Prom Night (1980)

Let this flick be a lesson to all of you sadistic little twelve year olds out there. If by chance you are going to turn on one of your playmates and cause them to "accidentally" fall out of a two story window, be damn sure no one saw what happened, unless you want them to come back and get your ass years down the road. Case in point: 1980's "Prom Night", a somewhat overrated slasher flick which was pretty much ripped off years later and remade as "I Know What You Did Last Summer".

A group of kids are playing a friendly game of "killer" in an old abandoned schoolhouse. The game turns ugly as the group turns on one of their less than popular school chums, chasing her through the school, and causing her to fall to her death out of a two story window. The murderous gang all makes a pact to never reveal their secret to anyone (sound familiar Kevin Williamson?), take their secret to the grave, blah blah blah. Only problem is, someone saw what happened, and years later decides to exact revenge on the night of the senior prom.

The main problem I had with this one was that nothing, and I mean nothing, hardly happens in the first hour. Oh sure, you get your typical psychotic heavy breathing phone calls to the soon-to-be-victims, as well as the introduction of a few possible suspects here and there. Other than that, the most exciting thing is seeing Jamie Lee Curtis in her bra and watching her and her date boogie down in a truly hilarious disco scene that went on for way, way to long. Once prom night hits and the killer decides to finally get his ass in gear, things do pick up a bit, but even the chase scenes (like the disco scene), went on way to damn long and just were not very suspenseful. All the kills were relatively bloodless, though be sure to keep your eyes open for a nice decapitation, courtesy of the killer's axe. Other than that, this one was pretty low on the splatter scale. Perhaps if a little more would have happened in the first hour, and the killers identity not have been so obvious, Prom Night would have been a little more entertaining. As it is though, it's nothing more than a greatly overhyped slasher flick. Watch "The Burning" instead.