Prom Night

Rating:
Summary: It's Not Who You Go With Honey,It's Who Takes You Home!
Review: "Prom Night" is an effective little whodunit that centers around a mysterious killer stalking four high school students during their senior prom as retribution for their part in the death of a young girl six years earlier. Not on the hit list but caught up in all of the murder and mayhem is "Scream Queen" Jamie Lee Curtis as prom queen Kim Hammond. She's every young man's dream date: smart,sexy and tough. Leslie Nielsen is fun in a glorified cameo (although he received top billing) as Curtis's father,principal of the high school which provides much of the film's setting. The supporting cast,which I suspect is made up primarily of Canadians (since the flick was filmed in Toronto),is excellent,especially the gorgeous Eddie Benton (now Anne-Marie Martin,or should I say...Mrs.Michael Crichton) as sexy bad girl Wendy. The film boasts an excellent disco score by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer,and an eerie opening flashback sequence involving all of the main characters as children. What separates "Prom Night" from the countless clones of slasher greats "Psycho" and "Halloween" is that you will find yourself actually caring about the characters.

Rating:
Summary: I have to admit it...(* 1/2)
Review: No matter how many times I try to like this movie, I always can't help but think it SUCKS. And the thing is, I SHOULD like it. It's from the early 80's, it's a slasher movie, AND it has disco in it! But I CAN'T! It's not scary at all, and the action doesn't start till 20 mintues 'till the end! The prom part is boring, but everything leading up to the prom is VERY boring. The only good thing about "Prom Night" are the clothes, hair, and music.

Rating:
Summary: " It's not who you go with,honey. It's who takes you home."
Review: Ok, Ok. So is this isn't exactly the most effective horror movie, neither is the movie the best Jamie Lee has acted in. But the movie is surely one of the cheesiest horror movies, and best to believe has some cool qoutes along with a cheesy 70's music. But there is just something that makes this movie likable. The plot is simple and to the point : 4 ( 5? ) kids are playing hide-and-seek, and a little girl joins them, but she soons ends up murdered after she accidentally falls out of a window. After the children were teasing her, the children then promise to keep quiet. About a couple of years later, The kids are all grown up and going to the prom. On the night of the prom someone is watching them and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

As you read, the plot/script wasn't exactly gonna win an academy award. And, warning to people who want to rent or buy this film : The picture quality is horrible ( or the verison I saw ), nevermind the sound. But if you want a cheesy horror movie on a saturday night, this is the movie just for you!

Rating:
Summary: Ok movie!
Review: I used to love this movie, but it doesn't hold up like other great horror films that feature Jamie Lee Curtis. It is scarier than "Terror Train" for sure, but it wasn't shot as well. A lot of bad acting goes on throughout the film.

Rating:
Summary: Would You Like Some Cheese To Go With Your Horror?
Review: Okay, I was going to give Prom Night two stars, but..come on...any movie that features Leslie Neilson cutting a rug to a disco soundtrack deserves at least 3 stars! Jamie Lee Curtis, riding high as the 80's scream-queen poster girl tackles a six-year old mystery, steals a hot-blond's boyfriend and engages in some of the most hilarious disco dancing seen this side of the Village People in the movie "TGIF". Actually, Prom Night was a bit ahead of it's time in that it not only is a slasher flick, but also creates a pretty decent little mystery as to who the killer may be. Later movies like "Scream" and "I Know What you Did Last Summer" borrowed this plotline to varying degrees of success almost 30 years later. The kills are pretty standard early 80's stuff, not really gory, but there are a couple intense chase scenes that will keep you riveted. Also, this movie may feature one of the ugliest casts in filmdom. The main heel, bad-guy with the unibrow and unfortunate teeth is just disturbing to look at. One of my favorite characters is Slick, an overweight, dork who drives a 70's conversion van, that is just too damn funny to be taken seriously. There are two main drawbacks to Prom Night; 1. How come everyone is 30 years old and still in high school? I mean come on, I can suspend belief for quite a bit, but most of these actors looked closer to middle age than to 18 and 2. Sure Disco was the sound of the time, but man it really dates this movie. I have seen worse slasher flicks, but I have seen a lot better too. If you are a fan of the genre then you should check this out, but I would wait until a $10 version is available before I would buy it.

