#124 -- The Hazing (2004)

Director: Rolfe Kanefsky
Rating: 4/5

I remember renting this movie with a friend of mine when we were about thirteen or fourteen. We also rented The Blair Witch Project 2. For whatever reason, we ended up watching Blair Witch, and never got around to this one. I wish now that we'd gone the other way. Also known as Dead Scared, The Hazing is just about as cliche as you can get--but it works. It started off with a group of college kids pledging to a fraternity, and a sorority. For some unknown reason, they held their hazings together. I assume this was to fill the movie with both male and female, so they could get a little sexy time in. Anyway. Their first task was a scavenger hunt; they had to go around town and steal all sorts of things to gain points. One of those items was an evil book that was supposed to be able to do anything from raising the dead to giving women orgasms. While obtaining this book, Marsha and Doug accidentally killed their professor who was currently in possession of said book. Or, so they thought. While the professor was lying in a hospital bed, his spirit was with the kids in the infamous and haunted Hack House (where, of course, a man had murdered his family many years before). The kids had to stay in Hack House until morning, while their two pledge leaders attempted to scare the shit out of them. Of course, there were forces in that house more powerful than any asshole frat leader, and things soon took a turn for the worse.

The good professor's disembodied spirit tricked Doug into opening the portal between our world and Hell. Once the portal was open, the professor's spirit was able to exit Hell with full force; and it also gave him the ability to possess the kids so that he could have his evil way with them.

One of my favorite parts in this was when one of the kids lost his tongue in a bit of sexual rendezvous. When confronted by a professor-possessed Doug, he was asked: [pardon my language] "What's wrong, pussy got your tongue?" This gained a bout of raucous laughter from me. This movie was filled with humor, silly situations, and just about every horror movie cliche there is. It was funny, the gore was pretty good, and it was definitely entertaining. To put it simply, The Hazing is a great movie. I was pleasantly surprised, as I've gotten to the point that I don't expect too much these days. It's nice to be able to find a horror movie that is entertaining and doesn't seem to last four hours (you know what I mean. A bad movie seems to last forever, where as a good one doesn't last long enough). And I must say that Marsha (played by Tiffany Shepis, who I realized is a Tromette, which makes it even better) is pretty freakin' hot. My favorite character actually made it through the movie without getting killed, which doesn't happen very often. On an unrelated note, this one also stars Parry Shen, who you might recognize as the tour guide from Hatchet, and Brad Dourif (I've just realized who he is) as the crazy professor. Overall, this is a wonderful movie, and I'm sad that it took me almost ten years to finally watch it.