The DNA of Prom Night
Given the much-awaited disco-bopping soundtrack to Prom Night was finally released on CD in the spring of 2019…
I thought it was time for another re-watch, this time paying more attention to the various… ‘homages’ the film is patched together from. Perfectly, I might add.
So, starting at the top – why didn’t Kim (or Alex) tell the cops that they saw Nick and the other kids playing at the school/convent/whatever minutes before Robin’s death? You’d think they would be questioned about it.
The Halloween Xeroxing is rife, you could easily mistake these streets that teenage girls get stalked along:
And then we have JLC and her gal-pals walking along together, carrying books, discussing girly things about upcoming dances n’ the like:
Jamie even forgot her text book in both films – geography in Prom Night, chemistry in Halloween! Why does this revelation make Alex think “darn!” and why do we get to hear it?
How could Kelly and Jude even be friends with Kim without major guilt? THEY KILLED HER SISTER and are asking her about her sex life!!! And Nick is GOING OUT WITH HER!? After going out with WENDY, his accomplice!???
Then we have the escaped mental patient who returned to town, and his shrink – although this time the police summon him rather than the other way around. Said shrink vanishes early on though.
The bitchy girl and the scuzzy dude plotting to humiliate the prom queen, right outta Carrie:
That dance routine nabbed from Saturday Night Fever, which featured John Travolta from Carrie! The Bee Gees versus the amusing composed-to-spec disco bops Paul Zaza and Carl Zitterer made for Prom Night is no contest though:
The interactions between Kim and her friends are good though, naturalistic teen girl banter:
In summary, Prom Night is a jigsaw of a production, built with puzzle pieces from other films, but undeniably a fab one.
A friend recently asked me if I were to remake it, what my approach would be…
- Well, not that vile 2008 remake
- More kids in the game at the start, with one killed earlier in the day (rather than the hour wait)
- Make more out of Principal Hammond and his wife as suspects – where do they go???
- Perhaps have Kelly turn out to be the killer?
Coincidentally I just re-watched Prom Night myself recently an am currently in the process of going through the Blu-Ray extras.
You make some good points in your article. Another couple of things to mention would firstly be that a little bit more build up work could have been added to support Alex wearing the lip stick at the end. I also felt it would have made more sense to stick a picture of the murdered sister in the teens lockers instead of their own year book pictures which in themselves didn’t really tie in with anything.
Also I felt it was slightly unrealistic that no one seemed to notice when Slick’s vehicle went off the cliff/bluffs and exploded. Maybe no one from the actual prom would have heard due to the music but surely someone would have been aware of an accident and then maybe the cop could have mentioned it in passing when seen speaking on the phone later. Could have been chalked up to a drunk driver or whatever.
It’s a really good slasher though, I’m not knocking it.
Man, remember when Prom Night was this simple yet effective teen slasher from the 80s before we got vengeful ghosts from the 50s, a murderous priest with stigmata and a bug-eyed teacher straight out of a Reddit letsnotmeet story?
Good times. Good times…
>Also I felt it was slightly unrealistic that no one seemed to notice when Slick’s vehicle went off the cliff/bluffs and exploded.
Ha! This is so true! I huge explosion outside drowned out by deafening disco music?? Maybe, but if Slick and Jude ventured outside to hook up, it’s likely others did too.