Let's talk about Prom Night!

The slasher genre was at its peak in the early 80s, but not every one of these movies was breaking new ground. Sometimes, they overanalyzed their predecessors to make a product based on the formula and it didn't always work out. So what about Prom Night then? Where does it fit in?

Two years after Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis was still a go-to option in the genre. If she's in the movie, it can't possibly be bad, right? Well... I'll be honest. I like Prom Night. Truth be told, it really isn't a great movie, but I like it for reasons beyond typical rationale. It takes the idea of a holiday or occasion and makes it into the setting for a killing spree. Nothing wrong with that! Maybe the execution or lack of flavor is what does this one in, but for all intents and purposes, it had to be done in some way or another.

So we start off with our obligatory backstory. A few kids turned primary victims are playing a "killer" variant of hide-and-seek in an abandoned school in 1974, and they scare a girl half to death. The other half of her death involves her falling out a second story window to her death, and the kids vow to never speak of it again.

Flash forward to 1980, and prom is coming up. The same kids are grown up, and they're getting obscene phone calls. They try to overlook it because there's no time to let it sink in, because prom is tonight! Men and women alike are trying to get laid and Jamie Lee is slated to be prom queen, but you can tell right off the bat that she's poised to be the final girl. Someone is targeting those same kids from the backstory incident, as well as a few others who get in the way. Who is it? Well, it's easy if you think about it, but I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

Leslie Nielson plays the principal in a non-comedic role, which is hilarious in itself. Dude was hilarious in anything he's ever been in, so if he tries to play it safe, you know he'll only wind up being the disco king. That's right, this movie was straight out of the 70s, so the musical choices are very disco.

This movie is littered with red herrings that are so obviously red herrings, you know the killer has to be someone much more basic, and it is. For what it's worth, the execution isn't as bad as you'd think, and if you bear with it, the movie is somewhat fun to watch. Jamie Lee wasn't terribly attractive in Halloween, but she only got hotter in her later slasher endeavors.

If you want some standard slasher fare teen-drama final-girl trope with some entertaining chase scenes along the way, Prom Night isn't a bad choice. For some damn reason, the sequels took this series in a completely different direction, opting for an Elm Street supernatural basis rather than a grounded Halloween knockoff, but it still works somehow. Only in the 80s though!