Prom Night (1980)

Directed by Paul Lynch. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Eddie Benton, Casey Stevens, David Mucci, Mary Beth Rubens, Joy Thompson, Michael Tough, Leslie Nielsen, George Touliatos, Sheldon Rybowski, Jeff Wincott, Antoinette Bower. [R]

Stick Carrie, Halloween, and (believe it or not) Saturday Night Fever into a blender, and you get the idea for this tame early-80s slasher. A mundane and unimposing maniac menaces a handful of students on the night of their high school prom; could it be related in some way to the death of a child several years earlier that the victims accidentally caused and swore to never speak of again? Lacks a substantial filmmaker to give it suspense and style, and the teenage melodrama is as tedious as anything you could find over on the CW. The murder set pieces, which (aside from one key beheading) are discreet where its peers from the time were so often gratuitous, are all delayed until the last half-hour, and are mostly so peculiarly constructed and ineptly executed that they earn howls of derision instead of terror; with shocks and gore at such a premium, the ghastliest artifacts are seen in the clothing, hairstyles, and disco music. Followed by a handful of almost entirely unrelated sequels and a 2008 remake.

35/100