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Rating: 2 out of 5
Ooooh Prom. Who has been to prom? An overblown formal dance where high school juniors and seniors go at the end of the school year. A dance where guys go all out and become more creative in asking out their date than they do in doing classwork. A dance where girls dress up in their tightest and beautiful dresses while waiting for their corsages from their date. The guys dress up in their best suits while being nervous about going to their date’s place with their corsage. The dance is known for crowning a prom king and queen while dancing, and a spiked punch may be served. I personally didn’t go to my prom. I had a state championship meet the same week of prom. There are days when I would’ve liked to go to prom, and then I look at the career I had in my sport, and it was a sacrifice I made for greatness.
I wrote a while back on the 2008 remake of Prom Night. That film sucked ass. It was terrible, and I wondered why it was made into a remake. When Hulu dropped the original 1980 Prom Night starring Jamie Lee Curtis, I was intrigued. Maybe the original wouldn’t suck as much as the remake? Maybe the original would be a highlight of the slasher genre? Maybe the original would be memorable in the horror game? The 1980 version of Prom Night is just as much trash as the remake. Another stupid slasher movie that made me happy that I didn’t go to prom.
The film starts off in 1974. We are introduced to 11-year-olds Wendy Richards, Jude Cunningham, Kelly Lynch, and Nick McBride. The group of friends is in an abandoned warehouse playing hide-and-seek. These kids need to have their ass in school. When 10-year-old Robin Hannond rolled up and wanted to play, these freakin spoiled ass kids taunted her until she fell out of the window, falling to her death. What do these spoiled ass kids do? They made a pact to never tell anyone what happened because they were too scared of getting in trouble. Really? Okay.
The film jumps six years later. Robin’s older sister, Kim (Curtis), and fraternal twin brother, Alex (Tough), are getting ready for the night of their life, aka school prom. Kelly (Rubens), Jude (Thompson), and Wendy (Martin) all get strange ass phone calls where they go, “Who the fuck is this?” Nick is about to bounce when his phone rings, and he completely ignores it as he doesn’t have time for it. Nick has to rush to Kim’s place as they are dating. Jude is asked by the jokester Slick (Rybowski) while Kelly is rolling with her boyfriend, Drew. Wendy’s foine ass and Nick’s ex-boo thang go to prom with bad boy Lou Farmer (Mucci) with the goal of embarrassing Nick and Kim. High school drama at its fullest.
No killing yet, but creepy shit with Wendy, Jude, and Kelly each finding their yearbook photos stabbed. Dun dun dunnnnnnnn! Kim and Alex’s father, Mr. Hammond, played by the legendary funnyman Leslie Nielsen, is the school’s principal. Mr. Hammond is tough as nails and has never gotten over Robin’s death. When he learns that Leonard Murch has escaped from a mental asylum, he wants to know all the information, as he was blamed for the death of Robin.
Prom gets off with some epic 80s dancing. Must have a colorful dance floor. This is where the film shifts into slasher mode, becoming pretty boring and laughable. Each kill that happens is stopped before the actual kill. It’s like someone hit the pause button and then transitioned to the next scene. The killer is in a ski mask and takes Kelly out first by slitting her throat with a mirror shard. His next kills are Jude and Slick. They are getting busy in the van, and homeboy rolls up and kills Jude and has Slick drive off a cliff. Where is this school located, with a cliff nearby? Why the hell did the van explode? Wendy foine ass has the second most epic murder. The film drew out her kill and the killer chased her ass all around the school with an ax. When he catches up with her, well, Wendy doesn’t make it.
The film keeps up with its stupidity with Lou and his crew trying to do some Carrie shit with messing up the whole crowning of prom king and queen. I will say that, probably back in the day, this was by far one of the craziest killing scenes. Dude takes his ax and pops Lou’s head off like it was a bottle cap. Lou’s head rolls down that ramp in glorious prom fashion.
I won’t spoil the ending because it might be obvious who it was. That was Prom Night. Crazy person goes around and kills people that were connected to him. It wasn’t a great movie, and it honestly made me glad I didn’t go to prom. Good thing I didn’t, because some craziness would’ve happened.
