HELLO MARY LOU - PROM NIGHT 2 (1987)

 

DIRECTED by Bruce Pittman

SCREENPLAY by Ron Oliver

STARRING - Michael Ironside as Principal Bill "Billy" Nordham,  Steve Atkinson as Young Billy Nordham,  Wendy Lyon as Vicki Carpenter,  Justin Louis as Craig Nordham,  Richard Monette as Father Buddy Cooper,  Robert Lewis as Young Buddy Cooper,  Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou Maloney,  Lorretta Bailey as Mary Lou Maloney (creature),  Terri Hawkes as Kelly Hennenlotter,  Beverley Hendry as Monica Waters,  Brock Simpson as Josh,  Beth Gondek as Jess Browning,  Wendell Smith as Walt Carpenter,  Judy Mahbey as Virginia Carpenter,  John Pyper-Ferguson as Eddie Wood

PLOT - In 1957 Prom Queen Mary Lou Maloney was burnt to death when a prank to humiliate her by her jilted boyfriend went horribly wrong.

Fast forward a few decades to 1987 - Student Vicki Carpenter is looking forward to her own prom night. After her religious mother refuses to buy her a prom dress, Vicki discovers an old chest in the school's basement. The chest contains the crown and shawl of Mary Lou Maloney. Vicki decides to keep them but her actions unwittingly awake the unquiet spirit of Mary Lou - NO-ONE takes Mary Lou's prom queen crown and very soon her bitter ghost embarks on a murderous rampage...

PERFORMANCES - A usual practice in straight to VHS movies at the time (especially in the horror genre) was to have a cast of actors consisting mainly of unknowns and then add a more well known (or at least a "cult" actor) appearing for a couple of scenes to add their name for marquee value. In the case of Prom Night 2 that actor is Michael Ironside, although in this case he's actually playing one of the main characters who's integral to the plot, rather than just an extended cameo.

Ironside plays Bill Nordham - the principal of the highschool where the majority of the film takes place.

At first Nordham appears to be a fairly standard headteacher - appearing to be tough but fair and dedicated to his school and profession (and let's face it - if you where a highschool kid you certainly wouldn't want to give your headteacher any shit if he was Michael bloody Ironside).

However there's more to Principle Bill than meets the eye. Because Bill has a past, in 1957, Bill was the jilted boyfriend of Prom Queen Mary Lou Maloney. It was Bill who dropped the firework that set Mary Lou on fire and ultimately killed her (a quick note here about Steve Atkinson who plays the teenage Bill in the flashback prologue - he looks EXACTLY what you'd expect a 17 year old Michael Ironside to look like. A great bit of casting there).

Bill is obviously haunted by his past actions as is his friend Buddy Cooper (Richard Monette) who supplied him with the firework that killed Mary Lou. In fact Buddy is so wracked with guilt that he turned to God and became a Catholic priest.

This guilt at the heart of Bill drives the character throughout the film, and Ironside sells it well.

The rest of the cast are your usual 20/30 somethings playing teenagers that you usually get in these types of film. 

The final girl/main heroine is Vicki (Wendy Lyon) who ticks all the standard final girl tropes - pretty, virginal, slightly repressed but with an inner strength that helps save her from becoming Kebab meat like her friends. So far so standard - the difference here though is that about three quarters of the way through the film Vicki actually gets possessed by the vengeful ghost of Mary Lou - basically our hero becomes the main villain.

You can tell that Wendy Lyon is having a lot more fun playing the vampish, seductive bad girl that is Mary Lou (following the lead of Lisa Schrage who plays her in the flashback and when we see her in her final resurrected form) - she just oozes mischievous and sexy menace. All in all a good show all round.

SFX - Prom Night 2 is one of those films that really goes all out with it's 80's era practical effects. They're great, it's one of those films which really makes you mourn the days of the increasingly lost art that is practical special effects work.

Flesh melts, people get zapped by neon looking Emperor Palpatine style lightning, people get sucked into school blackboards that have become liquid like and we get a weird somehow alive rocking horse that sticks it's tongue out at us.

Best of all is Mary Lou's "zombie" form - burnt and nightmarish - she looks like the Bride of Freddy Krueger.

VIOLENCE - The violence in this movie starts out being fairly realistic as we see Mary Lou's prom night go horribly wrong when she gets burnt alive in front her entire school year.

Fast forward to the 80's and now that Mary Lou has joined the ranks of the vengeful undead it's fair to say that things begin to take a very surreal turn. So much so that the individual death scenes feel like they come straight out of an Elm Street movie. I've always been a huge fan of the Nightmare On Elm Street series so this similarity (OK - call it what it is - Knock-off) is one of the things that makes this film so enjoyable for me.

It appears that being undead has given Mary Lou demonic powers and my God does she use them. Every kill scene is incredibly surreal and imaginative - my favourite being the girl who gets crushed to death in a metal locker that's become like a hungry metal mouth.

Bizarrely, Mary Lou herself doesn't get "killed" at the end and she's firmly set up to return in a sequel which she did a few years later in Prom Night 3 - The Last Kiss. Clearly the producers thought they were onto the next big slasher villain but alas Mary Lou disappeared into horror history after her next outing. It's a shame she didn't return as she had a lot of potential. They should have done a movie where she meets Freddy Krueger and they battle it out with their assorted trippy powers - that would have been AWESOME !!!!!

RATING - I honestly didn't know what to expect going into this film but I found myself pleasantly surprised by it.

It's not a classic in the conventional sense but if you want to see a horror flick that really encapsulates what horror movies where like in the 80's then you really can't go far wrong with this.

4 and a half demonic prom Queens from Hell out of 5.

ART -