Prom Night

    Okay, that’s twice in a row now where a movie that could’ve been schlock has been helped immensely by a solid central performance. I’m not arguing that this movie is on the same level as ‘Dreamscape’ but having a lead actor with that much raw charisma and acting ability does tend to center and steady the entire production.

Oh, it's a skull, the body in the knife is the nose, and - I get it.

         

    Another quirk of casting is Leslie Nielson as her dad. This movie came out just a few weeks after ‘Airplane!’ and was during that odd period where he would alternate between dramatic and comedic roles. Although he received top billing he’s very much a supporting character, spending most of his time being the concerned adult in the room.

    Released in 1980 the movie was directed by Paul Lynch and developed after he had a conversation with producer Irwin Yablans, who had produced ‘Halloween.’ It was very much intended for this movie to be in the same vein as that film and it was developed as such, basically just switching out Halloween for prom night. The plots do diverge from there, however. I wouldn’t call this so much a ripoff but instead as commercially inspired by.

    Opening in 1974 the movie starts with a group of four rather bratty kids playing a killer-themed game of hide and seek in an abandoned building before accidentally causing one of them to fall out of a window to her death. They swear to never tell anyone what happened and run away. Slightly later the cops and her parents are at the building and watch the body being loaded into an ambulance. There’s a throwaway line about the police suspecting someone, just enough to establish the character exists. Cut forward to the present day of 1980 and we see her parents, her older sister (Curtis) and younger brother mourning at her graveside. So right away this movie dispenses with the idea that the killer is secretly the victim seeking revenge. Don’t worry, they have plenty more possibilities.

    The next hour or so plays out as a typical teen drama with petty rivalries and everyone competing to get the best date to prom. It’s established fairly quickly that the victim’s sister and brother are friends of the kids who caused her death, the four of them having successfully kept their secret. There’s a decent framing device of anonymous calls to each of the four former kids involved in the death coupled with a quick flashback to their childhood selves to establish exactly which character is which.

    While prom drama is going on the movie starts setting up possibilities for the eventual killer. The police talk about the suspect they had back when the girl first died who was a known sex offender (whatever that actually meant back in the 1970’s). When they tried to take him in for questioning there was a car chase that ended in a crash, causing extensive burns and placing him in an asylum which, it just so happens, he just escaped from that very night. Hard to see this as anything but a firm nod to ‘Halloween.’ There’s also a creepy maintenance man at the school who Jamie Lee Curtis is very overtly frightened of. The school delinquent tousles with the group, gets indefinitely suspended, and may well want revenge. I tagged the brother as the killer from the start but was idly wondering if it might be the mother or father until we actually see the killer on screen and whose stature could only be the brother.

    Once the killings start the rest of the movie is pretty much just crossing them off the list. What’s an interesting contrast to ‘Halloween’ is how very clear it is that this is a flesh-and-blood killer, and not that skilled of a one at that. The first kill, sneaking up behind a girl and slitting her throat, goes pretty well, but after he kills the second girl in the back of a van her date starts the car and almost gets away several times, the killer pretty awkwardly clambering all over the outside of the van before it accidentally goes off of the cliff. The third kill is the bitchy friend and goes on the longest. The killer chases her all over the closed-off parts of the school with an ax, repeatedly missing and losing track of her. It’s rather refreshing for a slasher film to have the killer’s whereabouts always established for the audience, you always know how close to getting away she really is. Eventually she stumbles across a corpse, panics, and gets an ax to the face.

    The movie ends at the prom itself. The final kid from the opening scene turns out to be Curtis’ date to the prom and the prom king as well and clearly killing him at the ceremony is supposed to put a cap on the evening. Due to shenanigans by the suspended trouble-maker there’s a case of mistaken identity and the wrong head goes flying, causing the prom attendees to flee in a panic. As Curtis rescues her date from where he’d been knocked out and replaced the killer catches up to them on the dance floor. They struggle and Curtis get a hold of the ax and delivers a blow to the killer’s head. They stare at each other and she recognizes him before he stumbles out of the school and collapses to the ground in front of the assembled crowd. She pulls off his mask to reveal her brother. He admits he witnessed their sister’s death, names the four kids as responsible, and then dies as Jamie Lee Curtis cries her way into the credits.

    Contemporary critics were not kind to this movie, although like so many 80’s slasher flicks both time and nostalgia have been kind to it. It was decried as part of the disturbing trend towards more and more violence in movies although in reality any actual violence is strictly off screen. Except for a little nudity this could run uncut on basic cable on Sunday afternoons.

    It’s not actually that bad of a movie, as far as these things go. It’s reasonably stylish and competently directed. The cast has chemistry, although to be fair I should rather say that Jamie Lee Curtis has chemistry with the entire rest of the cast. The script is not stupid, the dialogue is completely fine, and the characters have some depth to them. You could complain about how long it took to get the deaths but I only find that’s a problem in these movies if they’re not using that time to do anything constructive (looking at you, ‘Piranha II’) and here they do some character work, lay some plot groundwork, and generally build a nice atmosphere. If you’re a fan of slasher films and somehow haven’t already seen this one I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re looking for a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie then I regret to inform you that it’s actually pretty decent.