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Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 12/19

PromN2
12/19: It seems the Prom Night franchise is in the business of ripping off well-known horror films.

The most obvious source is Carrie. In the original, there's also a lot of Halloween with, for some inexplicable reason, Saturday Night Fever thrown in. In the sequel, I saw plenty of familiarity from A Nightmare on Elm Street with the constant annoying references to The Exorcist. So I guess the appropriate title should've been A Nightmare on Exorcist Street: Carrie's Revenge Twice Over.

One thing is for sure: the sequel looks fresher, is less amateurish, gets right down to it quickly, and has more deaths and nudity than the original although there's no connection between these two, save for the same high school and one good line. However, for a 97-minute flick, it feels twice as long because there's a lot of filler with rip-offs of the aforementioned films and they're all stupid.

I'm surprised Michael Ironside, who just came off the success of Top Gun, appeared in this when I thought Scanners was enough for him. Then again, it's a Canadian film, and he is a Canadian. The rest of the cast is made up of untalented D-listers who aren't worth bothering with.

While watching A Nightmare on Exorcist Street: Carrie's Revenge Twice Over, I fail to understand what's so special about proms. I skipped mine because it had no significance. When I read that high school kids had spent thousands of dollars dressing up, getting their hair and nails done, renting a limo, and booking one night at a fancy hotel presumably to lose their virginity, I was like, "What the...?" And forget that Prom Queen crap; it's the most "who cares?" event of the whole thing.

All in all, the prom genre begins and ends with only Carrie.