High School Horror Hangover: Prom Night, Student Bodies & Beyond

Grab your corsage and your survival gear. This week, we are diving into four retro horror films where high school is a literal death trap. We break down the slashers, the satire, and the supernatural chaos that ruled the prom nights and hallways of yesteryear.

What we are covering:

• Prom Night (1980): Jamie Lee Curtis dances while a masked killer seeks ultimate revenge.
• Student Bodies (1981): A hilarious, early parody lampooning classic slasher film tropes.
• Dance of the Dead (1988): Punk rock rebels fight bloodthirsty zombies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
• Ghoul School (1990): Two metalhead teens accidentally unleash a toxic monster outbreak at school.

Transcript

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Welcome to Dad Bot of Horror. This is Butch Barr, your host. Uh, no co-host yet. We're in season one, episode 23. Probably thinking to yourself, after 23 episodes, I will probably never have a co-host. He could be right. But I'm working on it. So there's no housekeeping to do, so we'll move right into the movies. So movie number one, for again, episode 23 of season one, is Prom Night from 1980. You can find it on Prime, Howdy, Apple TV, Fossum, Peacock, Plex, Pluto, CW, Roku, and To Be To Be. So basically, you can't cross the street without getting hit by this movie. Production companies were Guardian Trust Company, Prom Night Productions, and SimCom Limited. Director Paul Lynch. Writers were William Gray and Robert Gousa Jr. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Casey Stevens. The plot. At a high school senior prom, a masked masked, masked masked, masked mask, mask, mask, masked. Why does it sound like I'm saying masked? Like the mast of a ship when I'm trying to say masked. I don't know. Anyway, masked killer stalks four teenagers who were responsible for the accidental death of a classmate six years previously. So why this movie? First off, it's an excellent movie. Secondly, I was trying to think of kind of a theme for this week, and I the next few weeks I have theme set up already, but I didn't have one for this week. So I figured a lot of high schools are uh are their their school years coming to an end. So I thought I would do something related to like high schools and high school kids. So how did I see it? So I remember seeing this for the first time on network TV. Um, I remember watching it with my parents, at least my parents. I don't know if the whole family was there, but I know it was my parents were there. It was at night. It was probably, you know, the movie probably started at 8 o'clock at night. Excuse me. We were in our living room and they were sitting on the sofa and I was laying on the phone, uh laying on the floor watching this this movie. So I do remember the beginning was really scary for a kid. Um not scary now, but like everything that was going on, I I think it was it was it was scary. My favorite kill, so this couple, this guy and a girl, the guy being slick, I forget the girl's name, go to his van and and they drive to kind of a wooded area on campus, kinda. And they make out, and when they're done making out, he's sitting towards the front of the van, and she's sitting on the floor of the of the van. It's a custom van. She's sitting on the floor with her her her like leaning back, the upper part of her body leaning back on the double doors at the back of the van. And then you know, like all of a sudden the killer opens up the back doors, and her, you know, the her the top half of her body kind of falls backwards down, and her head's sticking out of the van, and he just starts like the killer starts stabbing her in the neck. I thought that was pretty neat. So the way that I like to do my shows is uh I like to do three movies if I can. And I like the first movie to be like a popular one or like a classic, and then the second one to be not quite as popular, a little bit more obscure, and then the third one would be kind of an independent. But uh Prom Night's an independent movie. In fact, uh well, I'll talk about that later. So, so yeah, Prom Knight was an independent horror movie, and in fact, they had trouble getting investors to sign on for this until Jamie Lee Curtis signed on, which is kind of neat. Um, it's made in Canada, and I realize Canada is not inside the United States of America. I realize that there's some people in our country that don't know that, but I do know that. But I don't consider like a Canadian-made movie a foreign-made movie, uh, only because a lot of American productions, you know, go to Canada to shoot their films because it's less expensive there, which actually could have been what happened here too. So there was a girl in the beginning of this movie that kind of confused me for a few years. So when I went to elementary school, there were two girls at this elementary school um that were Amish. And for those of you out there that have never seen Amish, they they or how they dress, like the the females basically wear dresses. And like the younger girls, and they're usually like have flowers in them, and um, they're like summer dresses, except they're longer, and they're not light fabric, they're usually not light fabric, um, usually a little bit heavier fabric to them. And then so they wore those kind of dresses like every day to school, and then they wore their hair in braided pigtails, and so like that was the outfit and look that I associated with Amish girls. And in the beginning of this movie, so the beginning of this movie, there's a bunch of kids playing in an in an old like building, an old warehouse type thing, and um they accidentally kill a girl. And one of the one of the one of the kids there, one of the girls there, was wearing like this flowery dress and