Prom Night

I picked up this flick in the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart...and let's just say they should have rolled back the price on this fucker even more.

Yeah. It's that bad.

First off, the movie is so damn dark that you can hardly make out what's happening most of the time - now if I'm going to waste 90 minutes of my life, the least I could ask for is some blood and gore. But nooooo. Apparently the director, Paul "I also directed Humongous" Lynch, thought the best way to scare what little audience he had was to not show them who the killer was...or where the killer was coming from...actually, he didn't show the audience ANYTHING.

As for what plot I could guess at from the audio, four kids accidentally kill a girl, then swear to never say a word about it. Fast forward six years - it's prom time for our friends, who have grown up into greasy, disco-dancing high school seniors.

Well...everyone starts getting ready for the prom, some hooker gets brutally murdered, and Jamie Lee's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend plots to embarrass Jamie Lee by bringing all-around dirtbag Lou (David Mucci) to the prom. How this will embarrass Jamie Lee, I don't know.

Did I mention that Leslie Nielsen is Jamie Lee's father and also the high school principal? Oh yeah, Jamie Lee has a brother who's a sophomore in the same school. And one more thing: the girl who died was their sister.

So as the prom gets closer, Jamie Lee decorates the gym while some other people get killed. As you would expect, the killings aren't even good - real TV-edit stuff, where you don't see any blood or actual knife or axe contact.

Oh yeah, there's a creepy janitor guy that you're supposed to think is the killer, because he's creeeeeepy....and he's a jaaaaanitooooorrrr....

Prom night finally comes (but not before a lot of pointless shit happens that I've forgotten and/or left out). Jamie Lee sees her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend (who happens to be one of the kids who caused the girl's death at the beginning of the movie) hanging out with eventual child molester Lou. Jamie Lee's reaction? "Let's show them what we can do on the dance floor".

That's right folks, it's disco time. It's a fucking disco prom. I am so glad that I was born in '78, right as disco was dying. 1980 must have been disco's last polyester gasp.

So Jamie Lee and her boyfriend do a ridiculous disco number that lasts about 15 minutes. When we reach the end, the festivities of the prom are interrupted by Lou's head rolling out onto the dance floor. Oh yeah, he was standing backstage with the prom king's plastic crown, waiting for the cue to come out and do some horrible deed that was never actually made clear.

The other kids are so overjoyed that Lou has finally been erased from existence and they won't have to give him wet rusty trombones anymore that they pick up his head and parade it around on a stick, disco dancing all the while.

Ok, that was in my imagination. What actually happens is much, much more boring. I only wish I knew what did happen - the movie is so damn dark that all I could make out was the murderer grappling with Leslie Nielsen for the axe - and then Jamie Lee grabs the axe and whacks the killer with it. The killer drops, and Jamie Lee pulls off his mask to reveal her brother!! Irony of ironies!! Tragedy of tragedies!! Oh whatever. They explain in a really quick bullshit flashback that he actually saw their sister's dead body after she took the second-story spill six years earlier, and was out for revenge on the kids who killed her.

The stupid thing is, he only killed two of them. But then again, this movie's producers didn't exactly pride themselves on doing anything smart.

There are actually three sequels to this shitfest - I'll hunt them up and try to watch them. I mean, they can only go uphill from here, right?

Boob factor - none, but you do get a nice clear shot of one hot girl's ass. Needless to say, I paused on that frame. And used the zoom feature. Yeah.

More info from IMDB: Prom Night