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Prom
Night 2 - Hello Mary-Lou |
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“Prom Night 2” opens with a prologue set in 1957.
Mary Lou Maloney is the most popular girl at Hamilton
High, proving to be ahead of her time as she drinks,
curses, engages in sex, and generally acts like some
hussy out of an Ed Wood movie. On prom night she ditches
Bill, her milquetoast boyfriend, to get it on with one of
the school’s bad boys. Bill decides to get revenge by
dropping a stink bomb on Mary Lou during the coronation,
but it accidentally catches her dress and sends her up
in flames.
Flash forward to 1987, where Mary Lou’s spirit seems to
still be lingering in the halls of Hamilton. Virginal
prom queen candidate, Vicki Carpenter, has her hands
full with prom preparations, college applications,
strict parents, a devoted boyfriend…the usual trappings
of teen life. When her friend accidentally releases
Mary Lou from purgatory, and is subsequently murdered,
Vicki begins having disturbing visions of the
long-deceased prom queen. Before long, she is dressing
and acting like Mary Lou, who has taken over her mind
and body in an effort to settle the score with Bill (who
is now a parent and the principal of the high school) and
slaughter anyone who stands in the way of
reclaiming her crown.
The original “Prom Night” was a decent (if not typically
routine) slasher flick that came out in 1980, the year
that ushered in literally dozens of copycats of the
“Halloween” formula. A lot of these movies weren’t all
that memorable, and while “Prom Night” did garner a small
following, it’s sort of surprising that someone would buy
the rights to it seven years later and produce a sequel
that would eventually play out into a four-movie franchise.
It’s even more surprising that the slasher theatrics were
scrapped (the only connection between the two movies is
the school name) in favor of the supernatural teeny-kill
crossbreed (although the then-success of the “Nightmare on
Elm Street” sequels probably had a little more than
something to do with that, but I’ll get into that later).
Thankfully, this sequel manages to do quite well on its
own due, in large part, to some solid direction and acting.
Director Bruce Pittman keeps the pace pretty tight and the
ambience of the film in an almost constant dream-like state.
Scenes flow into one another very nicely and your mind
isn’t given much of a chance to dwell on a few of the
unnecessary plot points that might have otherwise dragged
a movie like this down. What surprised me most was the
performance of Wendy Lyon (Vicki); while the rest of the
actors turn out passable (and almost cliché) characters,
Ms Lyon seems to have given it her all, metamorphosing from
droll-good girl to brazen-bad girl with some credibility
and ease. Lisa Schrage, as Mary Lou, is a close contender.
While you don’t get to actually see much of her, it’s clear
that she’s the embodiment of the fifties B-movie bad girl.
The performances of the two women are quite consistent,
and really help the essence of Mary Lou come to life.
While Michael Ironside is usually a bonus in a horror flick,
I think he’s horribly miscast as the namby-pamby school
principal and former flame of Mary Lou, not being able to
restrain that undeniable eeriness that I loved him for in
“Scanners” and “Visiting Hours”.
What’s probably the most oft-criticized thing about
“Prom Night 2” is that it shamelessly lifts ideas from other
movies, something I would be hard-pressed to refute, but
very much admire the deliberate way in which it is done.
Of course, the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies are the most
common comparison as they seem to be the reason for this
sequel’s existence: the dead killer who preys on the
children of the adults who would like to forget the past,
the lucid dream-sequences, and an ending that practically
re-enacts that of the first “Nightmare” film. Mary Lou has
even been likened to the female Freddy Krueger, (both died
in flames…wisecracks and all) but I think that her black
humor has a nice cynical edge that works much better than
some of the drivel that came out of Freddy in his latter
years. “Carrie” is another obvious influence (the religious
fervor of Vicki’s mother, a climactic prom massacre) as well
as “The Exorcist” (demonic possession, the words “Help Me”
bubble up on a chalkboard in one scene, and one character
refers to something as “Linda Blairsville”). A bit of John
Hughes-like teen angst is interjected in the forms of a
pregnancy scare, conflict between high school hierarchy, and
a horny computer geek is thrown in for good measure.
“Prom Night 2” was followed by the inferiorly campy “Prom
Night 3: The Last Kiss”. Mary Lou returns to Hamilton High
a seduces a male student into bringing her more victims.
“Prom Night 4: Deliver Us From Evil” returned to slasher form,
this time pitting a group of high-schoolers against a
psychotic priest. While anything is possible, don’t expect a
fifth installment anytime soon.
Some pretty far out stuff, although nothing visceral. A girl
is hung and thrown out of a window, a priest is stabbed to
death with a crucifix, one guy’s head gets totally fried via
electrical charge that emits from his computer, a girl is
speared by a neon light, and in one truly inspired moment,
a naked Vicki stalks her best friend through a locker room.
The friend attempts to take refuge in one of the lockers,
only to be spontaneously crushed. “Prom Night 2” is also
permeated by a bunch of all-around creepy images. There’s
an incestuous kiss between Vicki and her father, and I
absolutely got the shivers from that fucked up rocking horse
that comes to life. Mary Lou’s final showdown at the prom
is pretty cool too, as her rotting corpse bursts from Vicki’s
body and replenishes itself.
Some good oldies tunes, and just about every one that
contains the name Mary Lou. The rest of it sounds like
a slightly generic take off of that in the “Nightmare
on Elm Street” movies.
“Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2” may be a bit of a charlatan,
but it sure ain’t terrible. It may lose points on
originality, but manages to hold it’s own in a lot of
instances. I think that had it not been promoted as a
sequel to the original “Prom Night” (it originally beared
the title of “The Haunting of Hamilton High”), it might
have been better received in some circles, but that’s just
speculation. Either way, “Prom Night 2” may put a lot of
people off, but sure to gain some fans.
Review By: The ScareMaker