had her hairs and her hair and braided pigtails. So I always thought she was Amish, which was confusing to begin with for her to be there, like just paling around with those kids. And then like later on, they six years later, when this movie kind of takes place, she's in like the regular high school with all of them and she's dressed normal, which threw me off. Like, is she no longer Amish? Like, it it really confused me for a while. But then I realized, like, you know, you can be a young girl and wear a flowery dress and put your hair in braided pigtails and it doesn't mean you're Amish. So, you know, lessons learned. Um, to me, this movie could have really been called I Know What You Did Six Years Ago. It's kind of the same concept where this girl accidentally got killed, and now six years later, someone's coming back and killing those kids. So, you know. In this movie, you get to see Jamie Curtis do this like little dance by herself, which was kind of neat. Unfortunately, you have to endure a lot of disco dancing. For those of you who have never seen disco dancing, God bless you, you are better than most. But if you want to see why Disco died, watch this movie, watch the dancing at the end, and you'll be like, Yeah, yeah, okay, that's why Disco died. Again, I said it was an excellent movie in the beginning, I stick with it. It's a great mystery. There's a great pull of suspects of who's doing the killing, and it keeps you guessing the whole time. And I did read somewhere that I guess the original cut of the movie it was too obvious who the killer was, and so they had to change things a little bit and remove some things so it wasn't as obvious anymore. So, I mean, that's cool. You know, I I like movies, I like to try to figure out who the killer is, and I'm kind of pompous in that I don't want everybody to just be able to figure it out. And it also has to make sense, not like the last few screen movies and who the killers were. So, yeah, and I'm not I'm gonna do my best not to spoil who the killer is, because I think it's pretty cool. And when I when I do a show like this, I do my best not to spoil too much. I already spoiled the van thing, and and that's okay. I expect a lot of people to have seen this, but I know not everyone has. So, you know, one of the great uh you know uh horror movie tropes, which is brought out in screen, is uh, you know, the rules, you know, for a horror movie and surviving a horror movie. And like the first rule is like don't well, not one of the first rule, one uh an early rule is don't have sex. Sex equals death. Well, there's a girl in this movie that refuses refuses to have sex with a boyfriend and she gets killed. So um totally breaks that rule, you know, and and something I think about, like, thinking about that a little bit, like, you know, Jane Lee Curtis, again, I think it's from the screen movie, like she never bared her her herself, her breasts, until she went into legitimate movies, like Trading Places, I believe, is where she first did some nudity. So she had done like four or five horror movies before that. And you always wonder like, did she not ever show breasts before that because she was a final girl and she had to remain pure and and yada yada? Was that it? Because I mean, in the fog, she wasn't the final girl, she wasn't the pure one, but still nothing in that movie. Or did it have something to do with her parents? You know, being said, her parents were both very famous. So I don't know, just something that popped in my head thinking about it one day. So with Jamie Lee Curtis, apparently she was a a trained dancer, and her partner in this movie that dances, and when you just go dance and you do it as a couple, it's it's a whole thing. Um Casey Stevens, who was her dancing partner, was not a trained dancer and apparently was not a very good dancer. So they needed to have a dance stand-in for some of the more difficult moves in the dance. So I have to go watch the movie again to look for that, to see if I can spot the the stand-in dancer. And Jamie Lee uh Curtis also choreographed the dance herself because he didn't have a choreographer. So the last thing um about Prom Knight is so Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis is in it. But Leslie Nielsen is one that got the top building. As you notice when I said him, Leslie Nielsen and then Jamie Lee Curtis. So Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor, and this was actually his last serious acting role. After this movie, he shot Airplane, and then it was all comedy from there. So it's just kind of interesting. It's weird to see like Leslie Nielsen in this movie. It's weird to see Leslie Nielsen in like the Poseidon Venture. It's weird to see him in these movies in serious roles. But yeah, so Cprom Night. Uh, movie number two, uh, season one, episode 23, is Student Bodies. And that's from 1981. You have to rent or buy it on Pride. Production company, uh Alan Smithy Classic Films, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Southwest Cinema. Director Mickey Rose and Michael Richie. Ryder, Mickey Rose. Stars uh Kristen Ryder, Matthew Goldsby, and Richard Brando. They act like Richard, uh, they act like Kristen Ryder is like someone. I don't recognize her name or her in the movie. The plot. A serial killer with a signature heavy breathing proceeds to systematically kill the students and teachers of Lamab High School. And why this movie? This takes place, everything happens to the high school kids, and it takes place during like all these big events happening in one day. How did I see it? So I'm pretty sure I watched this on HBO or Cinemax one night when my parents were out. It was an R-rated movie, you know, so try to sneak in an R-rated movie when you can. Uh, little did I know, like, I don't know why it's an R-rated