PROM NIGHT

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
PROM NIGHT - 1980 USA Release: July 18, 1980 Prom Night Productions, Simcom Limited, Guardian Trust Company, AVCO Embassy Pictures Rating: USA: R

Kids can be cruel.

I don't have to tell YOU that. At some point in your childhood you were either the victim of cruel children or you WERE a cruel child.

You possibly experienced both sides of that fence.

So it's after school in a small town and a handful of rug rats are playing a vicious game of Hide and Seek in an abandoned building, the kind usually favored by kids.

Some other kids come up, see all the fun they are having in there, and the oldest of the three, Robin Hammond (Tammy Bourne) tells her fraternal twin brother Alex and little sister Kimberly to "Go on ahead", she's going to go and meet the popular kids horsing around inside.

Little bro and sis think that's a bad idea but, "Sha!" they're just kids! Whattya they know?

So the siblings reluctantly leave and big Sis (probably no more than 10) goes inside to see if she can play.

Well you know what they say, it's all Fun and Games until somebody ets pushed out a window and falls to their death.

All the kids are clearly guilty little bastards but the Alpha Girl swears them all to secrecy.

Pact made, they pack up and leave.

But hark! A shadow falls across Robin's corpse.

Someone else KNOWS!

By the time the cops show up and the grief stricken Mother (Antoinette Bower: THE TELL TALE HEART [1958], SUPERBEAST, DIE SISTER DIE!, BLOOD SONG, TIME WALKER) is overcome with her loss, nobody is thinking Kids did this.

The cops, led by Police Chief and the deceased's father Mr. Hammon (Leslie Nielsen: FORBIDDEN PLANET, NIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS, DARK INTRUDER, COMPANIONS IN NIGHTMARE, NIGHT SLAVES, HAUSER'S MEMORY, THE RESURRECTION OF ZACHARY WHEELER, DAY OF THE ANIMALS, CREEPSHOW, REPOSSESSED, DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT, SCARY MOVIE 3, SCARY MOVIE 4) are thinking an adult did this, and they're pretty sure they know who! It's probably that creepy unpopular guy who sticks to himself, minds his own business, and doesn't bother anyone.

Yeah, you just can't trust those folks who want to be left alone.

Freaking loners is what they are!

But forget all that.

It's six years later, we're now caught up to 1980, and after a quick memorial for slain sis, it's time to party at the Prom Night High School disco! Featuring the oldest looking 15 and 16 year olds you ever saw! 9 year old Kimberly has grown up into a stunning 15 year old played by then 22-year old Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN II, VIRUS, HALLOWEEN [2018]).

Older Kids Roll Call starts now!

Dead Robin's fraternal twin Alex Hammond (Michael Tough: VIRUS: THE END, SKULLDUGGERY),
Jude Cunningham (Joy Thompson: SKULLDUGGERY),
Kelly Lynch (FIREBIRD 2015 AD),
Nick McBride (Casey Stevens: THRESHOLD),
and
Wendy Richards (Anne Marie-Martin: DR. STRANGE, THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, SAVAGE HARVEST, THE BOOGENS, RUNAWAY).

Even by 1980 the slasher formula was set in stone thanks to movies like BLACK CHRISTMAS and John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN.

The killer is someone who feels they were wronged and is going to wait X amount of years before returning to,

A: Wreak Vengeance (The person we thought we killed isn't dead!) or
B: Wreak Revenge (The killer is family/friend of the person we killed!)

As templates go, PROM NIGHT is a pretty reliable boilerplate for teen Horror fans. In this case, the killer calls up each of his victims to let them know thar's a-gonna be trouble!

The mystery of course, is who the killer really is.

Is it the loner they sent to the looney bin six years ago? He escaped and is "At large"!

Is it the latest loner, the introverted janitor Mr. Sykes (Robert A. Silverman: RABID, THE BROOD, SCANNERS, NAKED LUNCH, eXistenZ, JASON X). He seems harmless enough but since he's a loner who knows what he's thinking to himself?

Never trust folks who think to themselves!

In FRIDAY THE 13th (also released in 1980), the killer was laugh out loud surprising. Yet as ridiculous as the ending was, F13 has done damn well for itself over the years.

