Tenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #14 Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)

Do you need to have seen the first Prom Night to enjoy Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II? No, you do not!  This flick was exactly what I was hoping for in all its ridiculous, late 1980s glory, right from the beginning with its opening credits synthesizer music.

We start with Prom Night, 1957.  Mary Lou Maloney is a wild child.  She's gorgeous, sassy, knows what she wants and is popular enough to be voted Prom Queen.  She also cheats on her straight-laced boyfriend, Billy, with some other dude, right there back stage at Prom.  Billy decides to get back at her with a stink-bomb prank at her coronation, but something goes wrong and her dress goes up in flames just as she is to be crowned.  She dies, shrieking, right there on stage while no one even tries to put her out!!!

Then it's 1987, with its hair and shoulder pads and high-waisted, pleated, pastel-colored pants.  Vicky's mean mom won't let her buy a new dress for Prom - even though she's in the running for Prom Queen - so she finds something sparkly in the theater department's prop closet.  While she's rummaging around in there, she inadvertently sets free Mary Lou's vengeful spirit, which was somehow trapped in a steam trunk, along with her Prom Queen sash, cloak and crown.  Mary Lou gets right down to it: tormenting and then possessing poor Vicky and then killing all sorts of people.  Her old boyfriend Billy is now the high school principal (played by Michael Ironsides!), and father of Vicky's boyfriend, and the dude Mary Lou hooked up with is now the local priest, so you might imagine the high jinks involved.

Slight spoilers for a 30+ year old movie.  This is how you can die in HML:PNII: strangled with a cape and tossed out a window; stabbed with a crucifix; crunched in a gym locker; electrocuted by personal computer; impaled by a neon light.

This is not at all scary but it is a great example of late '80s campy horror.  It has no shame about cribbing from Carrie, The Exorcist or the Nightmare on Elm Street movies; the lolling tongue could be right out of Nightmare III.  The practical effects (I love practical effects) are superb, particularly the blackboard whirlpool and Mary Lou's resurrection.  There is a bit of a slow stretch between the first death and the second, as the movie is much more entertaining when Mary Lou is causing trouble.  I even had a bit of sympathy for Mary Lou: literally all she wanted was to be Prom Queen.  (Also, why did NO ONE try to put her out when she was on fire?!?)  Any horror film that says, "I've got places to go, people to kill" with a straight face is aces in my book.