movie. Um Favorite kill? So this is a horror comedy, and probably play more comedy than horror. All of the kills are pretty silly, and that's kind of the point of the movie. So none of them really stick out. Um, this is an early horror parody film. I mean, it I mean, it's made in 1981. Let's face it, that up until that point, like, I mean, the the 78 Friday 13th came out, and like that just re re-energized, reinvigorated the genre. So this only had a few years of 50s and horror movies under its belt. It it definitely obviously parodies Halloween when a stranger calls and carry. It's a good movie. Um, it's a little campy and a little bit silly. I could see how people have trouble sitting through it. Um, it can get over the top at some point. One of the things I really like about it and struck me right away the first time I saw it, is every time they it kills someone, like there's a counter, like there's a kill count. And it's kind of funny. I've seen other movies do that, but as far as I could tell, this was the first movie that did it. So this movie had big studio backing. So this was not an independent movie. You would, if you watch it, you'd think it was. Because there was a uh Paramount was big studio backing. So there was a writer's strike going on, and Paramount was buying up whatever they could to try to get movies into theaters to keep making money. And this was one of those movies. I can't imagine they made money off of this movie. This movie, unlike prom night, where the girl that forgoed, forgone, forbidded, forbotted, forboded, the one the girl that didn't have sex got killed. In this movie, it really leans into if you have sex, you die. That seems to be like what happens. They show a couple, they're gonna have sex, and then they die. Now, the end of this movie is kind of lame. It kind of feels, and I'm only assuming they did on purpose. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz ending because like the the final girl wakes up, and everybody that's been in the movie is still alive, but they're playing completely different characters than they were in her, you know, dream and what they were the entire rest of the movie. Like the guy that was a janitor while she was dreaming, uh, turns out to be like this, and and he was kind of a goofy janitor. Turns out to be this brilliant guy, you know, just just weird. I can say that like no one in this cast did anything else after this movie, except apparently for a woman named Sarah Eckhart, who plays the prom queen in the movie. She eventually left Hollywood and became a judge in Texas. So no one did anything in in Hollywood after this, really. So yeah, there's not a lot on this movie. Believe me, if you watch a movie, and I suggest you do. It is good, it's funny, but there's not a lot to it. There really isn't. It is it's silly, um, but it's fun. So movie number three for season one, episode 23, is called Dance of the Dead. It's from 2008. You can find it on Prime, Plex, Roku, Pluto, and Tubi. Production companies are Compound B, Bishop Studios LLC, and Bleiberg Entertainment. The director is Greg Bishop, the writer is Joe Ballerini, it stars Jared Kuznitz, Kuznitz, whatever, Grayson Chadwick and Chandler Darby. Still easier names than I did in the last episode. Plot. On the night of the high school prom, the dead rise to eat the living, and the only people who can stop them are the losers who can't get dates to the dance. That is a really good plot summary. So, why this movie? Again, another high school kid movie. How did I see it? I watched this a few years ago. It might have been during COVID. I watched a lot of horror movies during COVID, and I was basically looking around for a horror movie I hadn't seen before, and this one looked interesting. My favorite kill. Um, this is a zombie movie, and you know, zombie movies for me, there's usually not any good kills. So this movie's very entertaining. In truth, for an independent movie, I think they did a great job. There was some great the beginning. I like the way that they introduced you to the characters. They like almost, it was like almost going back to like handheld 80s VHS type stuff for some reason to like signify this was in the past and it's not happening now. So it's kind of neat. They did a good job with that. And then also the way that they showed it, it it they're also like kind of doing some good character development, which is kind of neat. The action scenes in this are are pretty good, especially considering this is not a big budget project. The practical effects in this are also pretty good. You know, a lot of the the biting and killing and whatnot. So I mean there, there's some some good effects there. Done very well again. I don't think there was any CGI in this, so everything was done really well. The movie is is pretty much the nerds save the day, which is weird because I mean when I was a kid, that was not how a theme would ever be. But now it's like to be a more reoccurring, re recurring theme that you know, the the jocks and the the popular kids can handle things, but the nerds, the ones that understand what's going on, uh, they save the day, it was just kind of neat. I say that, you know, being a nerd myself. So this is another movie and another recent movie that that has this concept that you know, like zombies, they're kind of like mindless killers and whatnot. And but for some reason, music soothes them. And this movie kind of feeds into that. And it's interesting. Uh, I've seen in a couple of films now, again, newer films, but a couple of you know, newer films that like like the music somehow has an effect on zombies and a and a calming effect on really. The ending of this movie is awesome, it's really worth seeing it for the ending. Also, uh, throughout this movie, so the the the undead, the zombies start