A Prom to Miss

Prom Night (1980)

With little to recommend it, apart from the lovely Jaime Lee Curtis, and Leslie Neilson disco dancing, Prom Night was a Canadian production (look out for the actor playing the weird janitor(obvious red herring) who plays a weird patient in Cronenberg’s The Brood(1979), made in the unenviable time between Halloween(1978) and Friday 13th(1981). You can tell the slasher template hasn’t solidified in how the film plays more like a stodgy thriller for the first half, and has little bloodshed or imaginative deaths in the second. It does still manage to steal several scenes- the psychologist, the shaggin-wagon van and fate of the owner, and of course Jaime Lee, from Halloween. Prom Night also suffers from a horrible influx of disco music and ‘ the kids’ getting ready for the prom, like a poor man’s Carrie(1976). The makers might have thought they were giving the characters depth, but instead it just makes the audience have to wade through seemingly endless soap opera plotlines before anything exciting happens to a bunch of characters we don’t care about. Curtis stands out as the natural star, but unlike Halloween or Friday 13th, this really didn’t warrant a sequel, let alone three and a remake. 5/10