By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Rush Week (1989) is a hard-to-find, out-of-print, whodunit horror film. There are elements to it that fans of the genre will recognize as familiar tropes, yet there is also a misunderstanding by those that made the film as how to use those tropes.
The movie follows a bunch of frat boys who attend Tambers College. Pretty much everyone in the frats are complete scum. In fact, the group of guys that the audience are supposed to root for are the worst of them all. They go as far as to trick a prostitute into having sex with a corpse. When the woman runs screaming out of the house, the douchebags laugh it up.
Jeff (Dean Hamilton) for all intents and purposes is supposed to be the protagonist. He’s the head of the frat and when he thinks his brothers have gone too far, he speaks up. When the issue with the hooker comes up, his reaction is to make sure she doesn’t tell anyone – nice guy. This is one of those tropes. It’s important for whodunits to have suspects and red herrings. In great horror movies, no one is above suspicion, not even the ones that we’re supposed to root for. The filmmakers brave enough to take that route are really conducting a balancing act. The protoganist both needs to be nice and someone to root for, all the while leaving the hair on the viewers neck standing in curiosity when odd or out-of-character things are said. Here, Jeff is always a jerk, but it’s almost as if the writers didn’t know that. It’s as if they thought all college kids were dicks and he was just the one we were supposed to want to win.
To try and give Jeff something else to do, he becomes the love interest of our lead. Even when that first starts, it begins with Jeff being an ass to another student in order to gain her attention. He flirts with fellow student Toni Daniels (Pamela Ludwig) in an immature way that would make most women steer clear. At first, she is rightfully unimpressed with Jeff’s advances and overall scumbag behavior, but then because he likes computers she comes around. There really isn’t a turning point. She doesn’t seem like the kind who would go for the bad boy, but once again the movie doesn’t realize what an asshole Jeff is. He writes a poem and sends it to her via the best 1980s MAC technology and then she falls for him and zero character development is seen in any.
Many reviews I have read seem to surround Toni’s role in the film. Without question, she is intended to be the lead. She’s a journalist who is researching the disappearance of students at the college and is put smack dab in the middle of this whodunit. That said, for a lead, she doesn’t do much. She’s just sort of there. That’s not to say that Pamela Ludwig isn’t a good actress. She just didn’t have much to work with.
In the middle of the frat boys being jerks and competing with other houses, a killer in a robe and double-sided axe is on a rampage. His weapon of choice and wardrobe are utilized for initiation purposes within Jeff’s frat. The cool scary old-man mask however is not.
There are some great visuals and some cool shots within this mess. The issue is that no one will root for any of the characters. Even though, Toni doesn’t do anything awful, her adoration for Jeff is enough to make the viewers hate her. The next issue is with the motive of the killer. Without giving spoilers, it doesn’t make much sense. When the reveal happens in a whodunit, the driving factor is critical to all that came before. Here, there are so many problems with it and without giving away the ending, I can’t begin to touch the surface of it.
Overall, I can’t recommend this one all that much. Killer Party is a much better film that though is just as big of a mess, has much better characters and much better scares. If Rush Week gets reissued on a multi-pack of movies for a reasonable price, it’s not the worst film ever to be seen. It has enjoyable moments. It’s definitely not worth the current $24.99 buying price for an out-of-print Amazon copy.
Scared Stiff Rating: 4.5/10 Great Mask – Great Weapon – Zero Plot
