Prom Night 5 - The New Babylon 5

Maire says:
What?! No Paul Zaza soundtrack? This movie is already off to a bad start! Wait, this isn’t even Hamilton High?! SHENANIGANS! And where the FUCK is Brock Simpson?!

Prom is dumb. Teenagers are really dumb. This movie is super dumb.

Corey says:
Oh man, where to begin?  This movie was AMAZING.  This was probably the best group of 20 and 30 somethings playing teenagers that I have ever seen.  I could barely tell through the pancake makeup and crow’s feet that these weren’t awkward teens at their senior prom!

And the prom, MAN don’t get me started!  This is almost exactly how I remembered things going.  I remember being able to get hotel rooms even though I was underaged and without a credit card.  Good thing that the prom was IN THE HOTEL!  How awesome is that!  And of course, who can forget how their high school prom venue looked like that awesome club from that video (except for the boobs and butts and booze, let’s not forget that these are underage 20-somethings, and that this movie is PG-13)!

My favorite part of this movie was how unpredictable it was.  Gettin’ your hair did, and you see that guy what killed your parents and almost you in the mirror… only to turn around and he’s not there?  Scriptwriting GENIUS.  Girl getting mad at her boyfriend and going up to the hotel room that they totally legally were able to rent, and the killer gets her?  DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING AT ALL!  Hiding from the killer under the bed, and there’s A BODY UNDERNEATH THERE!!!  How come no horror movie has ever thought of that before?

This movie blows.

Salty says:
This movie reveals the face of the killer right away and he is known as the killer throughout the whole film. What the fuck is that!? Look it doesn’t matter that you know throughout the whole movie that the killer is Sally’s leering older brother who is purported to be “into some weird stuff” from the first frame that you see him – the point is that you don’t see his him holding the bloody knife with that contorted look on his face until 45 seconds before the scene where he gets run over by the train thanks to the survivor girl’s deceased love-interest’s helpful German Shepard. These movies have a rhythm.

People have spent years looking for the perfect crab mask for their low budget horror film. To get the just the right mask is a major selling point for the film. Why else would anyone watch YouTube clips of Curtains? One reason that Halloween 4 blows (other than the fact that it killed one of the greatest fucking franchise ideas ever thunk) is that the mask is such a fuckup – people hate the Halloween 4 mask because it fails to capture the right spirit and it’s just a white mask! That’s it! Someone picked a featureless white mask that failed to live up to the hype of the old featureless white mask and it’s like someone added some poo to your intravenous saline solution – now there’s someone else’s poo in you! But this movie has the audacity to remove the whole mask concept. That’s like removing the ludicrous outfits from figure skating or the boobs from Miss America. It’s stupid!

There is no mask or ambiguity about who is doing the killings. There is no question about who the survivor girl is going to be. There is no challenge of any kind anywhere in the movie. The characters are all extremely unlikable, unredeemable and un-relatable. As I can find absolutely nothing worthwhile about this movie, I have to assume that I have fallen totally out of touch with a whole generation of horror and so I can’t really comment on the movie, because it’s totally out of context for me. BOO! (Not the scary kind the disapproving kind)

Maire	Corey	Salty
☆	☆	☆

Prom Night 3 - What's In It For Me?

Maire says:
I’ll tell ya what’s in it for me - laughs! This is the one movie in the franchise that just lays it out as a schlock comedy horror. The gore is schlocky, predictable, and poorly done, but that’s just what makes it all the more better.

Unfortunately, the ending ended up a bit too much for my tastes, but at least Brock Simpson returned to the screen. This time as Officer Larry!

Corey says:
You know, after watching enough of these movies, you start to notice a (severely unintentional) theme. Bear with me for a moment. Now, imagine all of the Prom Night films as actual prom night dates. Sounds dumb, right? BUT WAIT.

Prom Night: The awkward wallflower with a homemade plain dress. She’s there, but she’s not much to look at, and at the end of the night, she’ll still be sitting close to the punch bowl, maybe reading a book or something.

Prom Night II: This is that crazy hot troublemaker that everyone wanted to get with, but for some reason she picked YOU. She’s got a mouth on her, and she knows how to use it. You know you’re in for a wild ride where you’re gonna either end up with your pants off, or dead… and either conclusion is acceptable.

This leads us to Prom Night III: The Last Kiss. This is another one of those girls that everyone thinks is hot, and once again (you lucky dog), she picks you! However, there’s gonna be no hanky panky here. Just when you think you’re gonna get to second base, *poof* you’re on the dance floor, doing the Lindy Hop for some god awful reason! Every time, every goddamn time you start to get somewhere with this chick, she pulls the ol’ switcheroo and nothing happens.

Now to be fair, this isn’t necessarily III’s fault. We had to watch the TV edit, because that’s all there fucking is in America to watch. So, I guess it’s more like going to the prom with a hot young lass that’s had a full frontal… lobotomy. Nice to look at, but you know this shit ain’t goin’ nowhere.

At least most of the music, which was expertly put together by the amazing Paul Zaza, made it through the edits mostly intact.

Salty says:
The Last Kiss starts well. Mary Lou is back and now she is in love with a new student at Hamilton High only she’s dead and he’s not. Anyone that messes with her man-boy gets a taste of campy death. A Nightmare on Elm Street not only gave The Killer a medium-well face, it gave The Killer a very rambunctious personality. Not only does he kill you, but he insults you too! Unfortunately for us, the personality driven maniac was quickly given one-liners and goofy set-up gags for murders. The Last Kiss has enough of this that you may begin to think that most of the screenwriting time was spent picking out which puns to use (all of which are too embarrassingly unfunny to repeat here).

