The Hazing — The Hazing (DVD)
The Hazing is an entertaining ‘n’ fast-moving mix of horror, dark fantasy, and comedy. The early 2000’s film regards a group of pledges being sent to a creepy mansion for an initiation. But instead of pranks & tricks, they come face-to-face with a body jumping demon, that is focused on killing them all….think like if Hell Night and The Evil Dead had a straight-to-VHS baby. Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a bare bones DVD release of the film.
The film is from the year 2004- it was written and directed by New York City born Rolfe Kanefsky. Between the late 80’s and the early 2020s, he’s thirty one directors credits, but even more impressively, seventy-four writer credits. His feature credits include the likes of ahead-of-its-time postmodern horror film There’s Nothing Out There (1991). Sleazy sci-fi Sex Files: Alien Erotica (1998), rancy comedy The Erotic Misadventures of the Invisible Man (2003), comedy horror Bus Party to Hell (2017), and the gone wrong séance horror of The Mirror Witch (2020).
After the swirling & macabre credits, with a voice-over regarding an ancient and dark spell book. We drop down in the house of college professor Kapps- played by Brad Douif( Childs Play, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Exorcist III), who is heavily moustached with an English accent. He axes to death a young female student, and it becomes clear he’s up to perform an ancient ceremony with the book from the opening credits.
We then shift to a frat house, where a mix of male & female pledges are lined up- they are all dressed in bras and panties. To get into the frat, they are told that they have to carry out a scavenger hunt around the city- gathering things as wide as traffic signs, guitars, shop dummies, and the professor's spell book.
When finished collecting, they head to the old ‘n’ creepy mansion, which starts off being full of tricks/ false scares by those who run the frat house. But as time goes on, the fear, terror, and death become very real.
The frat pledges are a decent mix of characters- there’s a geeky, shy guy. What appears to be a ditzy blond, a clever/ cunning shiny jump-suited girl, and a few others. Great to see Douif as our dark magician/bad guy.
They encounter long/ seemingly endless tongues, shop dummies that move/ can turn you into them, cackling long-clawed humanoid demons, bloody axe attacks, etc. We get some female nudity, some gore, including two decapitations.
The film rolls in at a fairly tight one hour and twenty-seven minute mark- with a rapid and eventful pace, and a likeable cast, rewarding horror genre mixing, and generally entertaining unfold.
As mentioned, this is bare bones- and it really is with just the film and trailers, and nothing else. A real pity there was nothing, as a director's commentary track, and/ or interview would have been nice.
The only thing I’d seen of Mr Kanefsky's work besides this film is There’s Nothing Out There( also well worth a look)- so I must dig in deeper to his filmography. If you enjoy pacy and entertaining blends of horror, dark fantasy, and comedy, The Hazing is a must!.