1980 #49 - Prom Night

WHY?
Why was this film ever released?
The setup for the movie is pretty good. A bunch of kids tease a girl and she falls out a window to her death. Then 6 years later someone starts to kill off the kids on their prom night.
Unfortunately what happens during the film throws it all out the window.
The biggest problem from the beginning is trying to figure out who the characters are. Jamie Lee Curtis looks like someone's mother. Then we find out she's a teenager, but dating who we thought was her son. Then we learn who we thought was her son in the first scene is her brother, and she's dating someone else who looks way too similar to her brother. It's all very confusing for about 15 minutes or so.
Landing Curtis for this role was probably great for the production studio as I'm sure it drew people to the theater. Unfortunately it also ruined the film. She is far too prominent in the movie playing a character that should really have hardly anything to do with the story. The rest of the characters who are important hardly see any screen time before being killed off.
It's also way too easy to figure out who the killer is. Which leads to even less suspense as the film draws to its *groan* climax. But I don't want too give anything away in case someone actually wants to watch this.
The look of the film was even worse than the way the story played out. Half of the time you can't see what's going on because it's shot in the dark with a glaring light everytime there's a reflective surface.

The Verdict:
1 star (out of 5)
I really can not think of any redeeming qualities to this movie, except I had some fun watching it.Of course that was more due to the alcohol and company, then it was the movie.

Awards:
Nominated for Genie – Best Achievement in Film Editing / Brian Ravok
Disagree. I don't know much about film editing. But what I do know is that the editing of most horror films are used create suspense. There was no suspense created with this film whatsoever. And none of it even looked decent, so I'm not sure why this was nominated.

Nominated for Genie – Best Performance by a Foreign Actress / Jamie Lee Curtis
Disagree. Jamie Lee acted and looked like a mother figure to all the other characters that were her supposedly her own age. I'm sure this is partially the fault of casting, but still, there is no reason for this performance to be nominated for anything.

Memorable moments and quotes:
Wendy: “It's not who you go with, honey, it's who takes you home.”
Classic, and classy, too.

Alex: “You're my sister. I'll leer”
You know, they really didn't play out the incest angle that this brought up.

Disco scene
This was ridiculous, not only because I hate disco, but the scene added absolutely nothing to the film. Plus, Curtis dances like a robot.

Crowning of King and Queen:
This was hilarious. I can't say why, if you haven't seen it, but I hope it was meant to look as funny as it did.

Box Office:
Success?
From what I can find this film cost under 2 million to make and grossed almost 15 million at the box office. I'm sure this was a success for the studio. I can see why people wanted to see this. Horror films were really starting to take off around this time and current Scream Queen Curtis was probably a big draw. Too bad the movie couldn't deliver anything worth watching again.

Overall:
Stay away from this movie unless it's halloween and you want to watch hilariously bad scary(without the scares) movies.
One note of interest is the acting of Leslie Nielsen. It's not that great, but it is odd to see him act seriously.