Halloween Horrorfest 2018: HELLO, MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II (1987)

Ahhhhh, this is more like it.  I feel better after my ordeal with Zombie Hunter already.

In this film, Lisa Schrage is billed with the ‘featuring’ part of the cast.  This is a sin.  She is this movie.  But we'll get to that later...

Much like the 2005 Venom that I covered earlier, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II feels like the start of a franchise.  In fact, I wonder if it would be better remembered if it was released under its original title of The Haunting of Hamilton High.  Other than the name of the school, there’s nothing connecting this good ol’ slab of Canuckploitation (Its Canadian origins are obvious every time female lead Wendy Lyon opens her mouth) with the Jamie Curtis original.  And it’s a helluva lot better.

Lyon plays Vickie, a sweet young thing who, while foraging for a prom dress accidentally unleashes the spirit of Mary Lou Maloney.  Maloney, who was a hard-living gal, was about to be crowned prom queen when her jilted boyfriend accidentally dropped a stink bomb on her.  She went up in flames and died.  The jilted boyfriend grew up to be high school principal Michael Ironside, while the boy she jilted him for became the town priest (played by Richard Monette).  Slowly, Mary Lou takes over Vickie’s body and sets out to get her revenge--and finally wear the prom queen’s crown.

As you can probably tell, this isn’t the most serious film in the world.  But unlike other movies of this time which tried to take the edge off with some laughs, screenwriter Ron Oliver knows how to walk that line.  The mix doesn’t lean too far one way or the other and the humor--save for the trope of naming characters after horror movie directors, which wasn’t as eye-rollingly obvious as it was back in the 80‘s--tends to come from the characters and doesn’t feel forced.  It’s paced really well so the 97 minutes just move.  Plus we get the novelty of Michael Ironside being something of a protaganist, which he does in a subdued, measured way.

But there are two things that makes this film work so well.  Firstly, it’s got these wonderful surreal touches and flourishes that make it stand out.  Apparently some of them, like the scene of Vickie being sucked into a chalkboard (complete with swimming letters!) and the nude Lyon stalking through the locker room in search of prey, were reshoots done by Oliver after the producers complained that the film submitted by director Bruce Pittman was unreleasable.  Granted, some of those small touches don’t quite work--I can do without the living rocking horse with the Freddie Kruger tongue or the exploding bible on top of Mary Lou’s grave--but the bulk of them are so quick and so subtle that it adds to a sense of unease as our heroine transitions from Sweet Little Gal to Bombastic Hellraiser.

Secondly, and most importantly, there is Lisa Schrage.  A Toronto actress who only appeared in five theatrical movies and a handful of television shows, Schrage is Mary Lou Maloney.  She's only at the beginning and end of the film, with the rest being quick cuts and subliminal bits in the spaces in between, but she makes the most of her screen time.  The camera is always drawn to her and her startlingly blue eyes, and she plays up being this 50‘s bombshell with a great deal of energy and gusto.  I am convinced Lyons and Schrage collaborated on the character, as Lyons’ performance when she’s taken over by Mary Lou is consistent with what Schrage brings to the table.  She towers over this film like a freakin’ skyscraper of awesomeness, and it’s a wonder why her career was so short.

Oliver did write and direct a second Prom Night sequel that didn’t work, and it’s easy to see why.  Much like Robert Englund and Freddie Kruger, Scrage so embodied the character of Mary Lou that her absence leaves a big Black Hole of Nuttin’ in Prom Night III: Last Kiss.  The fact that Oliver played the third entry for laughs didn’t help much either.  Maybe if he acted quicker on the follow-up, when Schrage was still in the business, the follow-up would have caught on, and a franchise would have been born.

This is a great movie.  It’s a personal favorite of mine.  You have to see this movie.

How YOU Can Curate The 2nd Half Of The Horrorfest!

There's still time to help curate this year's Halloween Horrorfest

If you donate $31 to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network before October 15th and send me the receipt proving you did, you can name one movie I have to watch during the Horrorthon.  Keep in mind there are some things I won’t do (so no Eli Fucking Roth movies, for example), and it has to be a movie I can find.  If you’re an independent filmmaker and are willing to make the donation, by all means send me the film.  I will do as many as I can before October 31st, and those I can I will view in the days after Halloween during ‘Beyond Halloween Horrorfest.'