Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)Directed by Bruce Pittman
By 1984 the slasher subgenre was slowly dying, it needed the proverbial shot in the arm to keep it alive. That shot came from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Elm Street brought a supernatural side and a new dimension to the subgenre. It was a massive success and one of the most loved movies ever, regardless of genre. With its success came a string of ripoffs and wannabes. Suddenly the supernatural element was all the rage in slasher movies. Movies like Dreamaniac, Bad Dreams, Deadly Dreams, Dreams in the Dark (wait, no that’s a Badlands song) were made after and were basically rip offs. Then you had movies, that were sequels to other successful slasher movies that took a complete right turn and “adopted” the Nightmare formula and story. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is one of the latter.
Prom Night II is a big change from the original classic (and albeit overrated in my opinion) Prom Night. The sequel is based around a girl named Mary Lou Maloney, whom was named Prom Queen in 1957. Mary Lou was a slut, theres really no other way to say it. She slept with pretty much every dude in the school, so she was “popular”. She was caught cheating on her date Billy, whom decided to get back at her by lighting off a stink bomb and dropping it by her while she was crowned. Of course, it went wrong like these things tend to do in slasher movies and Mary Lou was burned alive on the stage that night. Flash forward 30 years and Mary Lou’s ghost starts haunting the students, and possesses the main character. Will they be able to stop Mary Lou before she goes too far?
The backstory is slasher cliché, nothing really original. A lot of things are lifted from A Nightmare on Elm Street, there’s a part where a girl is hanged with a cape and its very reminiscent of Rod’s death in the first Nightmare. Mary Lou is burned alive, much like Freddy Krueger, she has supernatural powers like Krueger as well. Inanimate objects come to life and only the main character can see them, much like the dream sequences in Elm Street. There is a scene where Vicki’s (main character) rocking horse becomes possessed or something and it is genuinely unsettling.
The acting is actually quite decent, sure you have a fair amount of lousy wooden actors but for this subgenre the acting is above average. Michael Ironside plays Billy, the guy that accidentally sets Mary Lou on fire and later becomes principal. How odd of a transition is that?! Ironside is always pretty decent in most movies so I kind of expected a solid job from him. You have a lot of the stereotypical characters in this movie: The good girl Vicki, the slut Kelly, the stern catholic priest Father Cooper, and the uptight bitch mom of Vicki. Wendy Lyon does a pretty good job playing Vicki. Basically, she is playing two characters, the good girl Vicki and the girl possessed by Mary Lou. You can see and feel her personality change and it does have an impact on you while you watch the movie.
Special effects are often a big part of slasher films and they aren’t lacking here. Some of the deaths are pretty cool, like a girl getting crushed in a locker, that was impressive. The gore isn’t excessive but it is enough to satisfy. The scene where Mary Lou is on fire is very believable and you can feel the actress’s emotions expressed fully. The dream like sequences are also quite good, they basically look like something you would see in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. They’re well done and intense at times. Like I mentioned earlier the scene with the rocking horse is creepy and it’s animation is quite cool.
Is Prom Night 2 a classic? No, more like a footnote in the book of slasher films. The original Prom Night is well loved but I honestly enjoy the sequel more. It is fast paced, interesting and fun. I like the change of approach, even if it takes a lot from the Elm Street series because it attempted to establish itself as a standalone film other than a sequel. Mary Lou would continue to be a character in the series in Part 3, which I still have yet to watch. Part IV is yet another story, so basically this series is more of an anthology approach than a continuation, which is refreshing if you think about it. Can I recommend this movie? Probably not to the casual horror fan, but to a fan of slasher movies? Sure! It is better than most slashers, especially of that time. While it isn’t a masterpiece or even a top 20 slasher film, I still enjoy Prom Night 2 and I would give it a solid B-. Maybe my grade is a little higher because I’ve seen so much shit in my time, but I had fun watching it and that’s really all that matters.