rising up from a specific cemetery before you know biting people and spreading it. And in the beginning, there's a caretaker of this cemetery, and like he knows this is happening, but he basically you know kills the zombies and has been taking care of it himself on a on a smaller basis, and uh, I think it's funny, like he knows this is going on, but he doesn't say anything to anybody because he doesn't want to get in trouble. You know, he can just take care of itself. There's very like a like very Gen X. Like, no point telling anybody I can take care of it, kind of thing. Yeah, I I don't know, I like that. And apparently the original script for this movie was finished in 1997. But 1997 was not what I would call a good year for zombies, you know, people weren't making zombie movies, and then uh, you know, 10 years later, the zombie craze is back on, so um, they finally had a good reason to make this movie, so they did. So I'm glad they did. Again, it's a good movie. You should try to see it if you can, Dance of the Dead. So I have one more because although I had a lot to say about Promenade, I knew I wouldn't have a lot to say about the other one. So instead of the normal three movies, I did one more movie. So movie number four for season one, episode 23, is called Ghoul School from 1990. You can find it on Plex or Tuy. Production company is O'Gore Productions. Yes, it's an independent. Um director is Timothy O'Raw. Dritter Timothy O'Raw. I'm only assuming he had a hand in the production company, too. Um it stars Joe Franklin, William Friedman, and Scott Gordon. Don't be surprised if you don't know who those are. Plot. Sex, babes, and rock and roll. Two thugs. Really, that's your first sentence. Um, two thugs in search of hidden treasure mistakenly unleash a chemical in the school's water supply, causing everyone it comes into contact with to become flesh-eating ghouls. Again, why this movie? I wasn't sure I'd have enough talking material um with the first two first three movies, so I did another one quick. How did I see it? Sorry, I was just reading my note and remembering. So, this is a movie I kind of watched under false pretenses. So, years ago, I was looking for a horror movie to watch on the screen. On a streaming service and like the poster art for this movie showed a couple of scantily clad women, like hot 80s girls. And I was like, Yeah, why not? You know, I'm I I can handle that. Uh, the scantily clad hot women never happened in this movie. I actually read later that like the movie poster stuff, like they took that print work from a different movie, like it had nothing, they they it really had nothing to do with the movie, but they just use it to try to sell the movie, and you know, dumb me. Yeah, they they got me. So, as it says, it's ghoul school, and they say like ghouls, which are apparently different from zombies. In this movie, a ghoul makes you completely blue and gives you really sharp teeth, and that's all they did um to make someone a ghoul. They painted them blue and they put really bad false teeth in their mouth. Um, so because it's ghouls, I decided to like what's the mythology behind ghouls? And it's it varies, it varies a lot. Um the one common theme about ghouls is that they eat flesh, and in this movie, that's what they do. They kill people and eat their flesh. The practical effects in this movie are really interesting, and I'm not gonna say good, I'm gonna say interesting. Um, like you know what? I skipped over my favorite kill. Kill. Well, here we go. Because I'm gonna talk about the practical effects. So, and this goes with my favorite kill. The practical effects, again, we're interesting, but my favorite kill, which has to do with that, is there was a guy that gets knocked down to the ground, and for some reason the ghouls start hacking away at him with an axe. And it is almost comical to see these axe strikes on whatever this is that is supposed to be this guy on the ground. It is funny because it's like I it's hard to describe, but but I'm not gonna tell you to see the movie. I mean, it's like it's like they had Recessa Annie, or isn't it? Yeah, the Recessa Annie, and they filled her with blood and they just started hitting her with an axe. And like, so like kind of blood kind of went out and kind of didn't, and maybe there were uh it was just really bad. The production values in this is kind of what you would expect from a handheld video camera from the 80s, kind of grainy, blurry, and bad. It it kind of looked like you were playing a VCR tape with the heads like not tracking right. Um, if you're my age or old, you'll understand what that looks like. The ending in this is horrendous. Um, the only thing probably more horrendous is midway through, well, during the movie, Jackie the choke man Martling, who is uh a guy that was on Harold Stern for a while. Basically, he and Joe Franklin, who's in this movie, are in this movie having a talk seemingly completely unrelated to the movie, but they filmed the shot anyway. It was a short movie. I guess they needed this too. They needed that part to add on and make the movie long enough, like I added this movie just to try to make this episode long enough to make me feel good inside. So I guess maybe two wrongs make it right, if you want to look at it that way. So that was it. Uh, you got four movies. You know, hope you feel that I've given you a bonus on this. If not, I understand that too because like although they were, you know, some of those are good movies, there's just not a lot to them, and and and that's okay in itself. So for my next episode, it's gonna be my Father's Day episode. So I'm going to do movies with either a Father's Day theme, not a Father's Day theme, but a father's theme. So kind of think of what movies might be hearing. And until then, have fun.