It was around Christmas time that I discovered the joys of the "Scream" movie channel. I've never really been one for horror movies, but I did go through a phase when I was about eleven when I watched a ton of classic horror films.
God, you know you've been blogging too long when you constantly catch yourself writing about things you've already written about. I know I've said that here before.
Anyway, it's not that I don't like gore. That's not to say that I do get any sort of sick pleasure out of watching these naughty teenagers get slaughtered. Basically, I haven't avoided horror movies because they're "scary", but rather because they're lame.
But then I realize — I love lame!
"Girlfriend From Hell". That was the one I saw around Christmas time. I don't recall much about it, but it was quite entertaining. From what I can remember, there was an apparently nice girl named Maggie (I didn't see the beginning of the film) who was possessed by the devil, who then killed her friends and swore and had sex and stuff.
There's this "devilbuster" guy, who was previously just a normal but odd guy who died and went to heaven, but couldn't get in since he hadn't really done anything good, so he had to go catch the devil in return for his admission into heaven. Ends up he unknowingly has a one night stand with the devil, who had possessed some random hot chick in a smoky bar. So, "Chaser", as he's called, leaves her the next morning, which pisses her right off. So, he's been chasing her for years and eventually catches her in the end of the movie, convinces her to give back Maggie's body and makes the dead kids all alive again, but then lets her go because he likes the chase.
Anyway, I'm sure there were some great gems in there, but IMDB doesn't have any particularly hilarious memorable quotes listed. I remember the main good girl Laura chick being a rather bad actress with a terrible 80s outfit, but I found the girl that played Maggie was pretty entertaining.
"And I'm Satan!". Ohh yes, there we go. Wonderful, just wonderful.
Next, we come to tonight's flick: "Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou". Again, the whole thing with nice girl possessed by the devil. Or well, a dead prom queen who was sent to purgatory, but whatever. Anyway, I can go a bit more in depth with this one seeing as my short term memory isn't all that terrible.
It's 1957. Mary Lou Maloney is with her nice boyfriend Billy at the prom (wait, wasn't that the boyfriend's name in "Carrie"?) but she ditches him for bad boy Buddy. Billy finds them making out and gets all pissed. Mary Lou wins prom queen, but Billy decides to get back at her by dropping a stink bomb on her. Unfortunately, her dress goes up in flames instead, and instead of stopping, dropping, and rolling like any rational person would, she flails around for awhile whilst everyone else stands back and watches.
This, people, is what separates kids nowadays from kids back then. No one attempted to help. No one called the fire department, an ambulance, anything. No one threw the punch bowl on her. No one tried to smother her with a jacket. They all just stood there.
Kids nowadays — kids nowadays — would have their cell phones whipped out in a second: "man, this is so going on YouTube".
So Mary Lou dies a horrible death. Billy grows up to be the principal of the school and bad boy Buddy becomes the local priest. Billy's son Craig is dating nice girl Vicki, whose mother is very "they're all gonna laugh at you!"-esque and whose father is the easy-going, laid back foil.
Vicki's mother won't let Vicki get a dress for the prom, so Vicki goes searching in the prop room on the suggestion of her friend Jess with the big bad hair. Jess had to leave since she had a doctor's appointment, which was just a stupid checkup her mother makes her go to every year. But wait! It seemed like she was going to tell her something but then didn't. Oh well. Must not have been that important.
Later, Vicki and Jess are in art class and Jess suddenly leaves in a fit. Vicki goes to comfort her in the bathroom where Jess is all curled up in a ball and crying about how she really likes this guy but he won't answer her phone calls and Vicki's like "oh, that's a shame" and Jess is like "I'm pregnant!" and then we have the "a-ha!" moment it all makes sense.
Anyway, the dress and crown that Vicki found in the prop room happened to belong to Mary Lou. Or actually, it was the prom queen cape and crown that she was supposed to wear but didn't, because her actual outfit would've been all burned up. So everyone leaves the art room except for Jess, who tries to steal a jewel off the old prom queen crown. But this angers the spirit of Mary Lou, who was awoken when Vicki opened the chest with the old prom queen things in it, so then a bag full of shredded paper explodes and all this stuff in the room gets possessed and Jess gets choked by the cape and almost gets her head cut off by a paper cutter and then gets thrown out the window, and it's all dismissed as a suicide.
Nice girl Vicki has apparently been taking LSD, because her rocking horse has glowing eyes and a moving tongue and she keeps seeing things and her eyes are all red and she gets really angry for no reason. She gets detention for slapping helium-voiced bitch Kelly, who is also in the running for prom queen along with Vicki, because she hallucinates her as being Mary Lou. During detention, she notices the words "HELP ME" being written backwards on the chalkboard, stupidly walks up to it, and is grabbed by some hands coming out of the board and pulled into it. It was actually pretty cool; obviously filmed sideways, the board was a pool of black water with letters floating around and a chair and desk taped to the wall, and Vicki floating around in it.
