The “Golden Age of Slasher Films” is widely considered to be between the late 1970s to 1984. Halloween, with its explosive box-office success in 1978, prompted a wave of clones and rip-offs that saturated theaters until their return on investment wasn’t profitable enough to keep the blood flowing. One of the first films to capitalize on Halloween‘s success was Prom Night, a Canadian production that hit theaters in July of 1980. Not coincidentally, this film also features Jamie Lee Curtis in a prominent role.
Prom Night begins in 1974 as a group of four kids play a game of hide-and-seek in an abandoned building. When a girl named Robin tries to join them, the kids begin to chase her and accidentally cause her to fall out a window to her death. Fearing that they’ll go to jail, the kids swear to each other to never reveal the truth about the accident. What they don’t know is that someone else saw everything.
Six years later, those four kids are preparing to go to the prom. There’s Nick (Casey Stevens), who is dating Robin’s older sister, Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis); Wendy (Eddie Benton,) who used to date Nick and is plotting a way to get him back for dumping her; Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens), who is trying to decide whether to have sex with her prom date; and Jude (Joy Thompson), who gets asked to prom at the last-minute by goofy Slick (Sheldon Rybowski).
For the first hour of the film, the preparation for and politics of attending the prom are front and center. There are some brief reminders that this is intended to be a slasher film. Menacing phone calls are made to the four kids involved in Robin’s death. Yearbook photos with shards of mirrored glass taped to them are placed in their lockers. But, aside from those little detours, the focus is squarely on the rivalry between Kim and Wendy. Otherwise, the plot lingers on the lives of the kids as they prepare for the big night. Strangely enough, this doesn’t hurt the movie at all. Getting to know the characters beyond their names and stock personalities (which is all we usually get in most slasher fare) makes their eventual deaths that much more shocking. The script also takes care in not revealing the killer’s identity until the final scene.
Once the killing starts, Prom Night settles into a more recognizable slasher film groove. But by that time, there’s a little more than half an hour left to wrap things up, so the kills come fast and furious.
But I haven’t even mentioned the best part: the disco-themed prom. There’s an actual choreographed dance number featuring Kim and Nick. And, as an added bonus, we get to see Kim’s father, Mr. Hammond (played by Leslie Nielsen before he became more well-known for comedies), disco dance with his daughter. What gave the film a contemporary feel at the time of its release adds immeasurably to its oddball likability in 2018.
Jamie Lee Curtis is not cast in a carbon-copy of her Laurie Strode role in Halloween. Her character here is sexy, confident, and funny (not to mention a good dancer.) I’m sure she was cast for her name value but she showcases the talents that have kept her from being pigeonholed as a scream queen in later years. Eddie Benton, who would later be known as Anne-Marie Martin, is perfectly cast as her rival, Wendy. She pulls off the vicious and coldly calculating character quite well.
Prom Night was one of the progenitors of the slasher genre. If one compares it to later slasher films, it may seem a bit crude. It’s important to understand when it was released, the genre’s tropes hadn’t been fully developed yet.
While definitely not a film for everyone, horror fans should enjoy Prom Night‘s weird, disco-infused charms.
3.5 out of 5.0 stars
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