Prom Night (1980)
A group of high school friends who were responsible for the accidental death of a classmate years before are targeted by a mysterious stalker at their senior prom.
One of the first slasher films produced in the wake of the success of Halloween (1978), Paul Lynch’s Prom Night strictly adheres to the now standard slasher blueprint, unfolding as a lean and moody potboiler. All the tropes, cliches and conventions are present and correct. Significant calendar date? Check. A group of hormonal teens for the body count? Check. A masked killer emerging to avenge a past misdeed? Check. Ineffectual authority figures? Check. A heroic final girl who will eventually defeat the killer? Check. Prom Night has it all, including Jamie Lee Curtis as its star! If there’s comfort in the familiar, then Prom Night is the goose down duvet of slasher films.
The opening shot of an old, discarded mirror, reflecting the image of a creepy, abandoned building, conjures notions of the double, and ideas regarding identity, truth and deception, reality and illusion. These concepts drift throughout the story, and the image of the mirror itself contains a subtle foreshadowing of certain revelations, not to mention later nasty business involving broken mirror shards. A group of children are playing a game of The Killer is Coming (which seems to be a variation of hide and seek) in the abandoned building. The youngest child, little Robin Hammond, falls to her death from an upper floor window as the result of a cruel prank. The other kids swear to keep their involvement a secret, but someone has witnessed everything... We cut to six years later and the group of kids - as well as Robin's twin brother Alex (Michael Tough) and older sister Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis) - are now all grown up and preparing for their senior prom. But wait! As each character is introduced, they receive a creepy, threatening phone call from the killer, evoking memories of When A Stranger Calls (1979) and Black Christmas (1974), and they can’t seem to shake the feeling they are being watched. While William Gray’s screenplay makes a welcome effort to establish the characters and set up their various dynamics and rivalries, these efforts are a little hampered by somewhat sluggish pacing or build-up of dread. Even talk of the escaped psychiatric patient held responsible for Robin's death can’t muster much suspense.
Lynch follows the template created by Halloween, but he doesn’t quite have John Carpenter’s knack for crafting a sense of uneasiness. While Halloween’s early scenes also featured oblivious characters going about their similarly mundane routines, they were at least undercut with a strong, slow burning tension that heightened throughout. When we finally get to the prom and the killer begins whittling down the cast, proceedings are finally taken up a notch, though Lynch’s staid direction means much of the action doesn’t create as much tension as it could. The arguable exception is a prolonged and intense chase sequence involving ringleader Wendy (Anne-Marie Martin), who is relentlessly pursued through the empty corridors of the school and cornered in a storeroom. As an interesting sidenote, it’s actually quite rare to see a slasher villain run after their victim, but this dastardly stalker – decked out in a figure-hugging black bodysuit - is pretty nimble. Some interesting editing helps up the ante and injects proceedings with a sliver of immediacy.
Despite somewhat lacklustre pacing, Prom Night is still an entertaining ride, and there’s a healthy dose of campiness to proceedings, not least the disco dancing scenes and the killer’s glittery balaclava (!). The use of disco music, with its shimmering associations with youth and sexual liberation, feels cruelly ironic in the context of a slasher movie, where young, sexually active characters having the time of their lives are stalked and brutally murdered. Disco music emerged from the underground clubs of LGBT+, Black and Hispanic communities, and is strongly associated with the free love movement and the broader sexual revolution of the 1970s. Journalist Adam Mattera described disco music as a ‘pansexual spiritual call to arms of unity, empowerment and sheer sexual liberation’. The violent backlash against disco - which occurred in the late 70s and early 80s - coupled with its use in Prom Night, which, like most slashers, exploits a 'sex equals death' formula, can be seen as a comment on the stifling conservatism of early 80s America. This was a period heavily influenced by the likes of the Reverend Jerry Falwell and his evangelical lobbying group, the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan's super conservative presidency, which was heavily bolstered by the Christian right.
Gray’s screenplay touches on several other interesting elements that are ultimately unexplored, particularly the long-lasting effects of the death of a child on a family. Kim and Alex’s mother is still consumed with grief, and the family are very protective of one another. Elsewhere, societal expectations and bullying are evident in the experience of Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens), who is being pressured by her douchebag boyfriend to have sex with him even though she is unsure she wants to. None of her friends are particularly supportive and her sense of isolation casts a sadness around her that is extended to her lonely, horrifying death. It’s not exactly a Helen from I Know What You Did Last Summer moment, but it’s still creepy and sad.
Prom Night was part of the first wave of slashers from the sub-genre’s Golden Age in the early 80s. Thanks to its absolute adherence to now well-established structures and tropes, it’s as conventional as they come, but decent performances and the tantalising mystery of the killer’s identity ensure it’s a fairly engaging and fun slasher romp.
