Director: Paul Lynch
Screenplay: William Gray, Robert Guza Jr.
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens, Eddie Benton, Antoianette Bower, Michael Tough
Country: Canada
Running Time: 92 min
Year: 1980
The 1980’s was arguably the decade of the slasher movie, from the supernatural shenanigans of Freddy, Jason and Chucky, to the decidedly more human horrors of Pieces and The Burning, one of the standout trends was that of naming your film after a holiday or event. Arguably started in the 1970’s with the likes of Black Christmas and John Carpenters seminal Halloween, we saw films with titles like My Bloody Valentine, Silent Night Deadly Night and this, 1980’s Prom Night.
The story starts in 1974 as a group of children converge on an abandoned building to play a game of “killers”, a creepy version of hide and seek which quickly turns nasty when young Robin Hammond gets involved. Creeped out by the game, Robin accidentally falls to her death from a second storey window and the other kids decide to run away, never to tell anyone what happened, instead letting the authorities believe Robin’s death was at the hands of Leonard Murch, a notorious sex offender currently on the run in the area. Six years later and the group, along with Robin’s older sister Kim, are about to graduate and looking forward to their prom. But the past is coming back to haunt them as the group receives a series of obscene phone calls and mysterious photographs ripped from their year book. Who knows about Robin Hammond’s death and what will happen to this group of friends on prom night?
Prom Night is a film that is clearly riding on two things – the popularity of John Carpenter’s Halloween from two years previous and the rising star of Jamie Lee Curtis who was very much typecast as a “scream queen” in the early 1980’s. But it also very clearly serves as a more foundational template for the slasher renaissance of the late 1990’s, with elements of the plot clearly having influenced the likes of Scream (which also directly references this film) and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The opening flashback scene is played surprisingly dark and sinister for a sequence featuring younger actors, particularly in how gruesome the death of Robin is, but with the cut to the “present day” part of the film, the narrative doesn’t quite manage to keep up that momentum. The story is a very slow burn affair, largely feeling more like a high school drama than a tense slasher, complete with soapy acting. Thankfully there’s some sinister moments peppered about to remind you what kind of film you’re watching and the fact that most of the kids are hiding their role in Robin’s death from Kim is a good touch. We do get to spend a lot more time with the kids to flesh out their characters during the first couple of acts, though, and the story does a decent enough job throwing some red herring’s out at the viewers. We have the recently escaped Murch, again on the run from the cops and strongly implicated to be involved in the mysterious happenings around the school, an angle that would be picked up with the character of Cotton Weary in Scream 2. There’s also a creepy janitor, a token mean girl who seems to be plotting something, Robin’s father who was first on the scene when her body was discovered, and the loose end of a witness to the children’s game who we never see in the opening scene. There’s quite a few threads hanging before the final act is kicked off on prom night with a super cheesy Saturday Night Fever esque dance scene.
Despite this slower build up, when we do finally get to the meat of the film, the kills we get to see are nicely orchestrated. Excellently shot by director Paul Lynch and DoP Robert C New, they manage to be suitably scary and gruesome without being overly explicit (with the exception of a neatly staged decapitation) as the killer stalks the kids around the school one by one. The killer themself is a simple but striking visual motif, dressed all in black with a face covering balaclava, armed for the most part with a shard of mirror, visually representing the shard of glass that cuts poor Robin’s throat in the opening sequence. There’s definitely a sense of whodunnit building up around the kills towards a final reveal of who’s been bumping off the teens and the final shot of the balaclava coming off is fairly satisfying if ultimately a little predictable.
On a whole the acting is decent enough to watch, fitting into its teen drama vibe well. Being in their early to mid 20s, though, the actors are starting to age ever so slightly out of being able to convincingly play teenagers. Jamie Lee Curtis is obviously the star of the show here, playing Kim Hammond as less of the innocent teen that Laurie Strode was in Halloween. Eddie Benton as Wendy is a particularly good standout in the cast, the manipulative girl who managed to successfully cover up Robin’s death with her influence in the group and sees Kim as a love rival. The strangest addition to the cast, at least for someone who grew up knowing him as primarily a comedy actor, is Leslie Nielsen as Mr Hammond. He’s great here, playing the role of a father still struggling with the grief of losing a daughter with a good degree of that intensity mirrored only by Antoinette Bower as his wife. It’s just a shame neither of them really have any meaningful screen time.
All of this is scored nicely by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer who manage to mix a menacing string driven instrumental soundtrack with some super funky disco tunes which play throughout the later prom sequences. It’s an odd juxtaposition but it works surprisingly well, especially as the kills occur alongside the more upbeat tunes on the soundtrack.
Prom Night is certainly not among the essentials of the 80s slasher flicks, feeling almost too drawn out in its middle act and ultimately too low stakes by the conclusion, but it’s a well put together film with some great characters and ideas; for fans of the genre it’s definitely worth a watch to be able to trace lines from the ideas explored here to later films in the genre.
Bonus Features
- Directors Cut
- Audio commentary with Paul Lynch, William Gray, Paul Jankiewicz
- Documentary: The Making of Prom Night
- Deleted Scenes from the TV Version
- Outtakes
- Trailers
- Radio Spots
- Image Gallery; Poster Gallery; Jamie Lee Curtis
This UHD release from Fokus Media is presented in a book format including both 4K and Blu-Ray versions of the film, as well as a CD of the soundtrack. It’s a nice looking set with the poster art boldly front and center on the packaging and, despite being a German language release, the film and all extras are available in English. The 4K transfer here is beautifully crisp with some striking colour and detail in the frames. Pleasingly we’re not getting any kind of digital clean up here, with some dust and negative marks still visible in some frames.
There’s a great selection of bonus features on offer to watch but the presentation leaves a little to be desired over some other boutique label releases. We get a “directors cut” of the film, presenting a TV version which had extra scenes inserted, however this is only presented in SD and is very poor quality. Thankfully the scenes themselves are presented separately; they all provide a little more character definition for the Hammond family. While they’re largely superfluous and would have bloated an already slower film, they definitely add to the red herring count and would have been interesting to see back in the main cut at a better quality.
There’s also the usual set of making of extras and radio interviews which open up the making of the film in different ways. Frustratingly the presentation here is a little weird, with the video playing out in a small offset frame that lets the films poster art take up a large chunk of the screen. Alongside some incredibly quiet audio this is slightly disappointing for what is a wonderfully presented release. There’s also a book accompanying the discs which is in German – but a little Google Translate magic will let you read this in no time!
If you’re interested in a copy of this great release of an intriguing slasher film, we have a competition running to give away up to five copies. This ends on the 1st June 2026 and you can find out how to enter here: https://blueprintreview.co.uk/2026/05/competition-win-prom-night-1980-uhd-blu-ray/
