Out of all the horror movie series I've seen, the Prom Night series takes the cake for maintaining almost no continuity in its films. The first of which was a simple tale of revenge; the following two contained none of the original characters and revolved around the ghost of Mary Lou Maloney: a wicked prom queen who'll stop at nothing to get her crown and the man she desires. While I enjoyed the first of these two films, it's hardly surprising that movie-goers have written them off as laughable and pathetic. Although Prom Night 4 bears no relevance to its predecessors, it gets its scariness from having a very dark villain who pulls no punches whatsoever even if the entire film is loaded with the most predictable horror movie clichés and contains no originality. When we first meet Father Jonas, he's praying fervently about his hatred for sluts and whores. Unsurprisingly, this hatred is what motivates him to kill two high school students making out in a car on the night of their prom. Fast forward 33 years later, Father Jonas isn't in jail but confined to small room beneath his church where his keepers rely on heavy sedatives to keep his evil at bay. Luckily for Father Jonas, a new priest has been assigned to look after him and he escapes by nightfall to return to countryside seminary he remembers from his younger days except now it's a summer home in which four thrill-seeking teenagers are indulging in sex and alcohol. Why not? It's their prom night! It's here that the horror-movie clichés are ubiquitous: for instance, upon their arrival the teens learn that the very secluded house has been burgled, but they choose not to call the police since they're not supposed to be there. The rest of the film features the murders of the two most promiscuous teens, calls to the police that are ineffective, and a lengthy game of cat and mouse in which Father Jonas chases Megan-the most innocent of the teens. Throughout it all, the priest maintains the same dark facial expression and goes about his rampage undeterred. If the effect isn't chilling than it's certainly gruesome, especially since the most undeterred villains in previous horror films couldn't have been human and either wore white masks and shredded coveralls or stalked their victims in their dreams. The fans of the Prom Night series who wrote off the Mary Lou storyline as crap will enjoy this film for being a simple slasher featuring rage-filled murderer, but so will all horror movie fans looking for a creepy and cliché-ridden thrill.
Review of Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil
