Movie X Presents: Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss?

Prom Night 3 breaks series tradition by being a real sequel to the previous film! Luckily order was restored with Part 4, which once again had nothing to do with any of the others*. But for a brief, shining moment, this series flirted with continuity, and the result was Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss.

Mere fire cannot defeat Mary Lou's eyebrows.

The movie starts with Mary Lou Maloney, the villain of the previous film, trapped in "Bad Girl Hell", which is sort of a chorus line with dancers chained to the floor. Mary Lou escapes by breaking her shackles with a nail file, an excuse to bring her back so weak it makes Freddy Krueger's resurrection by flaming dog piss in The Dream Master seem well-thought-out. Mary Lou then kills a janitor with a jukebox, before setting her sights on our protagonist, Alex.

In a fit of almost reckless character development, Mary Lou is now looking to settle down, and her schtick evolves into a sort of Overly Attached Girlfriend thing with Alex. She kills everyone who is holding him back, enabling him to get good grades, excel at football, and become popular like never before. All he has to do is bury the bodies she leaves in her 50s-ass wake.

Lucy finds a new way to fuck with Charlie Brown.

While the first two Prom Nights tried to be like proper horror movies (with mixed success), Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss is a comedy from start to finish, like Rock And Roll High School with a body count. This allows Mary Lou, now played by the very charming Courtney Taylor, to cut loose with such hijinks as killing someone with a drill-shaped football (still not as good as the basketball head explosion in Deadly Friend), and impaling a guy's hands with ice cream cones. Even Jason never figured out a way to kill someone with those.

51 flavours...of death!!!

The incidental wackiness just makes this movie so adorable. There are throwaway gags delivered through the school's overhead announcements, quirky minor characters that keep things interesting, and bad acting of the best kind. It's the kind of movie that you know they knew was stupid when they made it, so they just had fun and it kind of wins you over.

Also starring the boom mic.

But by far the movie belongs to Courtney Taylor, whose Mary Lou is the most sadly overlooked of all the horror villains. While Part 2's Lisa Schrage played it straight, Taylor gives the character this kind of peppy, discount Audrey Horne quality that fits perfectly with her 50s retro schtick. I think Mary Lou is overdue a comeback. Do it, Canada.

*Don't watch Prom Night 4: Deliver Us From Evil. Despite having a cool title and the potentially lulzy idea of a priest being the killer, it's just boring bad, not funny bad.