Review

Hamilton High School student Alex Grey is tired of being average, which is surprising given his supportive family, hot girl friend, and passing grades. Alex wants to make med school, and as the School Counsellor can tell him that just ain't going to happen without some major changes in Alex's attitude and life. Enter dead gal Mary Lou Maloney, who wants Alex to be the best he can be, or slightly better. Some changes are coming into Alex's life, not the least of which is making the first string football team and acing exams. Of course some things are going to have to change, including Alex's girlfriend Sarah becoming his ex, or winding up dead, or whatever.

As the body count starts to mount, and the football field starts to resemble a graveyard, Alex decides maybe being the all American High school super star might not be all it's cracked up to be. But Mary Lou has other ideas and the gates of Hell are ajar. Is there any way out of the situation for Alex, considering the Police think he's a psychopath!

While this movie is set very much in the 1980s, hasn't aged well folks, there's still some fun to be had with it, mainly in face palming fashion. The movie thrives on school announcements that mix puns with jokes that are primarily groan inducing to the max. I'm not sure about you but heck I thought that added charm to a movie that simply doesn't know exactly what it wants to be and which seems influenced by such diverse predecessors as The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and surprisingly Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). There's not a lot of originality here but everyone seems to have been having a rocking time bringing this movie to our screens.

For anyone who hasn't got their Hamilton High on yet, the original movie was a slasher with Jamie Lee doing the chicken dance and the sequel introduced us to the revenant Mary Lou who was still striving to be prom queen. We're very much back to Mary Lou in this movie, a gal who has set her sights on average Joe Alex Grey, and is working to be the woman behind the man in a sort of weird supernatural way. From there things simply work in a bizarre schizophrenic fashion involving revenants, murder, zombies, and Hell's school for the damned.

Just another horror movie, worth checking if into the 1980s otherwise give it a miss

The movie kicks off with Mary Lou trapped in the third level of hell, which apparently involves all those murderous teen bitches you knew in high school being condemned to a fiery aerobics class for all of eternity. Mary Lou naturally breaks the shackles and escapes her personal torment to return to the halls of Hamilton, that ring every few years with the shrieks of victims and apparently 1950s rock and roll if Mary Lou has anything to do with it.

What follows is the middle section of the movie that involves a rising death toll, Mary Lou getting down to her black lingerie in one memorable scene, and finally Alex Grey realising there's more to life than striving for more out of life than he is destined to achieve. While this section rocks along, they could have done more for mine with the football field being turned into a graveyard, the Director and Writers aren't finished with developments. We move to a final block in the movie that is apparently situated in Hell and involves the Zombified victims of Mary Lou and Alex's upward mobility move. As stated previously this movie isn't exactly sure which direction it should take or what particular suburb of Horror it currently inhabits.

There's not a lot to say about the scripting, nothing exactly new or exciting going down, and Directors Ron Oliver and Peter R. Simpson aren't putting their hands up to be awarded with anything beyond run of the mill teen horror outings. Last Kiss is simply a by the numbers attempt to cash in on the fan base the Prom Night franchise was building. Clearly someone thought the continued adventures of Mary Lou was exciting enough to build a movie on, but to be honest it's just another chance to fire off the same clichés we regularly see in revenant orientated outings.

Clearly since no one from the cast has exactly gone onto a glittering career we're talking average Acting on display and a bunch of extras who probably thought it was cool to get a bit part in a teen orientated horror flick.

There's a few problematic aspects to the script that took me out of the movie, but hey maybe I'm just pedantic or something. Alex seems to have zero issues cheating on his girlfriend, which didn't ring true for me, and has even less issues with burying Mary Lou's victims under the football turf. Got to say we might be dealing with a standard cheap horror flick, but some attention should have been given to motivation to fully endorse the plot developments.

As mentioned above Courtney Taylor (Mary Lou) is looking might fine in her undies but that's about it for T&A, guess the Producers decided to tone it down from the excesses of the second movie. There's some pretty solid gore on offer, though most of it is of the clearly fake variety so you won't need a barf bag and gorehounds are going to be disappointed. Last Kiss is pretty low on the scare factor and only just nudges into the horror category.

So Prom Night 3 didn't exactly have me howling at the moon, but I kind of needed to check it out as I'm a horror completist and am slowly working my way through the backlog of horror flicks I've somehow missed down the years. While the movie sort of entertained me in a school play gone complete insane fashion, I wouldn't exactly give it anything like a recommendation. One of those movies that you can happily pass on without feeling you are missing out on something.