Prom season has once again fallen upon us. Finding the prefect clothes, restaurant, and date all factors into having the best time possible but as we have seen in the horror genre, you also need to avoid some things. Be on the lookout for psychic killers, wronged students turned into slashers, and the cutthroat drama of being named prom king or queen. While the original Prom Night is hailed as a classic of both the slasher genre and that ridiculous early horror run for Jaime Lee Curtis, there are other movies to watch this time of year. You could put on any of the 4 Carrie entries which all deal with bullying and psychic powers, or a Nightmare on Elm Street which features a burned to death jerk coming back to kill people who wronged them years later, or you could middle Hellraiser movies that were just tagged as a sequel to put the series name on it to sell. Or… you could watch a movie that incorporates all three of those elements. Prom Night 2 isn’t just the Black Sheep of that somehow 4 entry series, no, it’s also secretly one of the best cash-ins, Carrie rip-offs, and Freddy homages you can find. Please come to the gym ceremony where we crown Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II as the rightful entertaining Black Sheep it is.
Prom Night, starring Jaime Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen amongst others, was released in July of 1980 during the beginning of the 80s slasher boom. It was a success financially for AVCO Embassy, making nearly 15 million dollars on its meager 1.5 million budget, but didn’t become a series like many of its contemporary films. At least, not at first and certainly not originally intended as such. Prom Night is fine and certainly has its legacy, but I find it kind of boring to be honest. I don’t love its relatively milquetoast if not faithful remake, but the sequels, those are fun, especially part two. Like I said though, the movie didn’t originally start that way. The movie was conceived, written, and shot as The Haunting of Hamilton High with plot similarities, the high school’s name, and even the tag line being the same as Prom Night were purely coincidental. The writer was Ron Oliver, and this was his first screenplay. He loaded it up with homages to horror movies of the past both recent and longer as well as giving names to many of his characters that were pulled out of horror culture such as Stephen King, Joe Dante, Tod Browning, and Wes Craven.
The director chosen was Bruce Pittman who had done tons of TV shows and made for TV movies up to that point and have a steady career after up to even productions in 2024. In terms of movies, this would easily be his most famous, at least for horror hounds, but he would direct episodes of the Twilight Zone reboot and the Friday the 13th Series too. Unfortunately, when it was all said and done, MGM came back at the movie and decided it wasn’t good enough for distribution. They wanted changes so they gave the screenwriter Oliver a bunch of money and little direction to reshoot a ton of the film. He ended up calling Wes Craven of all people to ask for advice and Wes gave him words that wound up basically being the foundations of what horror of the 80s was built off of. Craven said, “Give them a scare, give them a hard-on, and send them home.” Looking at the elements of what the final product is, well, he took Craven’s words to heart.
The movie opens in 1957 with Mary Lou Maloney seeing a priest before the prom of Hamilton high takes place. Mary Lou is there with her date Billy but sneaks off to have sex with another “high schooler” because yes, in slasher tradition most of the actors really don’t pass for high schoolers. Billy seeks a little harmless revenge and in the first call back to Carrie, he tries to embarrass Mary Lou after she wins prom queen by dropping a bucket of blood… I mean stink bomb… on her head. It backfires, literally, as the lit fuse causes Mary Lou’s dress to catch fire, and she burns to death in front of the rest of the school. It switches from Carrie to A Nightmare on Elm Street real quick though as an angry demon version of Mary Lou is awakened and kills off people that have to do with her death from beyond the grave, nightmare sequences included. We jump back to Carrie when the new main character Vicki is shown to be controlled by her overly religious mother. This causes her to seek a prom dress elsewhere where she finds a trunk with Mary Lou’s cape and crown that was initially meant as her royal garb. This of course awakens the evil spirit who wreaks havoc on both the current students as well as her old boyfriend Billy who is now the school principal and played by Michael Ironside.
