Prom Night

Prom Night (1980)

If you're not back by midnight...You won't be coming home!

At a high school senior prom, a masked killer stalks four teenagers who were responsible for the accidental death of a classmate six years prior.

Date of release
1980-07-18
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (521)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Horror, Mystery
Director
Paul Lynch
Collection
Prom Night Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Toronto

Prom Night is a 1980 Canadian mystery slasher film directed by Paul Lynch, written by William Gray, and starring Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis. The film follows four high school seniors who are targeted at their prom by a masked killer, seeking vengeance for the accidental death of Robin Hammond, a young girl, from six years earlier. The film also stars Casey Stevens, Eddie Benton, Mary Beth Rubens, Michael Tough, Robert A. Silverman, and Antoinette Bower.

Production

Director Paul Lynch developed Prom Night after a meeting with producer Irwin Yablans, who had previously produced Halloween (1978). Lynch had wanted to work on a horror film, and had initially pitched Don't Go See the Doctor, a film about a physician who murders his patients.

William Gray, a former Toronto Sun rock music critic who had recently co-written the supernatural horror film The Changeling (1980), was hired to adapt Guza's story into a feature-length screenplay. Gray utilized Guza's central premise, expanding it into a revenge-themed slasher film. Commenting on his writing, Gray said: "To do horror, you have to be a craftsman, not an artist. I'm not an artist.

While attending a Telefilm Canada event in Los Angeles, Lynch met producer Peter Simpson, to whom he pitched the idea. "I said, 'I'm working on this thing that is called Prom Night," Lynch recalled. "[Peter] said, 'Look, let's get together and talk.' This was on a Thursday. On Monday, he read the treatment, came back and said, 'We'll make a deal to develop a script and do Prom Night.' And that's how Prom Night came about."

In the documentary Going to Pieces (2006), Lynch stated he was having difficulty securing financing for the film until Jamie Lee Curtis signed onto the project. She received a salary of $30,000 (equivalent to $117,225 in 2025) for her appearance in the film.

Leslie Nielsen, an established film and TV actor, was cast as Kim Hammond's father; this role marks one of the last serious films for Nielsen, as he spent the remainder of his career performing in comedies. Lynch sought Nielsen for the role as he was one of Canada's "most-experienced actors." Opposite Nielsen, portraying his character's wife, is Antoinette Bower, whom Lynch had seen on numerous Canadian TV programs.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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