Prom Night (film series)

The *Prom Night* series is a Canadian slasher franchise made up of five movies. The first three take place at the fictional Hamilton High School, while the fourth shifts to a church and a house. It started in 1980 with *Prom Night*, directed by Paul Lynch and produced by Peter R. Simpson. That film, about teenagers stalked by a masked killer at their prom, made nearly $15 million at the box office. The next movie, *Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II* (1987), was originally meant to be a standalone film, but producer Simpson and his company Simcom turned it into a sequel. This second entry introduced a supernatural angle with the vengeful ghost of Mary Lou Maloney, a teen who died on her prom night in 1957. Its only link to the first film was that both happen at the same high school. A second sequel featuring Mary Lou, *Prom Night III: The Last Kiss*, came out in 1990. The fourth film, *Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil* (1991), dropped the Mary Lou story for a new plot about teenagers terrorized by a priest possessed by a demonic entity, and the action is not set at a prom. In 2008, Screen Gems released a reboot, also called *Prom Night*, which is a loose remake sharing only the basic premise of a stalker at a prom, with different plot, characters, and backstory.

**Films**

**Prom Night (1980)** In the first film, four children—Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick—accidentally kill a girl named Robin during a game. They swear to keep it secret, and a sex offender is blamed for her death. Six years later, Robin’s older sister Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her twin brother Alex are getting ready for their senior prom at Hamilton High. The prom falls on the sixth anniversary of Robin’s death. Kim’s father, the school principal (Leslie Nielsen), becomes alarmed when the sex offender escapes from a psychiatric hospital the day before the prom. On prom night, Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick get threatening phone calls, and Jude, Kelly, and Wendy are killed in violent ways by a killer in a ski mask. Kim and Nick are crowned prom queen and king. While waiting backstage, a bully named Lou takes Nick’s crown. The killer mistakes Lou for Nick and decapitates him; his head rolls onto the stage, causing panic. Nick and Kim fight the killer on the dance floor. Kim hits him in the head with the blunt side of an axe, and he stumbles outside.