Prom Night III: l'ultimo bacio

"Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou" is one of my absolute favorite guilty pleasure slashers of the 80s, and my nostalgic love for that film undoubtedly contributed to me being a lot more tolerant and forgiving towards part III. "The Last Kiss" is a much worse film, but still vastly enjoyable and recommended to fans of late 80s/early 90s slashers.

"Hello Mary Lou" was a genuine slasher with a couple of comical touches. "The Last Kiss" is an out-and-out comedy with a handful of noteworthy slasher moments. Mary Lou resurrects again in the dungeons of Hamilton High, although this time in the luscious body of Courtney Taylor. Taylor is a prettier actress than Lisa Schrage - in my humble opinion, at least - but the latter had a lot more evil-witch charisma. Mary Lou takes control over the average-on-all-levels student Alex Grey, and her influence promptly turns him into a grade-A student and the best quarterback in the football team. Whoever questions Alex sudden progress, teacher or student, dies in horrible freak-accidents.

The kills in "Prom Night III" are gory, juicy, and sardonic, but not the least bit shocking. There's a teacher who gets impaled by ice cream cones (!) and a mixer shoved through the head, someone receives a battery acid shower ("Oh, she wasn't a person. She was a guidance counselor"), and there's a nice showcasing of a deadly touchdown. There's also straightforward slapstick, like when the principal cuts off his own finger during the festive opening of the gym, or through the announcements via the hallway intercoms ("Today's chess tournament is cancelled. All participants are requested to go to the library and play with themselves").

It's all good and cheesy fun for an hour or so, but after that "Prom Night III" quickly becomes dull and repetitive. The actual prom should be the high point of the film, but instead it feels like the longest and most redundant twenty minutes of the film, with Mary Lou dragging Alex into hell of some sort, and it looks a lot like the Hamilton High Prom of 1957.

PS: tip for all bachelors out there - find yourself a partner who starts baking cooking whenever she's upset or angry!

"Prom Night III: The Last Kiss" is the third installment of the series, following Part II, which was virtually unrelated to Part I. Mary Lou continues her rampage again at Hamilton High School. This time, Mary Lou's ghost falls for a teenage football player named Alex. She begins appearing to him, and she seems to be able to give Alex what ever he wants, when he wants it. But what he isn't aware of is that Mary Lou is an evil spirit, and she begins killing off all of his enemies and rivals, and he ends up losing his girlfriend too. Since Mary Lou is a ghost and nobody can see her, Alex is the only link to the murders and he becomes the prime suspect.

I'm not sure if this sequel was intended to be scary or funny, because to me it was a heck of a lot funnier than it was scary. The whole setup of the movie is a bit random, and there are some genuinely funny scenes. Cheesy, but funny. Prime examples of this campy humor are when when Mary Lou appears to Alex at an ice cream stand in the biology classroom, and when Alex wakes up naked in the school and has to wrap himself in a flag. There are lots of gory scenes throughout the movie, but none of it is really taken seriously and the special effects aren't great. The acting was alright, and the plot was unrealistic. But it's what you would expect from a movie of this type.

Overall, "Prom Night III: The Last Kiss" is a campy but funny horror flick. It's not scary at all, it turned out to be much more funny than terrifying. It's an okay way to pass an hour and a half. 5/10.

Prom Night III continues with the Mary Lou storyline, but takes it in a lighter and more humorous direction. Mary Lou (Courtney Taylor) unleashes herself from hell using a nail file to cut the chains. It's from there that she begins to stalk a student named Alex (Tim Conlon). Her mission is to get Alex to be with her forever. There is just one thing standing in her way. Alex's girlfriend Sarah (Cynthia Preston). She starts to kill some of the people that get in his way for success. When he struggles in biology, she finishes his test and then turns his bio teacher into a human banana split. A guidance counsellor questions Alex's grades, so she kills her off using battery acid. This goes on and on and each time Alex has to dispose of the bodies by burying them in the football field. With Prom Night looming, the police eventually find the corpses and of course point the finger at our lead character. Will Alex escape and send Mary Lou back to hell, or will she claim her man and get rid of Sarah?

Prom Night III definitely has the best special effects of all the films in the series. The banana split murder in particular is pretty unique and visually well done. There is just something about this one that seems kind of cheap. It's like a cheap version of part II. The actress that plays Mary Lou in this one is different from the previous installment. She isn't as good as the Mary Lou from the second film. She was darker and more sinister in part II. In The Last Kiss, they try hard to make her seductive and humorous, much less evil and dark. The performance isn't as good.

I also don't understand the decision making from the lead character Alex. He knows this dead chick is killing all these people, and instead of telling anyone else, he just continues implicating himself by burying the bodies. This movie also has a 60's and 70's 'Grease' feel to it as well with Alex's leather jacket and the greased back hair. Prom Night III seems to suffer with a personality disorder. It tries to be funny, tries to be supernaturally spooky, and tries to add a bunch of different elements to it as well. It's all over the place and not as good as part II.

Mary Lou is completely different from the vixen we knew her as in "Hello Mary Lou". The ending is also very bizarre, but original at least. Prom Night III doesn't take itself very seriously, and neither do I.

5/10

This is very much a horror/comedy mixture (both genres being equally present this time, taking it a couple comedic steps further than the previous installment in the "Prom Night" series, "Hello Mary Lou"), and as such it's pretty entertaining. Our beloved Mary Lou character returns from hell, though played by a different actress (Courtney Tayler) in this sequel. She falls in love with average student Alex Grey and immediately goes on a killing spree for him, disposing of all the competition (like irritating jocks) and annoying high school teachers. A few amusing kills - not unlike the inventive ways of killing Freddy Krueger started to portray in the later "A Nightmare On Elm Street" sequels - and a funny ending make this one an okay, albeit silly 90 minutes time-waster.

Just how silly does tongue-in-cheek horror Prom Night III get? Well, ghostly antagonist Mary Lou pins a mans hands to a counter-top with ice-cream cornets and pushes a whisk through his skull, That stupid enough for you? Or howsabout the scene in which she throws a football, the ball turning into a drill that screws her victim to the goalposts? The Last Kiss is full of such nonsense, making it a mindless way to pass the time, but not a scary one, nor a particularly funny one.

Courtney Taylor plays malevolent spirit Mary Lou Maloney, who falls for high school jock Alex Grey (Tim Conlon), killing anyone who upsets her beau or threatens to get in the way of their relationship. Alex takes to burying the bodies under the football field, but is soon found out and arrested for murder. Alex's girlfriend Sarah believes that he is innocent and tries to free him from the sexy ghost's grasp.

Directors Ron Oliver and Peter R. Simpson keep a brisk pace and manage a few impressive shots (I love the camera careening down corridors), but they're unable to get the balance of horror and comedy right, with the gags falling flat (the announcements over the school tannoy are cringeworthy) and the supposed scares too comical to ever be disturbing. It all flashes past the eyes easy enough, but the film's frivolous nature and an ending that feels like an afterthought leaves one wondering 'what was the point?'.