SPOOKTOBER III: The Return
The only thing worse than a sequel is a trilogy
Oh baby, it's that time again. Time to dance with the spirits, worship Satan, and spill the blood of the innocent. Which is to say, put on cookie pants, ignore the shitty weather outside, watch a bunch of scary movies and write about them.
Last year was a success, insofar as I wrote a lot of things that very few people read. This year, I'm a little busier in my professional life, so my time is a bit more constrained. I'm going to try and avoid long form reviews (unless the mood strikes me), and try to work out a more brief movie reviewing system. I hate giving out scores, so I'll focus on what's interesting (or what's not), what I thought about it, what other movies it reminds me of, and any other inscrutable opinions that pop into my mind while watching it.
[My brilliant wife came through with a great idea. The summary of my reviews should be Remarkably Good, Unremarkably Good, Remarkably Bad, and Unremarkably Bad. The worst sin of all is boredom.]
[My brilliant wife came through with a great idea. The summary of my reviews should be Remarkably Good, Unremarkably Good, Remarkably Bad, and Unremarkably Bad. The worst sin of all is boredom.]
Think of this as a long form twitter feed for horror movie reviews. It'll be like if Eric Garland had some GAME THEORY about the universe of the The Ghoulies instead of Putin's Russia. Which is to say, this will be 10,000 times more important than anything that a coked out #resistance poster says.
Anyway, thanks for tagging along again, and I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of weirdness we can get into this year.
Semper splatter
Prom Night (1980)
Paul Lynch
"They don't want you in their game."
I settled on Prom Night almost by default. When I woke up on this dismal, rainy Sunday morning and turned on the TV, Showtime Extreme (home of only the finest films that the premium cable package can offer) was showing Scream 3. I have only vague memories of seeing Scream 3 in the theater, but I remembered hating it. I gave it about 10 minutes before I had to bail out of extreme embarrassment for myself and Courtney Cox.
So I signed up for a month of the Shudder streaming service, and looked for a teen slasher that might help me transition into Spooktober with help from boobs and blood.
I hadn't seen Prom Night before today, but I knew that it had Jamie Lee Curtis, and was one of the early titans of the 80's teen slasher subgenre. Beyond that, the only other context I had for the film was the VHS cover art which intrigued me at Blockbuster Video as a kid. It's Jamie Lee as prom queen, holding a bouquet and a bloody axe. My dad was definitely not a horror film fan, so 10 year old me never got to find out why this nice looking girl would kill everyone at her prom like a psycho lumberjack.
The tagline even suggests that she's going to take out her bloody vengeance on a room full of teenagers, which I guess would make people think of Carrie? The cheap chicanery of VHS video distributors is a long-lost art form.
What's it about: 6 years after the inadvertent(?) killing of a young girl, the children who were responsible for it start to face bloody retribution during their (titular) prom night
What was interesting: Easily the most interesting thing about Prom Night, is how quickly you realize that this is NOT a teen slasher. This is a carefully paced, intriguingly shot American (or maybe Canadian) giallo film. We talked a lot about giallo last year, but rather than having to pick back through a bunch of year old reviews, it's a genre of film that was made famous by Italian directors such as Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Dario Argento. The word itself means yellow in Italian, and references the pulp crime and thriller novels of the 50's and 60's which typically had a yellow cover.
Giallo films are usually highly stylized, feel a little dirty, and involve a sordid and sometimes supernatural tale of revenge, murder, greed, and/or sex. Like any good pulp novel, they're a bit cheap around the edges, but they really scratch that itch when you want something a little filthy and perverse.
I know nothing about the history of Prom Night, but I'm going to guess that Paul Lynch was a big fan of the films of Argento and especially Bava. The shots are beautifully constructed, and the little touches throughout (especially using reflection and shadow to build tension) are straight out of Bay of Blood. It's unfortunate that Paul Lynch's career dissolved into television, because there's some real talent here.
The first kill in the movie (other than the little girl plummeting to her death at the beginning) doesn't occur until the third act gets going. That's a long time to wait for blood in a slasher, but here it works perfectly. Each of the characters are funny, or interesting, or completely despicable, and the film gives you time to get to know them before...well...you know.
The twist (which you can see hurtling toward you like a giant flaming locomotive) is fun, and there's no pointless lingering on the after effects or trauma from all of the child murder, because the credits roll as soon as the climax lands.
The idea of taking this kind of story into the setting of an American high school is brilliant. So I guess what I'm saying is that Paul Lynch was ahead of the curve, and all the credit Rian Johnson got for Brick should be redirected. Lynch should be given the reins for the next standalone Star Wars film.
