A 'Prom Night' to remember - and not in a good way

THERE WAS A TIME when the main worry was getting a date. Now "Prom Night" includes a psycho killer.

Yes, Hollywood has stooped to remaking bad slasher movies (and with no apparent concern for making them better). "Prom Night" was a no-brainer that starred the then-reigning scream queen Jamie Leigh Curtis in 1980. Leslie Nielsen starred with her and is equally guilty.

The present edition is not technically a remake, but it's worse than the original. Nonetheless, movie industry insiders predict that "Prom Night" will take in $18 million to $20 million this weekend and be the No. 1 box-office movie in the country.

MTV has promoted "Pimp Your Prom" sessions and, for months, huge lobby displays in theaters feature a prom-night door. When you open it, employes of the theater are supposed to jump out at you and scream. The ruse didn't work too well locally. Our industrious theater employees were too busy peddling popcorn. (The price of the popcorn is the only scary thing in the theater this weekend.)

Only by posing as a real human being rather than a movie critic could I even get into the theater to review this work. The studio, quite understandably, didn't want it reviewed. When "they" try to stop me, I give them my well-rehearsed line from "The Elephant Man": "I am not an animal. I am a human being." (Come to think of it, I sometimes use that line in the office, too. Occasionally it elicits sympathy. Usually not.)

Yet again, we have the blond heroine. She screams profundities like: "Leave me alone!"

The high school teacher who killed her parents (apparently out of love for her) three years ago has escaped from prison and is stalking her on prom night.

Brittany Snow, who is 22 but looks 30, is joined by the oldest- living high school senior class in a lavish prom night filmed at Los Angeles' historic Biltmore Hotel.

The movie's budget may be low but this, still, is a prom night to rival the Academy Awards in hoopla - red carpet, stretch limousines, low- cut gowns.

Snow, who was in "Hairspray," shows no sign of acting talent.

Her tormentor, Richard Fenton, is played by Jonathan Schaech, who once was a teen hunk himself. He once had love scenes with Winona Ryder, in 1995's "How to Make an American Quilt," back in her teen queen days.

One now knows the fate of young hunks who don't make it - they are assigned to play villains in movies like "Prom Night."

He says things like, "There isn't a moment I haven't thought of you, Donna," but it's somewhat unconvincing because he spends most of his time slaughtering people like the maid, the bellboy, the best friend, the boyfriend and at least two cops.

How is that meant to endear him to Donna? Is there some unique mating ritual covered in the pages of National Geographic that we haven't read?

The police are around just to find dead bodies. Knowing that the killer is loose in the hotel, which is supposedly surrounded, they send poor Donna back to her isolated house, guarded by a nerdy detective who sits in the car outside.

She, after all, has to be kept in jeopardy for 88 minutes, long enough to charge feature-length admission prices.

"Have you caught that animal?" her uncle asks.

"We're doing the best we can!" the authoritative cop barks.

He rushes about giving orders constantly, but the killer sneaks through all barriers to cause trouble until, of course, the predictable finale when the cop hugs Donna and says, "It's over. It's OK."

It would have been merciful if it had happened 88 minutes earlier.

Cops are having a bad week of it at the movies. In "Street Kings," the main competition this week, they are all corrupt. Here, they're inept. We're paying no attention, guys and gals of law enforcement, and I'd like to add that I never speed.

Does the success of movies like this suggest that we are near the end of society as we knew it? Probably not. After all, we survived all the "Nightmares on Elm Street" and the "Halloweens." The original teen audiences for those films are now bankers. This, too, shall pass.

Besides, when you think about it, "The Ruins" was an even worse movie than this.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347 mal.vincent@pilotonline.com