Prom Night (1980) October 23rd, 2023

Coming to us via the good people at the Criterion Channel, Prom Night is a regrettable addition to this year’s October horror marathon. It’s difficult to say where Prom Night went wrong because it did so little right. Borrowing plot and set pieces from Carrie and Halloween, Prom Night greatest claim to fame is padding Jamie Lee Curtis’ scream queen resume.

Prom Night begins with a convoluted flashback to a group of children playing in an abandoned building that ends with one of their accidental deaths. The surviving children swear each other to secrecy about the death and we timejump forward 6 years. Now in High School, the murderous cadre of kids have moved on to more socially acceptable vices like premarital sex and drug use. Unfortunately a mysterious witness to the 6 years old murder begins killing them off.

Don’t get excited, the deaths don’t start until the last 20 minutes of Prom Night and every spooky scene before could be easily mistaken for a scene in a horror parody. What do we get instead of creative and suspenseful kills? It says it right on the cover, disco dancing. Yep, Prom Night has a killer theme song and we don’t miss a note as it’s played in its entirety while 30 year olds pretending to be 16 dance on a light up gym floor.

Prom Night doesn’t even depict a novel late-1970s high school experience like the somehow less nonsensical Massacre at Central High. I’m left to assume Prom Night must hold some significance in slasher history to justify its inclusion in a Criterion Channel horror collection. But without an accompanying featurette to explain this assumed significance, I’m reliant on my waning interest to inspire me to investigate further. Looks like I’ll never know.