Lower Your Expectations : Pledge Night, Anthrax, and the Dangers of College Hazing

I was a horror and metal dork in the mid-to-late 80s. If I wasn’t filling my head with speed metal(or any metal for that matter) I was filling it with absolutely inappropriate horror. I watched plenty as a little kid in ‘Edited For Television’ form, like The Fog, Halloween, Scanners, The Howling, The Exorcist, and plenty of other classics that popped up on network TV and late night fare. One very pivotal horror movie moment for me was seeing Phantasm late one night on the late show with my dad. I woke up after he’d gotten home from work(he worked 2nd shift for a time.) I couldn’t sleep and he was too tired to argue with me so he turned on the TV and we watched Phantasm. Whoa, what an eye opener that was. Corpses turned into Jawas, a silver ball with drills and blades that attached itself to people’s heads as streams of blood sprayed everywhere. And of course there was the great Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man. “Booooooyyyyy!!” Absolute classic.

It was a movie that stayed with me from that moment on until I became a teenager and could rent it for myself. It’s still one of my favorite horror movies to this day. Our purchase of our first VCR(a Toshiba Betamax) was a pivotal moment in my pre-teen/teenage years. It was a license to rent most horror movies that peaked my fancy, and my parents for the most part were open to me watching the weird stuff. Hey, as long as their wasn’t a bunch of nudity I was golden. They were pretty okay with The Evil Dead, but don’t even think about Dressed To Kill or Videodrome.

As a fan of horror and heavy metal I loved finding those movies that mixed the two. Return of the Living Dead, Trick or Treat, Black Roses, River’s Edge(technically not a horror movie, but it was scary just the same) were all movies I watched a lot because of the soundtracks. Trick Or Treat had Fastway creating the songs of the fictional rocker turned undead ghoul Sammi Curr. It was an okay movie with some cool cameos from Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons, but the Fastway soundtrack was worth the price of admission alone.

Besides collecting music(cassettes up until 1992, that’s when I made the switch to CDs), I also collected Fangoria magazine, the Bible for every horror fan since 1979. I’d find out about the newest horror movies coming down the pike months before they were released. They also had some really cool pull-out posters that I decorated my room with, much to the chagrin of my mom and weak stomached guests. One issue back in 1989 talked about a movie called Pledge Night that had none other than the great Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna in it. Man, I was stoked. Anthrax’ latest album at the time was State Of Euphoria, an album that gets flack but one I have great adoration for.

Back then there was never a solid release date for these independent horror movies. Fangoria would usually have pics from the shoot and some great gore-filled behind the scenes photos. You’d have to wait to see if it popped up in the local paper showing at your cinema or just keep watching for it to pop up on the wall of your local video store. Most of these indie horror flicks back then were direct-to-video because the makers could barely afford to make the film, let alone market it and get it in theaters. And distributors weren’t about to lose their shirt on some cheap scare flick. There were outliers, like Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Fright Night, Child’s Play, Halloween series, and so on…but there was either a built-in audience that distributors and producers could count on, or they had great directors and actors involved. 

Pledge Night had neither. It was a dime-a-dozen horror film that never made it to my theater or video store. It went into the 80s horror film black hole and I completely forgot about it.

Until recently.

Not that long ago I discovered the wonders of the streaming trash receptacle known as Tubi. It’s a free streaming app with thousands of movies and TV shows for your watching pleasure(with commercials, natch.) What I find it useful for is finding long lost trashy horror flicks. My watchlist is filled with as much trash as the streets of New York during the garbage pick up strikes of the 1980s. I’ll never get through it all, but it feels good knowing they’re right there at my fingertips for the watching. A movie I recently found on there was, yep, Pledge Night. Man, I was stoked. I’d finally be able to watch Joey Belladonna in his horror acting glory. Plus, Anthrax did the music for the movie. I added it to my list and was ready to be blown away. Or, at least somewhat entertained.

Friday after work I got home and finished cleaning up the house and then sat down to be entertained. After 35 years of waiting I was finally going to see Pledge Night. Man, was I disappointed.

I wasn’t expecting high art here. Or even low art. I was just hoping for some cheesy acting and some crazy gore. If there was a little T&A, well I wouldn’t complain. Turns out there’s a reason that movie disappeared into the ether, as it was pretty bad. Very subpar acting, ridiculous college hazing, and it takes nearly over half the movie just to get to the damn point. Oh, and all those great gory effects we saw pictures of in that Fangoria/Gorezone issue? Pretty much gutted from the final release(side note: I never understood why the gore was cut from these direct-to-video movies if it was going direct-to-video.)

Anthrax and Joey Belladonna? The Anthrax music was scarce, and Joey Belladonna was in the movie for like 2 minutes tops. His character that comes back from the dead is played by someone else in melty face makeup. Very disappointing. Two thumbs and two big toes down. Way down.

Part of the fun of being a horror fan is the anticipation, and I built some serious anticipation over the last 35 years. Sometimes the journey is far more satisfying than the destination. That’s been the beauty of being a horror fan this whole time. It’s separating the wheat from the chaff. There’s far more chaff than wheat, but when you get that wheat. Damn, how satisfying. Pledge Night was some serious chaff, but since I’ve got nothing to lose but its 90 minute runtime I’m not really losing much at all. I’m at home, on my couch sitting with my old pooch Otto and we’re chilling on a Friday afternoon. I can’t complain. Do I wish the movie had been a little better? Or had more Anthrax? You bet. But hey, you win some and you lose some. My watch list on Tubi is jam packed full of what I imagine will be many more disappointing Friday afternoons. But for every Pledge Night there’s a Nightmare On Elm Street or Halloween. Or fun indie stuff like Tonight She Comes, Southbound, or Hell House, LLC. You just got to keep digging.

That’s what Fridays are for.