Written by William Gray
Directed by Paul Lynch
Starring Jamie Lee Curties and Leslie Nielsen
Canada
What? I’ve never seen PROM NIGHT?!?! That’s right, I’d never seen probably one of the most famous slashers ever, let alone its remake. Let’s talk about the original, though, about a group of kids who bully one of their friends to death and then live with the guilt right up until prom night, when someone comes back for bloody revenge.
This movie has a few things going for it that most slasher movies do not. One of them is Jamie Lee Curtis. Yes, I know, she’s the star of HALLOWEEN, one of the movies who invented the entire genre, but other than inferior Halloween sequels and remakes, PROM NIGHT marks her only other appearance in the slasher genre and having a strong lead like her goes a long way towards making a potentially forgettable flick memorable. Oh, wait. I just looked it up. I guess she’s in TERROR TRAIN, too. Better put that on my watch list.
The other thing this movie has going for it is that it’s not only trying to ape the slashers that came before it, but it’s also trying to be the next SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. So what that means is you get some super groovy disco dance sequences, featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, who is no slouch. She’s no John Travolta either, though she does eventually bust a move with him in PERFECT (see Romancefest 2012 for details).
There are some strange narrative dead ends in the flick, I guess trying to be red herrings, but for the most part it’s a pretty good slasher yarn, with a particularly good opening sequence in an abandoned hospital and a mystery about who the killer is that will keep you guessing. So, come for the killings but stay for the dancing.
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