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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 18th

"PROM NIGHT" released in 1980

One of the better early slasher films of the 80's, scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis stars in one of her earliest roles in Prom Night. Carrying on the tradition started by Halloween two years before, a masked killer stalks and murders a group of teenagers on their prom night, believing they were responsible for the death a 10-year old girl six years before.

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Six years after the tragic death of their sister Robin (Tammy Bourne), brother and sister, Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Alex (Michael Tough) attend a memorial with their father (and school principal), Mr Hammond (Leslie Nielson), before preparing for the school prom to held that evening. Meanwhile, four teenagers - Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens), Jude (Joy Thompson), Wendy (Eddie Benton), and Kim's boyfriend Nick (Casey Stevens) - begin receiving obscene phone calls from an unknown figure. Strange occurrences continue throughout the day; Leonard Merch, a known rapist who was convicted for the death of Robin Hammond in 1974, has just escaped from prison, Kim and Kelly find the mirror in the women's locker room shattered (with a noticeably large shard missing), and Kelly, Jude, Wendy and Nick find torn copies of their yearbook pictures in their lockers. Later, as the night begins and Kim and Nick prepare to be crowned prom king and queen, an unidentified figure wearing a ski mask and all-black clothing kills Kelly with a mirror shard in the changing room. Unaware of the recent murder, Lt. McBride (George Touliatos), who had been staking out the prom, leaves as he is informed that child-killer Merch had just been recaptured. But if the murderer has already been caught, who is the masked killer still stalking the remaining teens? And just what is the dark secret that Wendy, Jude, and Nick share that has marked them for death on prom night?!

Top:   Their secret will come back to haunt (and kill) these kids!;

Above:   Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Kim Hammond

Producer Irwin Yablans, who had previously produced Halloween, developed the idea for Prom Night with director Paul Lynch, who had wanted to work on a horror film, and, in response to Yablan's suggestion that he utilize a holiday as a basis for the film, decided on building the premise around the event of the high school prom. Writer Robert Guza Jr., whom Lynch was an acquaintance of, had already written a screenplay about a group of teenagers whose involvement in a tragic event as children came back to haunt them, and was used as the central plot in the film and also provided the killer's motives for murder. Prom Night was having difficulty securing financing for the film until Jamie Lee Curtis signed onto the project, having already starred in multiple successful horror films at that time, Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980).

Kelly: Oh Drew, there was this horrible voice, on the telephone...
Drew: A heavy breather?
Kelly: No, worse than that!
Drew: He turned you on, didn't he? I ought to try that sometime.
Kelly: I'm serious!
Drew: So am I!

Top:   Kim and Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens) discover a large shard missing 

from the shattered mirror;   Above:   Kelly and Jude (Joy Thompson) find a 

surprise in their lockers

Filmed over twenty-four days in Toronto, Canada, most of the actors and extras playing the students were stage actors and recent theater graduates from the University of Toronto. David Mucci, who played troublemaker Lou, had a serious medical condition and of the scene where his character is decapitated, Mucci was so terrified that something may happen to him while his body was immobilized underneath the stage, that director Lynch had to hold his hand during the entire shot to assure him everything would be all right (see photo below). After production wrapped, Paramount Pictures expressed interest in distributing the movie, but only in fewer than 300 theaters, whereas Avco Embassy Pictures offered to release it in 1200 theaters and built a massive marketing campaign around the film. In response, Paramount released their own independent slasher film, Friday the 13th (1980) two months earlier and started a huge horror franchise that still continues to this day.

Kim Hammond: You seem a little anxious, Wendy. By the way, who are going with tonight?
Wendy Richards: It's not who you go with, honey. It's who takes you home.

Top:   Wendy (Eddie Benton) meets her deserved demise!

Above:   The prom is officially over when Lou's head is thrown on stage.

For Jamie Lee Curtis, Prom Night was one of three horror films she starred that were released in 1980 - The Fog and Terror Train being the other two - and firmly established her reign as Hollywood's scream queen!

Released in 1980 Prom Night received generally negative reviews, but was still a moderate success at the box office. This success enabled a sequel, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) to be made, introducing the recurring villain of the series, the murderous ghoul Mary Lou Maloney. Two more sequels quickly followed with Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990) and Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil (1992). In May 2007, cameras again rolled on a new Prom Night movie, this time a loosely based remake starring Brittany Snow and Johnathon Schaech, who plays a character similar to the Leonard Merch character of the original, Richard Fenton; a psychotic former teacher obsessed with one of his students and breaks out of prison on prom night to kill her friends and take her for himself!

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