Ironside is a legend with a voice to match and has shown up in everything from Scanners to Total Recall to The Machinist and more. Joining Ironside in the cast are Lisa Schrage, Wendy Lyon, Terri Hawkes, Louis Ferreira, and John Pyper Ferguson. The ladies don’t have a ton between them besides The Shape of Water, voices in Sailor Moon properties, and a handful of other TV things. Not to say they didn’t have wonderful and steady careers, they just didn’t show up in a lot of well-known things, particularly horror. This movie holds their genre legacy quite well though. Ferreira also showed up in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Saw 4, and tons of TV runs on Breaking Bad, Stargate, and Motive. Ferguson might be the most recognizable name outside of Ironside with appearances in Unforgiven, Stay Tuned, Brisco County Jr, X-Files, Millennium, and so much more.
They all hold a special place in the movie from their wonderful Canadian accents ranging from subtle to Tim Hortons and their willingness to go all out. A lot of the extra scenes and budget with the reshoots went to the special effects and added kills. It further plays into Carrie and Nightmare on Elm Street vibe with these kills. One of them looks like something Carrie would do by psychically using something to hang someone but at the same time, it also almost copies one of the deaths from Nightmare 1. In a non-death scare, we get a possessed rocking horse that looks almost as scary before possession as it does after and very much feels like Freddy taking over a landline phone, tongue included. The kills are a bit few and far between with a body count of only 7, fairly low for a slasher movie, but they get the job done when they happen. These special effects and stuff like the whirlpool chalkboard make the movie more memorable than other knock off horror found in this decade and the next.
Eventually our main girl Vikki is possessed fully by Mary Lou and decides to take out both the people that wronged her killed her in the past and her competition at the high school. Buddy Cooper, who was the man Mary Lou ditched Billy for at the prom, is now the town priest and while he finds out what’s going on, he is too late, and Mary Lou takes him out. Another friend confronts her about her attitude and we are treated to one of the more inventive kills in horror. A fully nude Vikki stalks her friend Monica through the girl’s locker room and Monica hides inside one of the lockers. Instead of Vikki pulling her out and using a razor gloved hand, kitchen knife, or machete, she uses the surrounding lockers to squish Monica into raspberry cobbler. It’s wholly unexpected and just gross enough while leaving a little something to the imagination.
The prom kicks off in earnest and while Kelly tries to get the prom queen election results changed, Vikki/Mary Lou electrocute him through the computer in another good FX showcase. The movie ends by going full Carrie with Mary Lou bursting out of Vikki in the final great makeup and FX showcase, which includes a different actress playing the now very burned Mary Lou. Carrie Krueger kills some of the prom guests including Kelly before stalking Vikki’s boyfriend Craig and is seemingly unstoppable with Billy unable to kill her with bullets. Craig is able to evade her long enough for Billy to present her with her originally intended crown which seems to be the only way to break the curse. Vikki is returned and Mary Lou is gone. Billy offers to drive the young couple home, but we get the all too familiar horror twist where Billy is now possessed by Mary Lou, playing her signature music on the car radio and driving away like it’s the end of Phantasm 2 or something.
I mentioned early the movie being in the same boat as the Hellraiser sequels where Pinhead shows up for 5 minutes to tie everything together but this works a little better. While leaning heavily into other horror movies, especially and specifically the franchises of Nightmare on Elm Street and Carrie, this turning into a Prom Night movie actually changed the trajectory of the series. While movies that wouldn’t quite work would continue to get Pinhead thrown in and labeled Hellraiser would be derided, Mary Lou would show up in two additional sequels and continue down the route of the supernatural. Hamilton High would be an important location, and we would have a trilogy of movies that have much more to do with each other than they do with the original film.
Unfortunately, Prom Night 2 would be left underappreciated and underseen due to a lack of physical media and dismal box office with making only 2.7 million on its 2.5-million-dollar budget, but it has started to make a comeback. You can watch it on borderline VHS quality, though uncensored, on Tubi, and Joe Bob Briggs hosted it on The Last Drive-in with better quality and lots of insights. Later this year in 2025 we are getting treated to a complete upgrade courtesy of Synapse which further cements the need for these boutique labels to continue to rescue movies who may be unknown or just unloved by time. A great new 4k release and special features will hopefully lead to the whole sequel series getting the same treatment which this movie and series deserve wholeheartedly. It’s way more fun and cheesier than it has any right to be and is endlessly rewatchable. This prom season don’t vote for Carrie or the original slasher and instead say hello to Mary Lou, the true Prom Queen of the series.
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