The movie opens with a flashback where some sadistic pre-teens torment a girl who just wanted to play hide and seek with them. The girl falls out of a window and dies, setting the stage for a classic revenge tale. Fast forward 6 years and Jamie Lee Curtis is the girl’s grown up sister. Someone wants to kill all the kids that had a hand in involuntarily manslaughtering the poor girl out the window. Who is doing it? Gee, there are basically two prime suspects.

Being released in 1980, this movie was a pioneer of the format. So many later flicks had similar premises and tones. There was also much room for improvement, because Prom Night is far from perfect. The pacing was slow, and people weren’t dying fast enough. I liked that it tried to build suspense and maintain the mystery of who the killer might be. There were also many parallels with Halloween.

It takes a little too long to get to the meat and potatoes and then they weren’t even that flavorful. The age of this movie really shows. I’m sure it was outrageous and cutting edge at the time, but it’s nowhere near as memorable as other films from the genre at the time.

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