Other films I thought of: Obviously, the giallo films of Argento and Bava are excellent places to start if you want to understand more about this genre. Don't Torture a Duckling and Bay of Blood are artsier, but similar enough. Prom Night is really not a slasher and is so far away from films like Carrie and Halloween that there's almost no comparison other than "Jamie Lee Curtis is in it" or "there's a bloody scene at a prom." And that's ok. Different is good.
Miscellany: There's a pervert janitor character that exists to distract you from who could be the actual killer, and this is the face he makes after a teenage girl moons him:
Still more qualified and less lecherous than Brett Kavanaugh.
Recommendation: A tight 90 of bloody teenage revenge? You betcha.
Remarkably Good.
"They don't want you in their game."
I settled on Prom Night almost by default. When I woke up on this dismal, rainy Sunday morning and turned on the TV, Showtime Extreme (home of only the finest films that the premium cable package can offer) was showing Scream 3. I have only vague memories of seeing Scream 3 in the theater, but I remembered hating it. I gave it about 10 minutes before I had to bail out of extreme embarrassment for myself and Courtney Cox.
So I signed up for a month of the Shudder streaming service, and looked for a teen slasher that might help me transition into Spooktober with help from boobs and blood.
I hadn't seen Prom Night before today, but I knew that it had Jamie Lee Curtis, and was one of the early titans of the 80's teen slasher subgenre. Beyond that, the only other context I had for the film was the VHS cover art which intrigued me at Blockbuster Video as a kid. It's Jamie Lee as prom queen, holding a bouquet and a bloody axe. My dad was definitely not a horror film fan, so 10 year old me never got to find out why this nice looking girl would kill everyone at her prom like a psycho lumberjack.
The tagline even suggests that she's going to take out her bloody vengeance on a room full of teenagers, which I guess would make people think of Carrie? The cheap chicanery of VHS video distributors is a long-lost art form.
What's it about: 6 years after the inadvertent(?) killing of a young girl, the children who were responsible for it start to face bloody retribution during their (titular) prom night
What was interesting: Easily the most interesting thing about Prom Night, is how quickly you realize that this is NOT a teen slasher. This is a carefully paced, intriguingly shot American (or maybe Canadian) giallo film. We talked a lot about giallo last year, but rather than having to pick back through a bunch of year old reviews, it's a genre of film that was made famous by Italian directors such as Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Dario Argento. The word itself means yellow in Italian, and references the pulp crime and thriller novels of the 50's and 60's which typically had a yellow cover.
Giallo films are usually highly stylized, feel a little dirty, and involve a sordid and sometimes supernatural tale of revenge, murder, greed, and/or sex. Like any good pulp novel, they're a bit cheap around the edges, but they really scratch that itch when you want something a little filthy and perverse.
I know nothing about the history of Prom Night, but I'm going to guess that Paul Lynch was a big fan of the films of Argento and especially Bava. The shots are beautifully constructed, and the little touches throughout (especially using reflection and shadow to build tension) are straight out of Bay of Blood. It's unfortunate that Paul Lynch's career dissolved into television, because there's some real talent here.
The first kill in the movie (other than the little girl plummeting to her death at the beginning) doesn't occur until the third act gets going. That's a long time to wait for blood in a slasher, but here it works perfectly. Each of the characters are funny, or interesting, or completely despicable, and the film gives you time to get to know them before...well...you know.
The twist (which you can see hurtling toward you like a giant flaming locomotive) is fun, and there's no pointless lingering on the after effects or trauma from all of the child murder, because the credits roll as soon as the climax lands.
The idea of taking this kind of story into the setting of an American high school is brilliant. So I guess what I'm saying is that Paul Lynch was ahead of the curve, and all the credit Rian Johnson got for Brick should be redirected. Lynch should be given the reins for the next standalone Star Wars film.
Other films I thought of: Obviously, the giallo films of Argento and Bava are excellent places to start if you want to understand more about this genre. Don't Torture a Duckling and Bay of Blood are artsier, but similar enough. Prom Night is really not a slasher and is so far away from films like Carrie and Halloween that there's almost no comparison other than "Jamie Lee Curtis is in it" or "there's a bloody scene at a prom." And that's ok. Different is good.
Miscellany: There's a pervert janitor character that exists to distract you from who could be the actual killer, and this is the face he makes after a teenage girl moons him:
Still more qualified and less lecherous than Brett Kavanaugh.
Recommendation: A tight 90 of bloody teenage revenge? You betcha.
Remarkably Good.
Remarkably Good.
