Prom Night
HORROR-THON 2023 • IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
8/10
DIRECTOR: Paul Lynch
STARRING: Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens
RELEASED: 1980
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 32 minutes
WATCH ON: Prime Video, Peacock, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Tubi, The Roku Channel
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
DISCO DANCE NUMBER: Mandatory viewing
A masked killer works through a high school prom, one victim at a time, and the soundtrack is wall-to-wall disco. Watching people get slashes to a four-on-the-floor beat is jarring and very unserious. I couldn’t look away.
In 1974, four kids play a cruel game of “killer” in an abandoned building and corner a little girl named Robin. She falls out of a window and dies. The kids swear they’ll never tell anyone what happened.
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Six years later it’s prom night at the local high school. Robin’s older sister Kim is up for prom queen, and their dad, the principal, is Leslie Nielsen playing it totally straight.
Then the four kids who were there that day start getting creepy phone calls. A masked killer starts working through the list.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
The kids honestly have serious karma coming, and the movie delivers it. They covered up a little girl’s death and went on with their lives. I wasn’t rooting for any of them.
This one had me fooled until the end. I had a theory about the killer. I was wrong. I love it when that happens.
And then there’s the choreographed dance scene. Jamie Lee Curtis and her date take over the floor and do a full disco routine. It doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, but it’s one of the best things about the movie.
It’s also probably better than the 2008 remake. I’d put a question mark on that, but most remakes don’t hold a candle to the original.
This was Jamie Lee Curtis’ gig right after Halloween, which I covered for Horror-Thon 2021.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The prom scene was shot using hit disco songs; unfortunately, the production team realized they couldn’t afford the rights to use them. This gave them a week and a half to create similar original disco songs that were close enough, but not close enough to get sued.