The original Prom Night is a quite straight ahead Halloween slasher film rip-off, even to the extent of starring Jamie Lee Curtis. I've never seen the sequel but from domino's description it definitely sounds as if it stole quite a few cues from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise that came along in the interim.
The first film isn't anything particularly outstanding - it has one neat extended stalk and slash sequence that moves from the school bathroom through some of the darkened classrooms and janitor closets ending up in a parking garage and in one particular car. But it is really a non sequitur sequence, given that the character we have been following gets killed!
One of the major flaws of slasher films is that usually most of the 'interesting' characterisation (i.e. giving characters some slight moment of individuality that sets them apart from the crowd and simultaneously marks them for death) occurs in the pre-murder stalking sequences and then with the murders things get reset to the main branch of ongoing narrative. Something like Argento's Inferno or Suspiria makes that ongoing narrative interesting in its own right, but unfortunatey Prom Night just returns to the main hall of the school for some more disco dancing scenes until another character decides to wander off on their own and get murderered.
The disco dancing scenes are cheesy fun though. Jamie Lee Curtis is surprisingly subdued in the lead role (but does liven up during a couple of the dance scenes!), to the point where I cannot exactly say what the point of her being in the film was, except to bring the Halloween crowd into the theatre. Speaking of which Leslie Neilsen is in the pre-credits sequence of the film but his presence is nothing to get excited about - he is only there for a minute or two at most and while Prom Night was made the same year he got revitalised as a comic actor in Airplane!, his part here seems much more to be the very tail end of his 'serious' roles.
tarpilot wrote:THE BURNING Tony Maylam, 1981
As Friday the 13th rip-offs go, unusually well-crafted, visually rich, and concerned with genuine stakes in its violence. There’s only one kill in the first 45 minutes, and in very rare form for the genre, the interplay between the film’s characters is based less in a puritanical look-down on their rampaging libidos than in their adolescent devotion to each other. The geek who can’t swim encounters nothing but empathy and protective camaraderie from his peers and the lone lunkhead horndog is skewered as a parody of the comparatively dim view of adolescence taken by so many other slashers (and what a weird mix of tones that premature ejaculation sequence is...). When the slaughters do come, they’re in the form of some of Tom Savini’s best and most gruesome work, with Maylam displaying a knack for when to hold a single image in the midst of chaos for maximum effect (something also in abundance with his later Split Second, a very fun sci-fi/horror neo-noir with Rutger Hauer in peak 80s-hangover mode). A genuine surprise that stands an outside chance at making my list.
The Burning was the first film for (blink and you'll miss her) Holly Hunter and (he's in it much longer) Jason Alexander (aka George from Seinfeld). It is also one of only two films written by Harvey Weinstein! I like the film a lot - it is pure exploitation but handles its generic backstory and slasher murders a lot more effectively (and ruthlessly) than the Friday The 13th series does. The canoe/raft scene is perhaps one of the classic scenes of the genre for quickly taking out a whole swathe of the supporting characters in one fell swoop!
I suppose the ending is also all the more effective for
actually being the end of Cropsy and not having had any sequels to dilute its impact.
In fact that whole ending is quite interesting - this guy is getting back at all teenagers in general for having been burned in a childish prank years before, and then our innocent teen heroes end up having to finish the job by burning him to death! Like fulfilling a inevitable prophecy in a way.
I also agree on Split Second - a very strange post-apocalyptic (the Thames Barrier wasn't very effective in this alternate reality) London serial killer film, sort of like The Element of Crime if Lars Von Trier had adhered more to well worn action movie tropes of grizzled cops paired up with rookie bookworm partners and had replaced the yellow filter with a moody dark blue one. It even includes a scene where Hauer has a fight with his boss at the police station over being such a maverick, which explains why he's ended up getting thrown off every police force in America and ended up in the hellhole that is London. But goddammit he gets the job
done! *Bangs desk emphatically*
Tony Maylam seems a odd choice to have directed a American summer camp slasher film. He had previously done the extremely staid pre-First World War yachting film The Riddle of the Sands but it seems that other veteran British directors were also 'slumming it' with American slasher films at that time, most notably Ken Hughes (Cromwell, Trials of Oscar Wilde, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 60s Casino Royale), whose last film was
Night School (which was Rachel Ward's first film and under the title Terror Eyes also got caught up in the whole video nasty scare, just as The Burning did, although Night School didn't stay on the list).