Also, God help me, there are some character inconsistencies that I really don’t like. Maybe it says something about my self-esteem that I really like the callous Mary Lou from the previous film. Her only concern was that she was having fun at the expense of anyone that happened to pass by on her path to revenge. She was evil for her own vengeful sake and that was that, but now she’s in love with some dude and playing these head games with him while she kills to impress him or something. Maybe if the nudity wasn’t edited out I would be a little more appreciative, but even a really nice set of the world’s cheapest special effects couldn’t have saved this one.

Maire	Corey	Salty
☆☆	☆☆	☆

Prom Night - Quit calling me Shirley

Maire says:
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
☆☆	☆☆	☆

Prom Night: The Franchise Introduction

The VHS boxes of the Prom Night series are those sorts of boxes that left indelible prints on my child brain.  Whenever I would go off to the rental store, I would wander down the horror aisle, quickly glancing at as may covers as I could before I chickened out and bailed.  There were covers that I didn't remember until they were brought up, like the dead prom date on Night of the Creeps, or the backpack full of copyright infringing horror icon weapons on Sleepaway Camp.  But there were some covers that were always there, tucked into the back of my mind, waiting for an idle daydream to come rumbling to the surface.  Mary Lou stuffed  in her casket locker of Prom Night 2 and the hell on wheels motorcycle of Prom Night 3 are two such covers.

The interesting thing about the Prom Night films is how diverse of a family they are.  Each film tends to embody a specific little niche in the horror world, from 70's slasher to late 80's camp to 2000's utter remake garbage.  In some ways, I think it would be impossible to like all of them, because each is so specifically different from the other.  In fact, the only link throughout them all (except the remake) is the ineffable Paul Zaza, maestro extraordinaire.  However, that didn't stop us from watching every goddamn one of them.  So grab a date and get in the back seat of your '57 Chevy, because it's Prom Night baby!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre : Bringing 1973 to 1973 in 2003

Maire says:
Disclaimer: I was at an advantage watching this one since we watched The Beginning beforehand. Thank you Corey and Salty. :)

As remakes go, I’m really alright with this one. Ok, we all know the story, so what can they do better. Well, the hitchhiker is a bit more crazy, so that was nice. The cop angle added a nice pickle as well. The gore is a bit more, but definitely within appropriate limits. I cringed. Ok, so there’s a baby, and I guess it being ok leaves you with a warm fuzzy? Yeah, I wouldn’t have put it in there either.

If you want a solid chainsaw massacre flick with an updated cast, please give this one a watch. It’s Maire approved.


Corey says:
For me the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot was one of the first films to kick off the remake revolution. Since it was released countless films have been redone, from other classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween to cult darlings The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left. (Disclaimer: Some of these remakes are good, and some are fucking garbage. Watch at your own discretion.) The 2000’s were the decade of remakes of films that I gave at least half a shit about. I guess everything old is new again at some point.

One of the more interesting decisions made for the reboot is that the powers that be decided to make the film true to the period of the original. While we can take this as a nod to the original, it really doesn’t serve that much of a purpose or stand out during the film. Most likely, we are tooling around in the 70’s because there’s no cell phones, and just not having them is much better than “oh. no. I don’t have service.” for the thousandth goddamn time.

Unfortunately, the family doesn’t take center stage nearly enough this time around for my taste. It’s almost all Leatherface all the time. Don’t get me wrong, the family does an alright job of trying to be the Sawyers (even though their names have been changed. Why? Fuck you, that’s why), but they aren’t as much of a focal point as they have been in previous outings. R. Lee Ermey is the shit, and plays the patriarch very well. He’s no Drayton, but he does ok. This time, there’s all SORTS of ladies helping out (I’ve never heard so much about tea in a film that wasn’t about tea in my goddamn life), and they brought another fucking kid into the mix. At least that goofy-toothed monosyllabic miscreant knew better than to get in the way too much. Fucking kids.

The reason that this film succeeds as a remake is because the people who made it knew who their audience was. In the olden days, horror films were drive-in fodder. You took a date and watched some schlock in the hopes that you’d get to see some tits (either on the screen or in your car). Throughout the years, though, these movies built a following. Gorehounds started watching the films because they liked them. Texas the remake isn’t about throwing a bunch of teens into a modern day situation with a tired old theme (I’m looking at you, Prom Night remake) in hopes to get one of the larger moviegoing demographics to see it. It’s made for the fans who watch the film for the film's sake.


Salty says:
The good horror movies are the ones that put you in an extreme situation and ask you to figure out how to handle it while the characters do the same – the better ones tend to let their character make more agreeable decisions. This remake of Texas does a great job of coming up with the situations and having its characters react well without letting thing work out nicely. In order to keep the surprises coming, the family is expanded into a town of sadists hell-bent on cannibalism.

In what I would like to think of as a tribute to our friend Franklin (remember those raspberries?) we are given a wheelchair-bound antagonist, a likably evil sheriff, and an assortment of scrawny and morbidly obese co-conspirators (oddly enough this amalgamation of the family most resembles the family presented in part 3) that work to keep the thrills a-comin’ with a lot of what-would-you-do scenes. And then there is a very respectable, very scary version of Leatherface. You really get the impression that this individual would be terrifying to be in a room with. Add a chainsaw to the mix, and all I would think to do is wet my pants, and hope that he fears urine.

Okay, I really dislike that they changed Leatherface’s name to Tommy or something, but otherwise minimal complaints.

Maire	Corey	Salty
☆☆☆	☆☆☆	☆☆☆

Well, look at that rating above there.  Hrm.  It looks like we've all finally agreed that a film deserves three stars.  Huh.