Prom Night (1980) on Netflix
Four children scare Robin Hammond at an abandoned convent, and she falls to her death. Six years later, her sister Kim prepares for the senior prom while classmates get anonymous calls.
- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb5.3/1024,272 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes45%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1974, four eleven-year-olds, Wendy Richards, Jude Cunningham, Kelly Lynch and Nick McBride, play hide-and-seek inside a disused convent. When ten-year-old Robin Hammond tries to join the game, the group frightens her and she falls through a window to her death. The four promise each other to say nothing, and somebody hidden watches them run off. Six years later Robin's sister Kim and her twin brother Alex, now high school seniors, get ready for the prom, which falls on the anniversary of the death.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Prom Night (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Prom Night's prom scenes were shot to disco hits the film could not afford to license, so producer Peter Simpson ordered composer Paul Zaza to write replacement disco songs in five days that closely copied the originals, even their tempo.
- Eve Plumb of The Brady Bunch was slated to play Kim Hammond in Prom Night, but was passed over after Jamie Lee Curtis's manager contacted director Paul Lynch about the role; Curtis starred instead.
SPOILER
Director Paul Lynch wanted little gore, but distributor Avco Embassy mandated graphic violence, so Lou Farmer is beheaded in the finale; the effects team built a prop floor for actor David Mucci to put his head through, creating the illusion of a severed head.- Similarities between the songs prompted a $10 million lawsuit against the producers of Prom Night, which was eventually settled for $50,000.
- Canadian actor Robert A. Silverman was cast as the janitor Mr. Sykes while still recovering from being struck by a car three years earlier; director Paul Lynch believed his off-kilter performance, caused by his injuries, made the character more mysterious.
- The abandoned convent seen at the start of Prom Night was really the Langstaff Jail Farm in Richmond Hill, which was demolished shortly after filming.
- Director Paul Lynch said he struggled to secure financing for Prom Night until Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to star, and she was paid $30,000 for her appearance in the film.
- Film scholar Richard Nowell considers Prom Night one of the most influential slasher films of the 1980s for rearranging Halloween's story structure into a whodunit, and filmmaker Joe Dante said the film's success made the slasher film a viable genre.
