hunt began!
I first watched Pledge Night (1990) nearly a decade ago, and have been championing it ever since. Despite having been released in ’90, it had been filmed two years earlier and shows; It feels exactly like one of those deep cut fraternity flicks plucked straight from the 1980s. Y’all know the drill – It is hell week, and we get to watch fraternity pledges get put through the ringer without mercy. This ain’t Revenge of the Nerds (1984), it is a horror flick, so naturally there is an entire backstory all about a prank gone wrong. Man, after Terror Train (1980) and The Burning (1981), you’d think I’d tire of this premise, yet I never do!
As far as the fatal prank in question here goes, that is where Joey Belladonna comes in. Back in the late ’60s, the fraternity occupying the house prior to its current residents decided to concoct a mixture of various ingredients into a bathtub, tell the pledges it was acid, and then promptly dump ’em in. Well, shit! Someone fucked up and actually dumped a whole beaker full of acid (how you could fuck this up, I’ll never know), and next thing you know poor ol’ Sid (Belladonna), a hippie pledge, receives a chemical burn instantly turning him into budget Freddy Krueger with a shag haircut. Does he live to tell the tale? Hell no, he dies. But don’t worry, naturally he comes back decades later seeking vengeance.
This may sound like a bunch of rehashed trash on paper, but man… Pledge Night provides a slew of creative kills I have yet to see anywhere else. It plays on the chemical burn aspect fairly frequently, but isn’t limited to it by any means. There is simply too much going on to really pigeonhole the slayings – Not only do we have deeply depraved and horrifying hazing going on constantly, one of the frat brothers has a couple screws loose and turns into a homicidal maniac. All of this occurs prior to the supernatural shit later to come. All boxes are checked here, folks!
A lot of horror flicks that came out during this time period have something working against them. The coolest plot can get totally destroyed by some shitty makeup and bad effects, which is absolutely the furthest thing from the case here. Sid looks gnarly as hell – I firmly believe this hippie ghoul deserves to be an underground horror icon, he looks that good. Plus, with a catchphrase as cornball as “Which way to the protest?” – Give this man an Oscar, pronto!
It is also worth noting that the soundtrack is entirely comprised of Anthrax tracks. I mean, it had to be. Y’all have got Belladonna, so why the hell not? Furthermore, arguably the funnest part of these lower-grade horror flicks is poster scouting. Keep an eye out for a Samantha Fox poster in the bathroom, and a wood-panelled bedroom later in the flick covered in Conan the Barbarian (1982) prints.
This may be sounding like a fluff-piece, and perhaps it is – What can I say? I really do love this movie. It encapsulates everything I love about late ’80s ‘fun’ horror. It is absolutely excessive and bonkers, but as a wise man (Yngwie J. Malmsteen) once said “Less is more… how can that be? It’s impossible… more is more!”
[PS: Before someone gets up my ass, I will clarify that Belladonna plays Sid *only* as the young hippie pledge, as he was busy touring with Anthrax at the time. Acid Sid is later played by Will Kempe.]
I was curious to hear Our Gentle Reviewer caught shit for being an Anthrax fan. When you literally grow up in the projects, you gotta have a side hustle. When I was in 6th grade grade Christian school (why the fuck do I keep telling stories about my half year in private school here??), mine was selling copies of forbidden cassette tapes to my sheltered little classmates. As a kid whose shoplifting and frankly, theft of any kind, bordered on mania, this was a lucrative way to pay for things that were either hard to steal because the shop owner was hip to my klepto bullshit (local comic book store owner), or things I felt compelled to pay for on romantic principle (presents for Sara, a girl in the tenth grade who was the 3rd Love Of My Life). I mention this because I pushed it all, dawg. Daddy is a deacon and you need some Sabbath in your life? King Collin has it. Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Zepplin, Skid Row, and many more, including Anthrax of course. I never judged my customers as long as they could pay. I like music. Some of it more or less than others but I was never one to yuck somebody’s yum, how could I? I was a compulsive thief whose taste ran to older women with serious cigarette and cheap beer habits.
So when I read Belladonna was in this, I went on the hunt. A couple minutes in and I wondered if this was finally the time Whipple would let me down. She’s only human and after all, we like people for their strengths but we love them for their weaknesses, don’t we? I was immediately amused by the two BMOC frat boys. One of them can’t even wear a sweater correctly for 1990 standards and the other looks like he’s about 5’6″. I hate to bring it up again, but 6th grade me could’ve beat the living shit out of both of them. This may not be Revenge Of The Nerds, but these motherfuckers were definitely Lambda Lambda Lambda.
Less than 5 minutes in screaming and cackling echoes from another room and we find out Brother Dan needs some support. I got to hear an actor say. “…looks like he’s got himself a brain tumor…” Seconds later we meet Dan and I was not disappointed. Dan is a full on crying, dinner plate destroying madman who dry humps a woman against the wall without the slightest inkling of consent and then stabs her savior. All while people are eating dinner. Then the tiny brother lets us all know that he keeps it real as fuck and nobody, I mean nobody in that frat house calls the PO-PO even if a motherfucker is bleeding to death. This is like five minutes in, people. At this point I settled in and thought, “Breanna, I’m so sorry I doubted you.”
From there shit just gets crazier. The pledges have to say they’re dirty and unclean then play a game with cherries, ice, and their asses. There’s corncobs, there’s… fuck it. Breanna, I think if we looked at the pictures of notable alumni, the founding brother would be a young Frank Booth glaring out at us from behind a picture frame.
This shit ain’t The Deer Hunter but there’s some good stuff here. The twist with Dan flew right past me which means im as dumb as those unclean pledges. This is one of those cool movies that slid past me and turned out pretty fuckin entertaining. It feels like a Spector and Skipp novel. That’s always a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
You know how much I love a Frank Booth reference! 😉 Glad ya dug the flick, man!