Prom Night (1980 film)

Plot

In 1974, 11-year-olds Wendy Richards, Jude Cunningham, Kelly Lynch, and Nick McBride play hide and seek in an abandoned convent. 10-year-old Robin Hammond tries to join them, but they start teasing her by repeating "Kill! Kill! Kill!". Robin is then backed up towards a window from which she falls to her death. Instead of reporting the incident to the police, the children make a pact not to tell anyone what happened and keep the incident a secret, but after they leave, a shadow falls across Robin's body. Later a known rapist, Leonard Merch is mistakenly blamed for Robin's death and is arrested.

Six years pass and it is 1980. Robin's family attend her memorial on the anniversary of her death. Robin's teenage sister, Kim, and fraternal twin brother, Alex, are also preparing for the school prom to be held that evening. Their parents will also attend, as their father is the school principal. Kelly, Jude and Wendy begin receiving obscene phone calls from an unknown figure, while Nick ignores his ringing phone. Kim and Nick, whom she is dating, are attending prom together; Jude is asked by goofy jokester Seymour "Slick" Crane whom she meets by chance that morning; Kelly is going with her boyfriend Drew Shinnick (who is preoccupied with having sex with her despite objections), while Wendy, previously Nick's girlfriend, asks the school rebel, Lou Farmer with plans to embarrass Nick and Kim at prom.

In the changing room after gym class, Kim and Kelly discover the locker room mirror severely cracked and a shard missing. The offender blamed for Robin's death has escaped and Lt. McBride, Nick's father, investigates. Also during the day, Wendy, Jude and Kelly discover their year book photos in their lockers torn and stabbed with a piece of glass. During the senior prom, Kim and Nick perform a dance number to impress Wendy who had insisted Nick would be getting back with her after the prom. Later, Kelly and Drew make out in the changing room, but Kelly refuses to continue to full sex, resulting in Drew angrily leaving. As Kelly gets dressed, an unidentified figure wearing a ski mask and all-black clothing stealthily approaches her and slits her throat with a mirror shard. Jude and Slick have sex and smoke marijuana in Slick's van parked outside school grounds. Unbeknownst to them, they are being watched and are then attacked by the masked killer, who stabs Jude's throat. Slick struggles with the killer while attempting to drive away but the killer escapes from the van (with Slick inside) as it tumbles off a cliff and explodes into a wreckage. McBride, staking out the prom, is informed that the sex offender blamed for Robin's death has been caught. He is relieved and ends his scrutiny of the event.

In the bathroom, the killer, now wielding an axe, confronts and chases Wendy through the school. She evades the killer several times, but is caught and killed after she screams upon discovering Kelly's body in a storage room. Kim and Nick prepare to be crowned prom king and queen but Wendy's plan is put into action by Lou and his lackeys who tie up Nick with Lou taking his crown and assuming his position back stage. Mistaking him for Nick, the killer approaches behind Lou and decapitates him. Lou's severed head rolls down the runway and onto the dance floor, sending the prom-goers fleeing in horror.

Kim finds Nick and frees him. As they prepare to escape, they are confronted by the killer who attacks Nick but not Kim. Eventually in the ensuing brawl, Kim bluntly strikes the killer's head with his own axe. She and the killer then stare at each other for a moment and Kim realizes who he really is. He runs outside where the police have arrived. As guns are raised Kim screams for Lt. McBride not to shoot him. Although he obeys, the killer collapses, as he is already dying from his head wound. The killer is then revealed to be Alex, who explains to Kim that he was trying to avenge Robin's death and that Jude, Kelly, Wendy and Nick were responsible for their sister's death. He cries Robin's name and dies in Kim's arms. Kim cries at the death of another sibling.

Cast

Development

Director Paul Lynch developed Prom Night after a meeting with producer Irwin Yablans, who had previously produced Halloween (1978). Lynch had wanted to work on a horror film, and, in response to Yablan's suggestion that he utilize a holiday as a basis for the film, Lynch decided on building the premise around the event of the high school prom. Writer Robert Guza Jr., of whom Lynch was an acquaintance, had written a story about a group of teenagers whose involvement in a tragic event as children came back to haunt them. Guza's story was then adapted and incorporated into the film as the central premise and motive for the film's villain. After approaching producer Peter Simpson with the idea, Lynch and Simpson signed an agreement within a matter of four days.

In the documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006), Lynch stated he was having difficulty securing financing for the film until Jamie Lee Curtis signed onto the project. According to the producer of Prom Night, Eve Plumb (from television's The Brady Bunch) originally auditioned for the role of Kim Hammond, but was passed over after Jamie Lee Curtis' manager contacted Paul Lynch about doing the film. A great deal of the actors and actresses playing the students were stage actors and recent theater graduates from the University of Toronto.

Filming

Prom Night was filmed over twenty-four days in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from August 7 to September 13, 1979. The Don Mills Collegiate Institute served as the main school location, while the Langstaff Jail Farm in Richmond Hill was used for the abandoned building featured prominently in the beginning of the film.

Release

After production wrapped, Paramount Pictures expressed interest in distributing the movie. However, they only wanted to open it in 300 theaters whereas AVCO Embassy Pictures offered to release it in 1,200 theaters. AVCO purchased the film at the Cannes film market in May of 1980 (Paramount, instead, released another independent slasher film, Friday the 13th, which premiered two months before Prom Night). The company subsequently developed an extensive marketing campaign to promote the film. A theatrical trailer was released for the film in June 1980, described by Richard Nowell in Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle, as an "exact replica of [the trailer] for Carrie (1976)."

Given a limited release in the United States on July 18, 1980, Prom Night was a financial success. Its theatrical run expanded on August 15, 1980, and the film went on to gross $14,796,236 in the United States. It earned an addition $6 million in rentals during its home video release.

Critical reception

Upon release in 1980, Prom Night received mostly negative reviews from critics, with frequent comparisons to Halloween (1978) and Carrie (1976). Variety said the film "[borrows] shamelessly from Carrie and any number of gruesome exploitationers pic [from a story by Robert Gunza (sic) Jr.] manages to score a few horrific points amid a number of sagging moments." Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave the film a middling review, writing: "Prom Night, the Canadian film that opened yesterday at the Loews State 2 and other theaters, is a comparatively genteel hybrid, part shock melodrama, like Halloween, and part mystery, though it's less a whodunit than a who's-doing-it." He also praised the film's restrained violence, writing that director Lynch "chooses to underplay the bloody spectacle. This isn't to say that there aren't some sticky moments, including one not especially convincing decapitation, but that more often than not the camera cuts away, or the screen goes discreetly gray, before the audience is drenched in gore. This may or may not be the reason that the audience with which I saw the film yesterday booed at the end."

Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune called the film a "watered-down cross between Carrie and Halloween," though he noted that the film was "not as violent as one might expect, based on those frightening ads of a masked man holding a phallic knife... You would think that Prom Night was another one of those hideous attacks-on-promiscuous-women pictures. It's not. Gender makes no difference in this routine revenge film." No less, the film's advertising campaign was criticized by Siskel and Roger Ebert in a September 18, 1980 episode of Sneak Previews, cited among a glut of other violent slasher films released the same year that thematized "Women in Danger." Siskel and Ebert used the episode to criticize the advertising campaigns for several films, including Don't Answer the Phone, Hell Night, and Prom Night: "[These] ads have been saturating television for the past two years," said Ebert, "and the summer and fall of 1980 are the worst yet."

In a review published by Time Out, the film was called "a sincere Halloween rip-off which takes time out to milk Carrie, Saturday Night Fever, and all those B-feature 'lust and rivalry' high school sagas," but praised Jamie Lee Curtis's performance, writing: "Curtis is superb as Miss Naturally Popular and Prom Queen-to-be, isolated in empty high school corridors." TV Guide gave the film one out of four stars, writing: "Curtis disco-dancing and wonderful moments such as when the severed head of a victim rolls across the dance floor. Prom Night is better than most slasher movies, mainly because it's funnier."

The film has an approval rating of 42% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 19 reviews, certifying it "rotten". AllMovie's review of the film was generally negative, but wrote that it "utilizes a surprising amount of skill both behind and in front of the camera as it goes through its paces".

Soundtrack

The Prom Night soundtrack was composed by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer, with additional writing by Bill Crutchfield and James Powell. and Director Lynch sought Zittrer after hearing his compositions in Black Christmas (1974). The soundtrack of Prom Night includes several disco songs which are featured prominently in the film's prom scene. Originally, the film was shot with the actors dancing to then-popular tracks by Donna Summer and Pat Benatar, but, according to Zaza, the publishing rights to the songs were far outside the film's budget.

Under orders from producer Peter Simpson, Zaza wrote a series of disco songs over a five-day period, closely copying the original tracks that were intended to be used in the film. This resulted in a copyright lawsuit for $10 million, which was eventually settled for $50,000.

The film's soundtrack is highly sought after by fans of the film and disco fans alike. It was released only in Japan on LP and cassette. A 7-inch single of "All Is Gone" b/w "Forever" was also released; however, neither of these songs appears in the film. Many bootleg CD releases have also found their way onto the marketplace, but Prom Night has never been officially issued on CD. Some of the music used in the film was used in Canadian horror productions that Paul Zaza scored as well; 1981's Ghostkeeper and 1983's Curtains. "Prom Night" was used in 2009's Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever.

Track listing

All tracks written by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer.

Home media

Prom Night has had an inconsistent release history on home video. It was originally released on VHS in 1981 by MCA Universal in North America, at the beginnings of home video popularity, licensed directly from then-production company SimCom, who had licensed theatrical distribution to Avco-Embassy. In 1988, it was re-released on VHS by Virgin Vision in tandem with the in-name-only sequel Hello Mary Lou; Prom Night II, which Virgin handled through a separate deal with that film's then-distributor The Samuel Goldwyn Company. In 1997, the film was re-released again, by Anchor Bay Entertainment, in both standard and "collector's" editions. It was then released on DVD by Anchor Bay on February 18, 1998 with a re-mastered widescreen transfer, and was one of the company's first DVD releases. By 2000, Anchor Bay's DVD release had gone out of print and became a rarity, with fans starting online petitions for a re-release.

In 2004, Alliance Atlantis released the film on DVD, but the film was sourced from an extremely dark, low-quality VHS transfer, which resulted in some of the film's darker scenes being nearly illegible; this transfer was also used for Platinum Disc's full-screen DVD edition of the movie for the US.

In September 2007, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment re-released the film on DVD in the United States in a completely re-mastered print from a PAL source, which was given an uncorrected transfer to NTSC. Due to the uncorrected transfer, the film is slightly "sped up," which, though mostly unnoticeable to the naked eye, reduced the film's run time by several minutes.

On September 9, 2014, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by Synapse Films, featuring a restored print from the original film negatives, as well as featuring a documentary as well as outtakes, original promotional material, and deleted scenes from the network television cut as bonus material.

Accolades

Sequels and remake

The Prom Night film series include four films and one remake (which tells a completely different story, with little connection to the 1980 film).

Works cited