1989
9 kills
First Kill - 5 minutes
My, my, how this series has fallen. The first Prom Night is one of my favorites. I haven't seen part 2, but parts 3 and 4 disgrace the name of the title.
This movie begins with some very promising cheese. The ghost of Mary Lou returns to her high school at night to kill the janitor with a jukebox. Before you can ask yourself, "What the hell was that all about," we're thrust into the next scene.
Apparantly, Hamilton High is re-opening the gym after years of its being closed due to some huge tragedy. (Maybe if I'd seen part 2, it'd make a little more sense? I think it was a fire and Mary Lou burned to death, but I'm not sure.) It's a big event. The band is playing. And it's amazing how they get such a glorious sound from a band full of students who are so obviously NOT playing the instruments. Really. They're playing half notes, but the saxophonists fingers are moving to eighth notes. But finally, the band stops and the principal, who says things like "cool, man" comes up to cut the ribbon. He says something insane like, "We hear ghost noises... students disappear... but everything's cool man" and cuts off his finger along with the ribbon. I had to rewind that scene twice. It's pretty good.
Then we meet Alex. Alex is average. He's 5'9" and wears size 9 shoes. He tells us this. I didn't measure him. Anyway, he's sick of his average life and wants some excitement. So he has sex with the ghost of Mary Lou rght there in school. He doesn't realize she's a ghost until he stumbles upon the story about her death on the computer. Does he break up with his new girl? Nope. Hey, she might be dead, but she's hot.
Well, Mary Lou really likes Alex and she wants to help him. She begins by killing his biology teacher with ice cream cones. But, I guess because she's dead, she needs Alex to bury the body. He does, they have sex, and things are great. When Mary Lou puts Alex on the honor roll, the guidance counselor knows something isn't right. Mary Lou has no choice but to kill her. Alex buries the body, but he doesn't like this whole arrangement of her slashing and him stashing. He tells her to stop, but by this point, of course, it's too late.
Alex finally does the unthinkable and breaks up with Mary Lou. She is very unhappy and decides to take it out on Alex's sweetheart on... (music, please)... Prom Night.
Sounds decent, huh? Well any signs of decency are immediately ruined by stupid kills and bad acting. For instance, I just couldn't take anymore of the stupid announcements that kept being made over the school P.A. "Due to yesterday's car accident, driver's ed is canceled." That's not even funny! There were like 20 of those announcements, all attempting to be humorous, all failing! Also, why did Alex's parents throw him a surprise party for getting an A on a biology test??? That's just stupid.
And the kills... Sure, the ice cream kill is good, and there are 2 others that deserve mention: one guy is killed with a football and Alex's best friend has his heart ripped out and shown to him. Also, she pours battery acid on the guidance counselor, which is not original, but it's pretty funny to watch. However, the other kills are bad. The "electric bolts from the eyes" has been done before, and that takes out 2 at once. What a rip-off. And the jukebox kind of does the same thing. It just shoots out some bright-blue light and kills the janitor. Bad.
Overall, you'd probably be interested for like the first 45 minutes. But when it gets bad, it gets bad fast and it still has a while to go. I think it was like an hour and 40 minutes long. I think it's bad because they waste so much time by having him bury the bodies. They could've just made her store all of the bodies somewhere like most movies. That leaves more time for killing. If she had taken out maybe 3 or 4 more teachers (those were the more original kills) this movie would merit 3 skulls easily. As it is, though, I really can't recommend it.
-- Coolio
