chancedelhomme When Nick, Wendy, Jude & Kelly were playing "Killers Are Coming" in the abandoned convent (which was such a dangerous structure for these kids to be running around in), and Robin interrupted their twisted variation of Hide & Go Seek...just what was the last man standing (in this case Nick) going to win/lose? Oddly enough, Nick was the catalyst for Robin's literal downfall that day; instead of warning her that Warpath Wendy would target her mercilessly and ushering her out of the building before the others caught him, he screamed "Here Killers, Here!" (which might have been one of their rules in case an outsider intervened), getting the attention of his three co-conspirators who literally scared Robin to death! Nick always seemed the guiltiest of the four, from the get-go when he started to mention that they needed to "get somebody, quick!" but outnumbered by the three girls, he agreed to the pact and still felt totally guilty six years later on the day of the prom during his romantic scenes with Kim.WHAT IF??? Nick ran home that day in 1974 and confessed everything to his father, Lt. McBride...who in turn was looking for a reason to capture local pedophile Leonard Murch, and decided to cover up his son's crime by blaming Murch, leading to his car explosion capture? McBride seemed to be a single father in the 1980 story, and I always thought he was a widower but there were no paintings or photos of Nick's missing mother in their apartment (but there was a framed photo by Nick's phone of him and another guy on a tennis court). I'm assuming that Mrs. McBride was devastated over her young son's malicious mayhem & subsequent coverup by her cop husband...so she flew the coop and left them both! (I know, like the mothers in Happy Birthday To Me and the original Scream did). Maybe Mrs. McBride was friends with Mrs. Hammond at the time and couldn't bear to see her friend suffer at the hands of her own family! And maybe she couldn't live with the fact that her husband framed an innocent man (at least at that time) of Robin's murder. Maybe Lt. McBride and Wendy's obviously wealthy unseen no-show father conspired to keep their children's crime a secret? I know all of this couldn't play out in the 90min movie (with the post-production tacked-on Leonard Murch scenes still in tact!).Speaking of Nick & Kim, after all that time...their Senior year romance seemed to be new since Wendy's jilted lover routine didn't come off as desperate like they've been fighting over him since they were 12!I just wonder about these things years later!

elsiagoddess I love Jamie Lee Curtis!!! Anything with her you should watch. ESPECIALLY if it's a horror movie! She is the classiest of all the final girls.Halloween, Terror Train and Prom Night are 3 of the best slashers from the 80's. I have seen them all dozens of times each and still get entertained.Not only do we have Jamie Lee doing her final girl thing but we have the funny old dude from the Naked Gun movies! This is jam-packed with goodness.Watch as soon as you can and obvi ignore the remake!

Leofwine_draca Pretty much your typical slasher film, this is one that was clichéd when it came out, and that was twenty years ago! Strange to see how films like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER are still using the same clichés even now, perhaps in twenty years time we'll be watching yet more blonde girls getting stalked through corridors by mad people...Still, as an example of its type, you could do a lot worse, and at least this presents a nice variety of clichés for us to enjoy, such as (deep breath): an escaped lunatic who kidnapped a nurse, cf. HALLOWEEN; some threatening phone calls, cf. BLACK Christmas; a weird cleaner as a main suspect; teenagers having sex and then getting killed, cf. just about any slasher film in existence! Although filmed on a low budget in Canada, the film succeeds by building up lots of red herrings and potential murderers in the cast, before bumping off half a dozen teens in the last third (although it's never explained why the fat guy in the van gets murdered when he had nothing to do with the original accident).The cast is mainly populated by nobodies, headlined by two stars; one up-and-coming girl, one middle-aged actor going through a lean patch in his career; that is, Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen. Curtis was typed as a screaming heroine at this time, having appeared in HALLOWEEN, TERROR TRAIN, and THE FOG, to name but three, and here she performs perfectly adequately - apart from her embarrassing moves on the disco floor, which should have been consigned to cutting room history! It's difficult to watch Nielsen acting seriously - you expect him to start blowing things up accidentally or killing people in a comic fashion. He looks as if he doesn't want to be in this film, and he actually isn't...near the end, he suddenly disappears, never to be heard of again! Where did Nielsen go? One minute he's dancing, the next...people are looking for him but to no avail! Was this some secret hint that there was actually a conspiracy involved that night - and maybe Nielsen was a second murderer? Or maybe the budget ran low and the producers had to quickly ditch the most expensive star.For a slasher film, there are surprisingly few deaths, and most of the film's running time is padded out with endless conversions about the prom, some low lifes at the school fighting, drugs, sex, flashing, and girls putting make up on. Not to mention some obvious spooky scenes, like a window smashing suddenly and nobody being there. When the deaths do come, they're pretty simplistic and disappointing - some blood, throat slashings, nothing spectacular apart from a flying severed rubber head moment at the end of the film (pretty funny, but not exactly worth waiting for). The killer dresses entirely in black and wears a balaclava; personally he reminded me more of a ninja than a murderer.PROM NIGHT was a moderate success, spawning three unrelated sequels to date. There are a few effective stalk and slash moments in the film to enjoy, but not really much horror content. If you want the blueprints of the genre then it's probably a good idea to go with the two most popular slasher films which were responsible for all of these imitations: HALLOWEEN and Friday the 13th (themselves influenced by many other pictures, I know). Or even something gory like THE BURNING. This film falls about the middle of the scale of slasher film quality.

Anonymous Andy (Minus_The_Beer) Starring then scream-queen (and current yogurt peddler) Jamie Lee Curtis and a pre-goofball Leslie Nielsen, "Prom Night" is one of the first in what would be many holiday-themed slasher flicks meant to capitalize on the success of John Carpenter's seminal "Halloween." The concept is at once simple and yet convoluted: a gaggle of tweens playing a rather odd and slightly sadistic "hide and go seek"-type game in an abandoned warehouse accidentally drive another child to their death. Because it's always a good idea in this sort of movie, the kids all vow never to speak a word of this to anyone. Fast- forward six years later, and the kids are now teenagers getting ready for their prom. Only somebody saw what happened that fateful day, and somebody is going to make them pay.Like its fellow brethren in "My Bloody Valentine," "Prom Night" is a low-budget production straight out of Canada. Director Paul Lynch works the meager concept into a rather sleek and efficient blaze of tension, bloodshed and disco. For better or worse, not much blood is shed until about 2/3 of the way through the movie. For at least the first half of the movie, we are treated to a lot of obscene phone calls, botched hook-ups in locker rooms and student-on-student pranks. There's also adequate time to set-up the somewhat stock characters, which is handled surprisingly well. Jamie Lee Curtis sticks out from the bunch as the innocent by-stander who, before becoming the de-facto survivor girl, gets to bust out in an obscenely long dance-number that almost gives a similar scene in "Airplane" a run for its money. The kill scenes are then, somewhat ironically, less memorable than all the stuff that comes before it, which is perhaps a testament to Lynch's unheralded skill or maybe just dumb luck.Either way, "Prom Night" is a great example of the '80s slasher. All the tropes you've come to expect -- revenge, premarital relations, bratty teens, recreational drug-use -- it's all here. Perhaps not as refined as its predecessors, "Prom Night" remains an entertaining and somewhat endearing experience all these years later. It even inspired a pair of silly yet throroughly entertaining sequels in "Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou" and "Prom Night III: The Last Kiss," along with a somewhat forgettable fourth film and an absolute piece of garbage remake. But if you're looking to hit the dance floor with a well- worn semi-classic of its era, you couldn't pick a better date than the original "Prom Night."