'Prom Night IV': The 'Angels & Demons' of slasher films

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (1992)
Starring: Nikki de Boer, Alden Kane, Joy Tanner, Alle Ghadban, and James Carver
Director: Clay Borris
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A demon-possessed Catholic priest (Carver) stalks and kills fornicating teenagers (de Boer, Kane, Tanner, and Ghadban) who have snuck for a weekend of nookie at an isolated country home that used to be a monastery.


"Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil" is a by-the-numbers slasher flick that is distingushed by a creepier-than-average slasher, thanks to a chilling performance by James Carver, and a cuter-than-average central chick in the form of Nikki de Boer, who gives the best performance in the entire film. In fact, she is so good she makes her nearly charisma-free co-star Alden Kane look even less talented than he does in scenes he doesn't share with de Boer. In fact, de Boer gives a performance that belongs in the Slasher Movie Hall of Fame, right along side Jamie Lee Curtis' turn in "Terror Train" and "Halloween".

The film even manages to do something that the original "Prom Night"did not... it manages to dish out some truly shocking and startling imagery. The film surprises more than once in that area... and I can't get specific, because it will ruin the surprises if you haven't seen this movie.

Unfortunately there are two big problems with this "Prom Night" sequel, and they conspire to make it only slightly better than the original film in the series.

The first problem is with the script. It's very uneven and herky-jerky in its pacing. After a strong start--with prelude murders, the presentation of a secret Catholic cabal that makes those guys protecting the DaVinci Code look like first-round "American Idol" contestants, and a startling dispatch of what looked to be a main character even before the film's main story has started--but it then threatened to stall out with an uninteresting build-up to the bloody teen butchery that invariably takes place in a film like this. Once the killing started, the film did an okay job of keeping up the suspense and terror, but there were at least five minutes of pure padding that should have been gotten rid of before we got there.

The second problem is with the title. While the "Prom Night" series has never been one to care about continuity between movies--the first was a simple revenge tale, the two middle ones were about a Prom Queen who was too bitchy to die, and the one being discussed here goes off in yet another direction that has nothing to do with any of the other films. In fact, it doesn't even really have anything to do with a prom, except one is talked about and the four main characters drive by one on their way to their weekend of private debauchery. I suspect the producers of the film had a generic slasher flick that they hoped to boost audience for by associating it with an established brand. It's almost too bad they did that, because Father Jonas could possibly have been another Jason or Michael if he had been allowed to skewer unsuspecting fornicators with his bladed crucifix. It would have freed the film of the tedious task of paying lip-service to a prom that has nothing to do with anything, and it might have left more time for the whole Church Conspiracy/Demon Possession angle.

On the other hand, whoever holds the rights to this film isn't terribly swift, so I can see how they might have thought the "Prom Night" brand would held their movie rather than hurt it. After all, this film was NOT released under a new title to take advantage of the "Catholic Conspiracy Craze" that was stirred up by the "DaVinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" hype of recent years.

Despite its weaknesses and its history of bad marketing, "Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil" is a fairly decent slasher flick. Fans of the classics in this horror subgenre should get a kick out of it.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (Except for the ones in the sequels.)

Prom Night (1980)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, Casey Stevens, Michael Tough, Anne-Marie Martin, Mary-Beth Rubens, Joy Thompson, George Touliatos, Pita Oliver and Sheldon Rybowski
Director: Paul Lynch
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A masked killer targets four teens (Stevens, Martin, Rubens, and Tompson) who covered up their involvement in the accidental death of a playmate six years prior. It's their senior prom, and, conincidentally, the older sister of the dead girl (Curtis) is the queen of the prom and one of the intended victims is the king. Will she become a victim herself, or will she stop the murderer dead in his tracks? What tragedies will play out on this prom night to remember.


"Prom Night" is a nicely done slasher-flick that is the direct antecedent of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and similar "dark secret" high school slasher flicks where a murderer bent on avenging a hidden crime on prom night, graduation day, homecoming or some other event that's standard on the annual calendar of American high schools. It starts out promising and presents viewers with the standard mix of Kids We Like and Kids We Hate, with even a few we feel okay in rooting for, or hoping they escape the murderer's sharp weapons of death.

The actors all give acceptable performances, but no one stands out in particular. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the "Survivor Girl" character that we've see her play in "Halloween" and "Terror Train", but she doesn't quite rise to the level of the performances she gave in those films. She, like every other cast member gives a satisfactory performance but there's nothing remarkable about it. She, Leslie Neilsen, and everyone else is good enough but not spectacular.

If average acting was the weakest part of "Prom Night", it could have ended up at the high end of average. Unfortunately, the film is done in either by a sloppy script, or by sloppy post-production hackjob editing. Because of poor attention to story development and details, the various red herrings surrounding the killer start stinking like they've been left in the sun for three days by the third act, and the climactic moments of the film don't quite come together because of too many loose ends and inexplicably missing characters. (I can't say who isn't around for the film's climax without spoiling the true identity of the killer, it's an absense that needed to be explained instead of the character just vanishing halfway through the movie. Similarly, the absense of the killer while he was out stalking victims should have been noted by someone at the dance, because he definately would have been missed.)

"Prom Night" is a film that's interesting from a historical perspective as it was the first true example of the "teen slasher" subgenre that ultimately led to a revival of the slasher flicks that hasn't run its course yet.