Still, it's a slasher and as is common for such B: Revenge movies, nothing that the inevitably revealed mystery killer does makes sense. If they were a witness who cared so much for the victim, why did they do nothing and tell no one for X number of years?

What is so special about PROM NIGHT, or VALENTINE'S DAY or whatever the hell it is that sets the killer off on a spree?

Probably the best reason why HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13th have endured is because those questions were answered in the first movie.

Power went out in the insane asylum on Halloween night, that's the night Michael first lost his shit and now he makes his escape.

Or

Killer stalks campers on the weekend of a specific Friday? That was the day tragedy "X" happened and that's what flips the switch. If the campers hadn't returned on that specific day, the potential killer would have shown up and had a solemn memorial picnic.

But those god damn kids just had to show up on this holiest of holies and have sex!

Runner-Up is Killer was left for dead and it took this long for them to recover but now that they are it's payback time.

Honorable Mention: Surprise, M.F.! This is what you get for solving an ancient Rubik's Cube!

In short, Killer can hold it together until someone says, "Niagara Falls". Got it?

If the killer doesn't have a good reason for suddenly going ape-shit, then that franchise stays locked in the minor leagues.

So Slashers usually do well and PROM NIGHT was no exception. Jamie wasn't just starring in Horror movies, she was in Hit Horror Movies and the press repeatedly referenced the fact that her Mom was most famous for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO.

The acting, plot, nearly everything was pretty stale even then, but Jamie Lee Curtis was riding high off the popularity of HALLOWEEN. In 1980, movie companies made a big deal that the actor had not two, but three Horror movies to be released throughout the year.

John Carpenter's THE FOG in February, PROM NIGHT in July, and TERROR TRAIN in October. Jamie was a bonafide Scream Queen and teen Horror fans felt they'd all discovered her and wanted to see her shine!

Jamie gave Horror one more year, 1981, then, not feeling that the Horror scripts she was offered were going anywhere, seemingly left it for good as she pursued everything but for the next 17 years (How you gonna keep Jamie on the indie Horror farm after she's done three pictures with John Carpenter?). Curtis eventually gave Horror movies another chance when she returned for HALLOWEEN H2O in 1998, VIRUS in 1999, and HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION in 2002 - and promptly regretted all of them. It would be another 13 years before Jamie gave Hollywood Horror a chance again with the TV show, SCREAM QUEENS in 2015.

That's 30 years lost for Horror movies, but Hollywood had it coming!

Jamie was done being mousey Laurie Strode. She had a hot body and wanted to flaunt it.

Getting back to PROM NIGHT, another thing that didn't hold up regarding 1980s Horror movies are how the cheapos would often use soft focus filters to give everything an odd fuzzy look. The super cheapo movies would slather Vaseline on the lens! Sheesh. The unrealistic result draws attention to itself and minimizes the horrific moments.

George A. Romero would have never done such a thing!

Director Paul Lynch's direction was generally as pedestrian as most studio low budgies and has a TV show ethos throughout. That said, the showstopper is the all too human mystery killer holding onto a moving vehicle and trying to kill the driver of the van while the potential victim, terrified out of his wits (who wouldn't be?), goes barrelling this way and that. Drive! Reverse! Donuts! Through a park, nearly hitting trees, as the panicked frightened bastard behind the wheel, still in the heart-breaking shock of seeing his girlfriend murdered, tries to shake the determined knife-wielding killer off.

Throughout the heyday of 1980s and 90s Horror movies, Paul never hit it big. Yet he seems to prefer staying close to Horror Thrillers and Scifi throughout his career. He would go on to direct HUMONGOUS, BULLIES, BLINDSIDE, REALLY WEIRD TALES, 9 episodes of the 1980s THE TWILIGHT ZONE TV series, 5 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 5 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 5 episodes of ROBOCOP, 4 episodes of POLTERGIEST: LEGACY, and... aw hell! If you're into 80s and 90s TV Horror and SciFi shows, you're probably a Paul Lynch fan whether you know it or not.

PROM NIGHT is unnecessarily dumb but still entertaining.

Three Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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