“They killed her…..they killed her!”
Opening with the tragic death of young Robin Hammond, Prom Night (1980) sets up a twisted game that takes place exactly six years later on, you guessed it, prom night at Alexander Hamilton High School. The film, created as an attempt to cash in on the success of other slashers such as Halloween (which set the stage for Jamie Lee Curtis’ career as a scream queen), features some amazing practical effects work with believable kills based around a killer who is definitely not a professional murderer. In fact, the killer is a lot like Ghostface in the original Scream film, stumbling around and often making mistakes, but always making the kill.
The film starred Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Neilsen, Eddie Benton, Michael Tough, Casey Stevens, Mary Beth Rubens, David Mucci, Pita Oliver, and Antoinette Bower. It features one of the most sympathetic slashers you’ll ever meet, and one of my favorite slashers from the genre as a whole. The movie also features an amazing disco soundtrack created by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer that was written in roughly five days whenever production notified director Paul Lynch that they couldn’t afford the licensed songs that were used while shooting the film. It has every single 80s slasher genre trope including a slasher with a motive, teens losing their virginity and then losing their lives soon after, female nudity, tons of misdirection, jump scares, a final girl that everyone cheers for, and a prime suspect that isn’t a suspect at all.
Prom Night has grown to become one of my favorite horror films. I originally saw it about five years ago and have returned to it many times since then. The more that I watch it, the more I appreciate how well executed it is as a slasher film. Despite being similar to every other cookie-cutter slasher out there, this one rises above the rest for me.
Thanks for checking out today’s Thirty-One Days O’Horror review!
