Rush Week (1989)

Director: Bob Bralver

Starring: Pamela Ludwig, Dean Hamilton, Roy Thinnes

Toni, a journalism student, transfers to a new college, where several female students begin to disappear under suspicious circumstances. She decides to investigate, which makes her the prime target of a mysterious killer.

It’s Rush Week at Tambler College and there’s parties and plenty of pranks going around. Toni (Pamela Ludwig) is a journalist student assigned to write about rush week. But when students go missing, she decides to write about that instead – endangering her life in the process.

When no-one believes something happened to the missing students, Toni investigates. She is assisted by Jeff (Dean Hamilton), one of rush week’s pranksters who also becomes romantically involved with her. ‘Rush Week’ is an interesting whodunit murder mystery, different to the many slasher movies of around the same time. It has more substance and there’s hardly any gore here. In fact, many of the scenes end abruptly just when a victim is about to get killed – almost like a TV movie. This might be disappointing to die-hard slasher horror fans.

But, being an 80’s slasher, there’s plenty of female nudity. Yup, sexploitation at its best. Boobies, boobies, boobies! ‘Rush Week’ didn’t make a big impact at the time of release, and is also one of the less known slashers of the 80’s. Yet, I actually enjoyed it more than expected.

Would I watch it again? I suppose so, yes.