The Hazing (2004)

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It should tell you something about this movie that one of the characters holds up an autographed photo of Bruce Campbell. It lets you know that if you end up not liking the movie you took it too seriously, because the filmmakers are just trying to have some fun. It's supposed to be over the top and full of irony.Well, just because a director lets us know he is winking at us doesn't mean he gets a free pass. Luckily, The Hazing ends up being more watchable than not. I had to skip forward through some of the predictable, tedious parts, but I got the gist.Three guys and two girls are pledging for a fraternity and a sorority (only five kids for a joint pledge? Maybe it's a mid-start semester?). The guy running the fraternity has to be the least convincing alpha-male since Leave It To Beaver went off the air. The pledges have to spend the night in a haunted house, which the frat boy rigged with gags to make them jump. If a fake skeleton popping up out of a trunk is enough to get you to run out of a house, you might be a member of the Brady Bunch.During the initiation, one of the pledges broke into the house of a professor to steal a spell book. The professor is accidentally wounded on a rhino horn, I guess, and goes into a coma which allows him to project himself onto the astral plane and convince one of the frat pledges to open the gateway to hell. Then he possess them one at a time and ruins the evening for everyone. After a couple characters die, the prof is sent back to hell and the gateway is closed.This movie was entertaining enough to keep me watching to end (as long as I was able to skip ahead, as I mentioned). It wasn't actually funny or well written, but it looked good enough. The most disturbing thing about it was that the evil professor did kind of look like someone who might end up on an episode of 20/20 for having a torture dungeon in his basement. It isn't as clever as the movies it wants to be like (Scream, Evil Dead), but I guess not many are. Seek it out if it is your goal to see every movie in which an evil spirit jumps from body to body.

This is one of those movies that was made solely for the reason of entertaining the audience. It is rare in this day in age to see a film that isn't trying to convince you to vote a certain way or to see the evil of something. The goal of this film is to have fun watching it. The film stars Tiffany Sheppis, Perry Shen, and Nectar Rose as part of group of college kids pledging the best fraternity and sorority on campus. They are sent on a scavenger hunt and to spend the night in a haunted mansion. One of the uber bright kids decides to steal a dark magic book from genre vet Brad Dourif and things go down hill from there. Great makeup effects with just a touch of CGI the film keeps you watching, cringing, and laughing, with you wondering which one you should be doing. Great fun and must have for any Tiffany Sheppis or Brad Dourif fans.

I bought this movie on a whim at a local video store. It cost me roughly $3 and was actually worth my time. Although, this movie has no surprises it does still keep you interested all the way through.It is pledge week on campus and a group of pledges have to run around town causing all sorts of mischief dressed in various costumes (Halloween). But when 2 of the pledges steal an ancient book from a crazy professor (Brad Dourif) all hell brakes loose. They accidentally impale the professor and stay the night in a rumored haunted house. This is where the rest of the movie takes place.Brad Dourif is hysterical in this movie. He puts on a ridiculous British accent and actually plays his part quite well. The rest of the actors do a fairly decent job also. This movie obviously gained many ideas from classic horror films and they even have a quick frame picture of Bruce Campbell with his named signed. The gore in the movie was fairly decent, but unfortunately, the cover of the movie never seems to happen. I kept expecting to see the girl in the bunny outfit go crazy with a chainsaw, but it never happened. Oh well... Still, this was a fun, campy little movie and I give it a 7/10.

I found "The Hazing" to be an enjoyable film, and I really appreciated the director's subtle references to the Evil Dead series- an arrow being shot at a Bruce Campbell poster, for example. The director really seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, and it just wouldn't be an A- film without the inclusion of Jeff Fahey, Brad Douriff or Malcolm McDowell. Douriff did a good enough job, as the psychotic professor. It also reminded me of "Demon Knight" in some parts- where the demon talks people into their own deaths. Really enjoyable, but I don't know how "scary" it really was. The leads were good and I really liked the "blonde bimbo" change. Very cool!