Prom Night II

One of the many things that the Friday the 13th series was responsible for is the trend in the 80s to resurrect 70s horror movies and turn them into slasher series. Things such as Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both dying after sequels in the 70s, were brought back to life in the 80s as fairly straightforward slasher films, and, of course, they weren't the only ones. Someone, somewhere, thought that Prom Night was a movie that was apparently screaming for a sequel and so in 1987 we got one - albeit one that actually doesn't have any relation to the original at all. In fact, the only thing that ties the two movies together, aside from the title, is that someone gets killed and years later a killer tries to get revenge based on that death. In this case, however, the killer was the person who was killed - a slight twist.

In truth, this movie owes more to "A Nightmare On Elm Street" and "Carrie" than to the original "Prom Night". The opening sequence is very similar to Carrie, with a girl surrounded by fire on her prom; while various other sequences in the movie - most notably when the heroine is sucked into the blackboard - are very reminsicient of the killer dream sequences of A Nightmare On Elm Street, while the ending couldn't mimic ANOES more so if it tried.

Sadly, aside from those entertaining aspects, the movie generally is pretty poor. Acting-wise, no one really makes an attempt and even Michael Ironside seems to be a little bored by his part. It's sometimes easy to forget nudity was a mainstay of horror movies in the eighties, and so when the leading lady gives some full frontal nudity during a locker room sequence, it seems a little surprising. Sadly, nudity doesn't save her performance which is pretty much crap. It's difficult to feel any sympathy for her and when she disappears about two thirds into the movie, surprisingly you don't tend to notice.

The film is great in a "crap but entertaining" way, but it's nothing special and is actually not as good as the original, despite the more fantastical elements introduced, which I'm more of a fan of.

"C"