PLOT: Six years after the accidental death of a young girl, a killer chooses Prom Night as the night to exact revenge on those that were responsible.

This might be the most egregious Halloween knockoff ever. Maybe I’m just saying that because they managed to get Jamie Lee Curtis in this obviously low-budget slasher, but this feels beat-for-beat like the classic film. While this is definitely the sort of film that deserves a remake, it’s amazing that someone would actually bother.

The film starts when a group of mean preteens playing in an abandoned psychiatric hospital scare a girl enough to make her fall out a window, dying on impact. It’s never gone into why these kids were so mean to her (she MIGHT have a stutter), but they quickly agree that the best thing to do is to pretend they weren’t at the scene and have someone else discover the body. I guess they breed sociopaths young.

Fast-forward six years to prom night (Hey, that’s the title) and someone is making cryptic phone calls to the kids responsible for the tragedy. It looks like the untimely deaths at this prom WON’T wind up in the dumpster… Sorry.

The best thing about this flick is the music. It’s all original disco music that sort of sound like songs you know, but aren’t. Which is pretty fun if you want to play “Guess What Song They Wanted This to Be”. It’s all pretty toe-tapping, though, so I actually can’t fault it for quality, disco or otherwise.

Otherwise, the cheapness of this film shines through. The film looks like a daytime 1970s soap opera, the kills are pretty disappointing (except maybe one), and it looks like they spent most of their money just trying to get Jamie Lee in this one. Other than the filmmaking, there are plot points that go nowhere: there’s a subplot that is basically completely lifted from Halloween, regarding an escaped mental patient, that completely wraps up without having an effect on the actual story the movie tries to tell. Also, where does Leslie Nielsen go for like the last half of the goddamn movie?

Additionally, you can pretty much figure out the ending to this film within the first 10 minutes of the Prom-era scenes. I don’t really pat myself on the back for figuring things out, and I won’t here; it’s just pretty predictable.

There’s one good decapitation scene, but most of the other kills are pretty tame. I could’ve given this movie more points if it spent a little money on the effects, but other than one scene, they phoned it in.

Gore Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Slasher movies aren’t all that scary to begin with, and when you have one that is as poorly put together as this one, it’s even less so.

Scare Rating: 0 out of 5

There’s lots of talk about sex; more specifically, about the lack of sex the guys in the movie are about to be getting. Though, we do get some side boob and the quickest flash of nipple.

Sex/Nudity Rating: 1 out of 5

OVERALL

This is not a great movie in the least, so it’s surprising that it spawned a bunch of sequels and a bigger budget remake. I’d see it so you can see what Jamie Lee Curtis did after her Halloween fame took off, but this is a cheap cash-grab with very little going for it.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 10