Blu-ray Review: Rush Week

Blu-ray Reviews, Reviews, Top Story

During the ’80s, fraternity Rush Week was a big thing. Not because it involved a chance to join a bunch of guys and wear Greek letters on your chest. The pure joy of Rush Week was all the free booze they gave out to lure in gullible suckers. A bunch of us would go to frat row to get drunk without paying and stumble back to our dorms knowing we had pulled one over on the frat boys since we were not their sort of material. We came home buzzed in our heads without any recruitment material in our hands. Eventually when the drinking age went to 21, the university ordered a Dry Rush since the average recruit was 18 or 19. The only good thing about frats was gone. Who wanted to tolerate them sober? <I>Rush Week</i> brings back those glorious free alcohol soaked days with the extra twist of a guy with an axe killing people around frat row.

Toni Daniels (Pamela Ludwig) is a plucky reporter at the college newspaper. She gets assigned a story about the fraternities rush week. The idea of being stuck interviewing a bunch of frat boys doesn’t turn her on. But early in the story she discovers a missing student that nobody else seems to care about. When she suggests changing up stories, the newspaper’s advisor (Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers) is open, but she had to check with Dean Grail (The Invaders’ Roy Thinnes) first. Grail swears that the missing girl, appropriately named Julie Anne McGuffin (Bride of Re-Animator‘s Kathleen Kinmont) had disappeared the previous year. There’s no story there. So it’s back to the Rush Week piece. But the vanishing crops up when her source who was going to give juicy details of Rush week turns up missing. What is going down on Frat Row? And how are they connected to an off campus phone number that promises on campus pleasures?

I would have enjoyed Rush Week back when it was made in ’89 since it dealt with college newspapers and murders on frat row. It’s was like the Reece’s Cups of cinema for me. Turns out that ’89 was when teen slasher films were vanishing off the theater landscape and Rush Week was put on academic probation. It wouldn’t crop up until ’91 on VHS although it’d get run on USA’s Up All Night minus the carnality of a few of the victims before they’re tracked down by the mysterious figure with an axe. This is still a goofy time with a mix of over the top frat boys and a killer that’s into beheading. Rush Week is nostalgic journey back in time to when kids could get drunk for free and university’s didn’t care when students went missing.

The video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The 2K scan off the 35mm interpositive is sharp enough to give me flashbacks to my old monochromatic computer monitor at the student newspaper. The audio is DTS-HD MA stereo. The levels are fine for when the killer is stalking victims or the Dickies are playing on the soundtrack. The movie is subtitled.

Commentary Track with The Hysteria Continues! has them recount how they each discovered the film. Mostly it’s from VHS at the video stores in the early ’90s. One of them had the joy of seeing the film when it ran on USA’s Up All Night although they don’t mention if it was Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Gottfried as host. They give the context to the film. They discuss the lack of gore during the killings.

So 80’s (12:52) interviews actress Courtney Gebhart. She’s thrilled to get to recap her experiences of her first big gig after graduating from USC. Her father was impressed that she got work. She talks about getting to do the singer script.

Still Dean Hamilton (12:58) catches up with Dean Hamilton. He goes into what it took to play the ultimate frat boy. He recounts working with the director and the atmosphere on the set. It was a bit like they were their own frat. He has memories of Gregg Allman. He went to law school after acting. He currently directs and produces show.

Vinegar Syndrome presents Rush Week. Directed by Bob Bralver. Screenplay by Russell V. Manzatt & Michael W. Leighton. Starring: Pamela Ludwig, Dean Hamilton, Roy Thinnes, Courtney Gebhart, Toni Lee, Kathleen Kinmont, Heidi Holicker & Gregg Allman. Running time: 96 minutes. Rating: Rated R. Release Date: April 27, 2021.

Joe Corey is the writer and director of "Danger! Health Films" currently streaming on Night Flight and Amazon Prime. He's the author of "The Seven Secrets of Great Walmart People Greeters." This is the last how to get a job book you'll ever need. He was Associate Producer of the documentary "Moving Midway." He's worked as local crew on several reality shows including Candid Camera, American's Most Wanted, Extreme Makeover Home Edition and ESPN's Gaters. He's been featured on The Today Show and CBS's 48 Hours. Dom DeLuise once said, "Joe, you look like an axe murderer." He was in charge of research and programming at the Moving Image Archive.