Rating:
Summary: at least this guy has a reason
Review: In watching a wide variety of slasher movies, I have noticed that the killer usually doesn't have a very compelling motive for butchering all those people. In many films, such as Halloween and Friday the 13th, the villain kills people simply because they are there to be killed. Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddy seem to brutalize people as naturally as most of us brush our teeth. It's what they 'do.' On the other hand, most slasher films that provide their killer with a motive usually make that motive so obscure that it's hard to relate to them as human beings. Or, if they do have a reasonable motive, it gets lost in the carnage. In Valentine, for instance, the killer does have a good reason to kill Dorothy, but how about the other dozen or so folks who get the knife? What did they do wrong?
This brings me to the reason why I like Prom Night. This killer has a motive that makes sense. He does what he does for reasons of his own, and only once, with Slick, does he kill someone who wasn't involved in the event he was trying to avenge.And that seemed accidental, in a fashion, since he went out of his way to drop his axe before confronting Slick. (Is it just me, or does Slick give off somewhat of a Meat Loaf aura?) For the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen it yet, I won't name the killer, but I can say that his motivation is by far the most powerful and logical of any slasher villain I've seen. (Remember-he has no way of knowing that the initial incident was accidental.) And even if it was an accident, the whole thing was still their fault, owing to their bullying the little girl so incessantly. The actions of the killer are perfectly reasonable if you look at matters from his perspective. It is a nice change of pace to see a slasher movie that builds its story around the devotion of the killer to a loved one. For this reason, I would rank Prom Night as one of the five best slasher films I've seen.

Rating:
Summary: good movie
Review: somebody in one of the reviews said that this film was dark. well i would just like to say that it is the print. there are other better prints of this movie. one or two of them are dark like the reviewer said. i seen this movie on video and it was dark. then i saw this movie on cable and it was bright.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible!
Review: I watched Prom Night after seeing Halloween and becoming a fan of Jamie Lee Curtis but while Halloween was a good movie Prom Night was terrible! I know I will probably get a lot of unhelpful votes for saying that I don't like this movie but oh well whatever!

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: This is a typical slasher film with a cast that doesn't realise that they are in a typical slasher film. All the actors handle their parts with such grace, and skill, that it makes this movie so much better than it ever should have been. Jamie Lee Curtis is the shining star of this one, and makes the moments between her and the rest of her family pure gold. I honestly was never bored during the early parts of the movie that focused on character development because of how well everyone played off each other. Now there are some weak performances, but all of those are in smaller roles.

The film itself is average. It has a strong script for a movie of this type, and a decent soundtrack. The direction is okay, but hardly great, due to the horrid lighting in some scenes (and the more recent release, the one with the 6 dollar price tag makes this even more of a problem due to it's terrible picture). But there are some okay scenes, and the death scenes are handled fairly well, although most of them are rather tame. There are some effective scenes, such as the disco dance off, and the rolling head, but other than that the direction falls in to the blah catagory.

Over all I think Prom Night is an average movie, made so much better by it's cast. If you want a very dated, and yet somewhat entertaining horror film, check out this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Picture Quality
Review: When I purchased this movie, I remembered that I didn't care for it too much. Usually when the director sits in his chair he says, "Lights, camera, action", but in this case he just said, "Camera, action", because this movie suffered from very poor lighting. The only clear scenes came from hallway shots that no doubt had fluorescent lights in the ceiling. There are some scenes where natural sunlight streamed though windows, bleaching out the scenes.

I've noticed flaws like this in some of the 80s horror movies. The poor photography really ruins the film for me. I expect good lighting, framing of shots and a good score. I can't imagine a low budget movie being so low that it couldn't afford some flood lights of some kind! How about a couple of 150 watt bulbs?

The acting in this movie was good, the story line was good, but unfortunately because of the poor photography, the movie is bad.

I purchased this movie because I really like Prom Night 2 and sort of like Prom Night 3 and 4. I figured, "Get the first one too".