Four unpleasant children tease a fifth until she plummets out a window to her death. They make a pact to tell no one what happened. Six years later to the day, they all prepare to go to their high school prom. One is going with Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis), the dead girlâs older sister and the daughter of the principal (Leslie Nielsen). Also planning for the prom is a psycho in a ski mask.
DO YOU LIKE DISCO!?! Well, who doesnât? And do you like to watch high school students, as visualized by twenty-plus-year-old actors with no significant dance training, boogie down to obscure disco tunes? Do you like to wait over an hour for the slashing part of your Slasher film so that you can dig the disco beat? If you answered âyesâ to these questions, Prom Night is for you. This is a movie that is focused on what its audience wants, and that audience consists of Slasher fans who dislike gore, are opposed to nudity, but love faux-teen bickering and that â70s dance-dance-dance feeling. All right, itâs a pretty small audience, but everyone should have a movie.
Prom Night has a reputation of being one of the founding (I canât bring myself to type âclassicâ) Slasher films, primarily based on it coming out only two years after Halloween. Ignore the reputation. For such an early entry in the sub-genre, itâs astounding how derivative it is. It steals from Halloween (including taking Jamie Lee Curtis), Black Christmas, Carrie, and even Saturday Night Fever. Many of the stolen elements, such as phoning the victims, are just tossed in, having no effect on the story. Actually, Curtisâs character, Kim, has very little effect on the story. The same is true of Leslie Nielsenâs principal, who is missing from large chunks of the film for no reason. Neither are potential victims, detectives, or serious contenders for being the unknown killer. They just use up time so weâre not forced to get to know the victims. Hey, isnât it a good thing to get to know the victims?
In an attempt to deepen the mystery, red herrings are flung about like they actually are fish. Who could the killer be? Perhaps the mentally deficient janitor. Maybe the child-molester incorrectly blamed for the girl’s death six years ago, and who was badly burned and just happened to escape from an asylum on the day of prom (yeah, thatâs hard to say without taking a breath). It could be the dead girlâs mother, who is still in mourning. And letâs not forget the juvenile delinquent who attacked Kim in the middle of the school cafeteria, wearing a mask, just because he could. Chances are, youâll know five minutes into the film, but if youâre not sure, donât worry, because when you learn the killerâs identity, you wonât care.
The acting is about what youâd expect for a Slasher. Unfortunately, that statement also covers Curtis and Nielsen, who are both off their game. Itâs not surprising, given how little they have to work with, but I expect more from Curtis.
If you donât fit into that peculiar demographic, is there anything worth watching in Prom Night? There is one mildly entertaining beheading. You just have to ask yourself, how much disco music are you willing to take for one ax stroke?