Prom Night introduces us to Jamie Lee Curtis’s second silver screen debut, Leslie Nielsen playing a serious role, everyone’s favorite one liner, and of course, the music of Paul Zaza.
In an intro that appears loosely based on Lois Duncan’s most popular novel, we find 4 friends, Young Nick played by Brock Simpson, making a secrecy pact. But someone else is there. Someone who hates prom as much as any other high school outcast. Why? We never really find out.
Cut to usual high school OMG PROM YOU GUYS movie, with the occasional YOU’RE GONNA DIE MUAHAHAHA thrown in and you pretty much can guess the rest.
Schlock highlights - Slick’s Van, the one liner It's not who you go with. It's who takes you home, Wendy’s death, and the killer reveal.
For fans of schlock horror, like myself, this first Prom Night sets up a fairly solid string of ridiculousness. (We won’t talk about this century’s Prom Night.) Just wait until we get to the glory of Prom Night 4!
Corey says:
If you would have told me that Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis were in a film together that wasn’t a comedy, I would have thought you were on drugs. And yet, here we are.
Prom Night was one of the films in the tidal wave of “We-are-studio-execs-who-saw-how-much-money-Halloween-made” slasher stampede. Hell, they even managed to put Jamie Lee Curtis in it, which was something Pieces sure as hell couldn’t do. (To be fair, I really like Pieces, and the ending is fucking weird and creepy.) And, like many of those first slasher clones, Prom Night ain’t that great.
All the tropes are there, of course. The prude, the stoner, the heroine (who happens to be a great dancer), and the red herring (which I totally fell for, I’ll be honest). However, the film just never puts it together quite right. Maybe it’s because this is my first time seeing Prom Night, or maybe it’s because I’ve seen enough slashers to know how they go, but just killing kids for fucking isn’t enough. I need a gimmick, and a dude in a balaclava isn’t enough. I mean, really, it’s not the film’s fault.
Wait, yes it is.
The reason this film doesn’t totally suck is because Nielsen and Curtis are just great to watch, even if they’re in a kind of shitty rip-off film.
On the bright side, the films has a stunning soundtrack, expertly put together by the amazing Paul Zaza.
Salty says:
The opening scene to Prom Night is the scene that I think of when I think of classic slasher openings: kids playing in some verboten place, a prank that goes mortally wrong, questionable liability, irresponsible reactions – it’s perfect! The rest of the movie doesn’t stand a chance.
10 years after the death and the students of Hamilton High start to be picked off one-by-one by a masked madman, who looks suspicious like a guy I remember from Ninja vs. Megashark or something like that. What I remember from my first viewing of the film (on stunning VHS!) is that the movie was very dark (as in poorly lit, not emotionally bleak) and the killer dressed in all black with a black ski-mask, so I had to use the process of elimination to guess who’s death cries I was hearing at any given 20-minute interval. Fortunately, the House of Sequels viewing was on DVD and I got to see what I was missing, which still wasn’t worth the time it took, but there is a stellar performance by an unparalleled horror movie icon.
That’s right I am talking about Leslie Nielsen! I know that the world will remember Leslie from his roles in such classics as The Night Gallery, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Repossessed and of course Creepshow (he can hold his breath a long time) and he does not disappoint here. Watching Leslie not just play the principal of Hamilton High, but be the principal of Hamilton High is just a pleasure.
The movie also offers viewers a time capsule that contains the full-blown stink of the 1970’s. There is feathered hair and too-short shorts and powder blue and disco – oh boy is there disco! In the midst of disappearing teenagers the film comes to a complete stop to give you, the viewer, a disco dance long enough for you to wonder if you should have signed up to watch every horror movie franchise that has more than four entries, because you are beginning to get a taste of what you signed up for and it is a little sour.
Then we reach the big reveal, but by the time we get there we realize that we really don’t remember who was present at the beginning of the film. It’s kind of like the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo where they pull off the crocodile man’s mask and reveal a character you have never seen before. So you just kind of go “Oh it’s… wait… who is that?” They give you a little flashback to try and help, but you really just want to see the end credits.
| Maire | Corey | Salty |
|---|---|---|
| ☆☆ | ☆☆ | ☆ |
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