THE HAZING

Who is Rolfe Kanefsky?  You may not know the name, but if you’ve ever stayed up past eleven and turned on Cinemax, you'll know his movies.   Director of such classics as ALIEN EROTICA and the EROTIC MISADVENTURES OF THE INVISIBLE MAN, Rolfe has become a one-man factory of soft-core late night cable flicks.  His move into horror comes with THE HAZING, an incredibly entertaining B-movie gem that is genuinely awful, in the best possible way.

The film follows the great tradition started by movies such as NIGHT OF THE DEMONS that finds a convoluted way of getting a variety of teenagers into a haunted house so bad things can happen to them.  In this case, the house must be occupied by five pledges to frats and sororities (a joint-hazing event, as it is convolutedly explained) for the duration of one night after a ridiculous scavenger hunt conducted while wearing Halloween costumes. 

But before we get to the set-up, we’re confronted with the odd presence of Brad Dourif (doing his terrible faux English-accent thing) who uses incantations from his evil book to turn living people into demons.  If it doesn’t sound like THE EVIL DEAD yet, it soon will.  The best part of the opening is the fact that Brooke Burke is on the screen for this time – of course she never disrobes and she’s gone after the intro, but damn is she beautiful.  Anyhow, I’d go on more about the Dourif character and this Necronomicon-esque book, but frankly I didn’t really get it and didn’t try to hard either.

What I did get is the fact that of the five teenagers (played by actors in their twenties), two are deliriously hot girls.   One is Tiffany Shepis, who is becoming a modern-day scream queen (see her turn in BLOODY MURDER 2 for reference).  This woman must find a way in every movie she’s in to remove her clothing.  She simply refuses to remain clothed.  Sadly, her nude scene in THE HAZING is brief, but memorable.  Happily, while clothed, she’s in a skin-tight space suit the rest of the movie.  Smart, Rolfe, smart.  The other woman, Nectar Rose, stars in the showpiece scene of the movie – one that involves her and a malevolent tongue with a mind of its own.  Yes, you read that right.   The rest I’ll leave to your imagination. 

There’s very little purpose in re-hashing the plot of the movie, as you could probably guess all that happens.   In essence, we get a variety of demons inhabiting students, murders, Brad Dourif’s apparition using $10 special effects, and an ending so ridiculously terrible that I literally laughed out loud for about five minutes.  To top it all off, we have an embarrassing performance from Parry Shen, star of the very good BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, who plays Mr. Sensitive Guy (up until the end).  Apparently it works because he scores Shepis, but listening to him deliver his nice-guy dialogue almost had me ordering the Bose Noise-Cancelling headseats.

THE HAZING is a terrible, terrible movie.  I have to say, I loved every minute of it.  Derivative, sloppy, poorly edited, poorly acted, and more, THE HAZING is a prime example of B-Horror movie-ness at its best.  Loads of fun.

RATING: *** and a half (out of four)