Prom Night III: The Last Kiss

Best cover ever? 

Year: 1990
Director: Ron Oliver, Peter R. Simpson
Writer: Ron Oliver
Genre: Horror: Comedy

Prom Night is one of my favorite 80s horror films. Even the sequel was a pretty fun film, although it wasn't really correlated much to the first. Prom Night III takes off at some point after 2 and brings back the Mary Lou Maloney character. Since she was one of my favorite things about the 2nd film this just made III even more entertaining.

In this film for some reason Mary Lou's spirit is disturbed. She awakens and finds herself smitten with a rather homely young teenager at her old school. She reveals herself to him and becomes a sort of succubus. She wishes to help this young man with all his high school problems, but in the process ends up killing a handful of people.

Prom Night III is one hundred percent a horror comedy. Normally, being confronted with the corpse of one of your teachers you might really freak out. But nope, instead of that Mary Lou just gets a verbal lashing. In a way, this film is almost completely a 80s comedy just with the addition of murders going on, and Mary Lou's creepy spirit.

While watching the film it felt so very much like a teenage dream - with a hint of nightmare. Because of this I really enjoyed it. The only way I've ever seen this film on DVD is in a double pack with Prom Night 4. Unfortunately the final Prom Night isn't nearly as goofball as this...

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Year: 1987
Director: Bruce Pittman
Writer: Ron Oliver
Genre: Horror: Possession

Prom Night is one of my favorite alternate-to-Carrie high school horror flicks. I really love Jamie Lee Curtis in that movie and overall it was a little too 70s/80s but that made it better. Because of my attachments to the original I was curious how I would or would not like Prom Night II. As it turns out, it's still a pretty fun movie although it's not really attached to the first.

In this film there is basically an alternate past made up where a young slutty high school girl gets burned to death by her scorned lover during the prom queen crowning. From then on her spirit has been contained in a costume trunk (horror movie logic!). Of course, some drab girl unwittingly opens it and gets herself possessed by this powerful personality. It's a neat little story and definitely fun to watch the character that was set up as meek become so completely wild.

I liked it a lot more than I expected myself to. Much like the remade Prom Night I can't place my finger on why these movies even share the same title. They are mostly singular entities not connected by any story. It must be due to the ability to market things best when they are from established franchises. Either way, don't look at this as a sequel but just as a cool teen horror flick.

Incredibly, the Prom Night series spawned two more features after this. I've not seen them yet but am hoping to pick up the double feature DVD soon. Although somehow it is easy to assume they won't be anywhere near the quality of this one...