Next day, Vicki shows up decked out in a fifties outfit — to which friend Monica, dressed in her pastels and shoulder pads and big hair, accuses her of being a fashion disaster — and saying "see ya later, alligator". She also has her hair all nice and pulled back. I forgot to mention — this chick had the biggest, longest blonde hair, and it was just all lying there and TERRIBLE! So when she finally had it under control, it was quite a relief, and much less bleeding of the eyes ensued. Anyway, we now must infer she's been possessed by Mary Lou.
There's the required but unnecessary lesbian nude scene wherein Vicki chases best friend Monica around the locker room and showers, then once she finds Monica hiding in a locker, says "a whomp bomp a loo bop, a whomp bam — " and she's crushed between the lockers and her unusually watery blood comes immediately pouring out.
Vicki is at home, getting ready for the prom. Well, actually, just sitting on her freaky rocking horse. Easy-going dad comes in and gives her an inspiring speech about how she'll remember this night forever, to which she responds by tongue kissing him, and in an instant, one of the few characters who you would feel slightly sorry for upon their death loses their status as he doesn't seem to try to resist. Mother walks in and is all "WTF!", so Vicki kills her mother by sending her flying through the front door (I thought pinning her up with knives in a Christ-like pose would've been much more effective), then steps over her body and down the stairs, off to the school prom.
There's one character I've failed to mention thus far, and that is the character of Josh: the cute, funny, big-haired, Einstein-loving, "Gilligan's Island" Professor-inspired, computer geek. Yeah, I wasn't that impressed by him.
Kelly, who you'll remember is the bitchy prom queen wannabe, goes into his office where he keeps his computer — WHICH IS ACTUALLY A FRIDGE!!! — and his computer computer. Anyway, Josh has this super high-tech program which calculates the votes for prom queen. It all kind of made me nostalgic for the 80s and 90s era of computers, which sure, I never actually witnessed, but failing traveling back to the 60s and being a model and traveling back to the 70s and being a rock photographer (rock and roll, silly, not like minerals!), I could totally dig being an 80s computer viking.
Anyway, Kelly offers him $100 bucks to fix the vote so that she wins, but he's a good guy, you know, so of course he's not going to do that! Later on, during the actual prom (seeing as this all happened earlier, I just neglected to mention it), Kelly comes back and asks who won. But he can't tell her… except, it wasn't her. So she's all pissy and he's all like "you knew my price". So Kelly swallows her pride and (god damn, I am not making this joke here!) gives him a blow job.
Unfortunately, Mary Lou is a l33t hacker, and just as Josh is about to change the name of the winner from Vicki to Kelly, she changes the screen to say "WRONG. DEAD WRONG." and then there are some terrible special effects and Josh is electrocuted and killed. Sigh.
Back at the prom, they press the magic button and the TV screen shows that Vicki has won prom queen! Kelly is utterly confused and random student wonders aloud to Kelly, "gee, how did you blow it?", which was total win, if you'll excuse me for saying in such a way.
Vicki goes up to accept the award, but Bill, the principal who you remember killed Mary Lou back in 1957, is above the stage, in the same exact place where he dropped the stink bomb, but this time with a gun, and he shoots Vicki. I have to give the class of '87 a little more credit than their predecessors, because they at least ran in fear as the deformed body of Mary Lou rose up from inside Vicki. Kelly gets killed in a rather unimpressive way, a neon light through her stomach or something. Pity, because she was also an entertaining character. Also, Buddy, the bad boy turned priest who Mary Lou cheated with on the '57 prom night, was also killed earlier in the church with little fanfare.
Mary Lou is now chasing Craig, Bill's son, through the school. Craig conveniently ends up in the prop room for whatever reason, and suddenly Mary Lou is at the top of the stairs! And then, right in front of the screen! AAAHHH! Actually, it wasn't all that scary, but it had some mighty fine potential.
I'm a little fuzzy on what happened in the end, but Bill eventually finds Mary Lou and places the crown on her head, to which she oohs and aahs and is all happy about. Elsewhere, Vicki comes back, covered in black goo from the chalkboard pool she was previous sucked into, and she and Craig embrace and are happy.
Then we're outside the school, as the distraught students look on as the handsome, promising, young Josh and various other fatalities are taken away in ambulances. Craig and normal Vicki get into a car to go to wherever, and father Bill gets in the front seat to take them there. Bill turns on the radio to some oldies station, which of course frightens Craig and Vicki, and Bill is all smiley and says "hey, they're playing our song!" and then says something clever, and they drive off into the night, Bill now possessed by Mary Lou. The end.