PROM NIGHT (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

PROM NIGHT is one of the iconic slashers of the eighties, so I wished it had been better overall, rather than having a great opening and a not-so-great rest-of-the-movie. Along with TERROR TRAIN, it's the last of the slashers headliner Jamie Lee Curtis made in response to the phenomenal popularity of her role in HALLOWEEN. After those two, Curtis made other films that might have psycho-killers in them, but she stayed away from the specific slasher-subgenre except for participating in sequels to the film that bumped her up the fame ladder. 

It's a shame the rest of the movie doesn't match up to the opening. In an abandoned house, four pre-teens play a nasty version of hide-and-seek in which they pretend that they're going to kill someone. It's all pretend-violence, but there's a nice feeling that the kids' indulgence in their darker sides may get out of control. A fifth preteen, a girl named Robin, gets swept up in their game and she suffers a cruel accidental death. The kids conceal their knowledge of the death, but an unidentified witness has seen the whole thing. The witness also keeps quiet about the incident for the next six years, and this results in the police fingering a local outcast for the crime. In the film proper, this disfigured individual is frequently evoked as the possible killer, though the script also supplies a much more likely suspect even during the opening.

Six years later, the family of the deceased Robin still mourns her, but life goes on. Widower-father Mr. Hammond (Leslie Nielsen) and twin siblings Kim and Alex (Curtis, Michael Tough) are making ready for the prom at their high school, where Hammond is the principal. As the viewer follows Kim and Alex in their school routine, we see that the siblings' classmates include all four of the now adolescent kids who were implicated in Robin's death. The only male member of the guilty group, Nick, is now dating Kim, much to the chagrin of Wendy, one of the three females from that coterie. Wendy, who's evidently read Stephen King's CARRIE, plots to embarrass Kim at the prom celebration with the help of a local bad boy, Lou. While all this teenage soap opera is going on, some members of the guilt-group receive photos of themselves in which their images have been slashed up. This leads to real murders by a man clad in a black ski-mask, black shirt and black trousers-- who nevertheless does not have as much visual mojo as many of the more distinctive serial murderers in the subgenre.

Much of the film is achingly slow rather than suspenseful, and the killings are at best fair until one reaches the expected "prom night."  Even then, one does have to put up with lots of tacky disco dancing before the killer makes his move, forcing Kim, the "prom queen," to unleash her Final Girl persona. I like how the script follows through on the traditional faux-royalty trappings of the American prom, by having one crowned head take a tumble, but one has to slog through a lot of dully directed scenes to get to the good stuff.