“Prom Night” emerged at the beginning of a decade, which also marked a decade for the rise and fall of slasher films as we know them. Along with “Terror Train” and “The Fog”, “Prom Night” is one of Jamie Lee Curtis’s most well-known returns to the genre after “Halloween”, though it still remains fairly obscure to many horror fans and general audiences. The plot centers on Kim Hammond (Curtis), daughter of her high school’s principal (Leslie Nielsen). She’s popular, well-liked, and seems to have it all. Unfortunately, Kim and her family are haunted by the mysterious death of her younger sister, Robin, who died after falling from the top floor of an abandoned building ten years prior; the police blamed a schizophrenic child predator on the crime, but little do they know, there were four children who were there and whom were responsible for the incident. Those four children are now high school seniors, classmates and friends of Kim; it’s prom night, which is incidentally the ten year anniversary of Robin’s death. Kim will be crowned prom queen. Some won’t live to see it.
If the “Prom Night”‘s plot set-up sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Though the film was fresh twenty-some years ago, its originality has been obstructed by the plethora of slasher films that followed in its wake, which may leave some viewers bored and running the numbers; but if you can look past this, “Prom Night” is an extremely fun film. It has a little bit of everything going for it: an elusive killer, odd phone calls, probable motives, sassy high school girls, disco dancing, a ski-mask, and, most importantly, an axe. Team up the carefree high school environment with five teenagers’ dark secret, and accompany that with a hellbent murderer on prom night, and you’ve got yourself a straightforward, suspenseful piece of slasher cinema.
Granted, the film is dated, and the disco dances and funky hairdos of the day may take be distracting to some extent, but the nostalgia of that era is in every frame. Paul Zaza’s score is appropriately ominous and ignites a feeling of being under watch by… someone, and at all times. Director Paul Lynch also does a fine job here, showing us just enough, but not too much. Nice establishing shots of the high school’s hallways at night set the stage for the action that ensues as night falls and the prom begins, and several impressive instances of cinematography abound (the slow-motion throat slash murder which only shows us a close- up of the victim’s facial expression, followed by a fade-in to the red punch bowl being one example). There are several surprisingly artsy shots in the film, and the camera-work is, for the most part, clever. The film has a rather bright, hazy look to it as well, which, whether intended or not, gives the movie another sort of texture.
Performance-wise, we’ve got a surprisingly decent cast of 20-somethings playing 18-year-olds. Nonetheless, most all involved give commendable performances, Jamie Lee Curtis included. Leslie Nielsen’s role is minor, but he’s great, and Eddie Benton does a good job as the jealous rich girl of the school (and might I say, she has one of the best chase scenes I’ve ever seen in a horror film). Though the film takes roughly an hour before all the mayhem ensues, the build-up is worth the wait— the final 15 minutes of the film are incredibly fun (almost as fun as the hokey disco dance scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and Casey Stevens, ala “Saturday Night Fever”). The killer himself is eerie and has an interesting choice of weapons (a shard of broken mirror), even though his whispering “now!” upon each murder might sound funny. The revelation at the end of the film may or may not be expected, depending on the viewers’ familiarity with these types of films. Either way, it’s pretty poignant for a slasher movie.
Overall, “Prom Night” is a wonderful example of slasher prototypes. It was early enough to not be considered a total rip-off, and it’s got a lot of interesting things going for it, no matter how by-the-numbers it seems today. It’s suspenseful, sometimes spooky, and genuinely fun and lively. Factor in some wonderful murder scenes, a budding scream queen, an eerie score, and a full-fledged disco blood-bash, and you have yourself one of the most memorable slasher films of the 1980s.
