Stand up these dates: ‘Prom Night III: The Last Kiss’ (1990) and ‘Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil’ (1991)

There’s a charm to second-rate slashers, but second-rate comedy is tough to sit through. “Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II” (1987) is a charming low-budget slasher with appealing blasts of off-the-cuff humor. “Prom Night III: The Last Kiss” (1990) is a comedy-horror film – which unfortunately means it’s a comedy merely with horror trappings rather than scares – but the comedy doesn’t rise to the level of being funny.

Mary Lou (Courtney Taylor) does rise from the grave, though. The way she does it is barely relevant to screenwriter Ron Oliver, returning from part two and also co-directing here with Peter Simpson. Yet it’s instructive of what’s ahead of us: She’s part of an endless line dance in hell, but she sands through her chain with a nail file then simply walks through the portal (a large costume case in the school’s basement, as per “Hello Mary Lou”).

For a while I felt like the straight-to-video “Last Kiss” would’ve been funny if Lisa Schrage had returned as Mary Lou and this straight-to-video film was allowed to continue to push her over-the-top sexuality and promiscuity. But as it goes on, it’s harder to give this film the benefit of the doubt because the comedy is so middling.

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It’s bad, but not for lack of effort. Oliver’s screenplay features attempts at comedy even in the margins. Over the school’s intercom, we hear satirical announcements such as how the girls’ weightlifting team must report for a mandatory facial-hair removal workshop. Few of the jokes are laugh-worthy, but we never forget what genre the film is in.

The plot threads are weightily uninteresting. Hero Alex (Tim Conlon) worries about being totally average, and his conflict is whether to spend the summer with his girlfriend or best friend. They’re both actors I feel like I’ve seen before: Cynthia Preston and David Stratton. Accurate in the case of Preston: She was in “Total Recall 2070,” one of my favorite hidden-gem TV series.

‘Nightmare’-inducing … and sleep-inducing

Preston’s soft voice plays well in that mesmeric future-scape, but is out of place in “The Last Kiss,” which oddly lacks energy. Preston’s Sarah tells Alex their relationship is on the rocks, since initially he can’t decide on his summer plans and soon he takes up with Mary Lou. Broadly, this is not his fault, since she casts some sort of spell over him (Mary Lou’s power: She can do whatever the script needs her to). But a viewer can’t really feel bad for the couple; not because they are bad people, but because they are indeed average (which reads on film as “boring”).

“Hello Mary Lou” is heavily inspired by the “Nightmare on Elm Street” saga in its premise and practical dark-magic effects. Some “Nightmare” films border on great, but as the series goes they become shrug-worthy; the increase in comedy is part of the issue.

With this Toronto-shot movie, the “Prom Night” series begins to mirror this problem. Another parallel: The production design, like that of the “Nightmare” films from around this time, resembles that of “Buffy” Season 1 (1997): mostly on backlots and stages. But I appreciate the look for nostalgic reasons, and it’s interesting to note that both sagas feature a Hellmouth in the school’s basement.

So the cinematography finds that classic look of horror-comedy, and I don’t believe Oliver is phoning it in. But it’s hard to point out any thing “The Last Kiss” does especially well, and easy to point out the opposite, including goofily bad high school football sequences that make the softball game in “Sleepaway Camp” look legit.

“Prom Night III: The Last Kiss” is merely unfunny; it’s not total amateur hour nor is it in offensively bad taste. But heck, maybe it should’ve tried for that; at least then we’d remember it.

2 stars

Hello, Father Jonas: More ’57 menace

“Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil” (1991), another straight-to-video entry but this time played straight instead of jokey, is a little bit edgy in its premise but from there it doesn’t remotely dodge genre expectations. Too competent to be so-bad-it’s-good, it lands smack in the realm of mediocrity as a slasher movie to fall asleep on your couch to.

Writer Richard Beattie and director Clay Borris, continuing the series’ tradition of being made in Canada in a low budget, unambiguously introduce us to an evil priest, Father Jonas (Jimmy Carver), at the 1957 prom. (Coincidentally, the same night as Mary Lou’s initial rampage.) In the slasher tradition – but more bluntly than ever – he kills teens who have sex, or who even think about it.

There’s something here, barely. Raised on the church’s teachings, the literal-minded young man might be aiming to carry out Biblical teachings. One scene borders on being psychologically interesting, as Jonas is so extremely religious that the extremely religious figures around him think he’s nuts.

The action doesn’t necessarily have to jump ahead to 1991. You might say, “Well, if Jonas continued on a killing spree in 1957, someone would’ve mentioned it in the previous movies.” Not necessarily. In the “Prom Night” saga, characters are constantly surprised to learn about Mary Lou’s depredations in old newspapers. And if Beattie wanted to be creative, he could have Jonas’ killings take place in the shadows of Mary Lou’s and be attributed to her.

As “Deliver Us from Evil” goes forward, though, it’s clear it doesn’t have the budget for full Fifties wardrobe and set décor (the establishing shots at the start are from “Prom Night II”), so we jump ahead to the waning days of big hair and metal. The downside is they also didn’t have the budget to make Carver look any older, even though he had been drugged on a bed in the catacombs for more than three decades.

Marching head first into the 1990s

Just as fans of Nicole de Boer, who later gained a cult following for TV’s “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “The Dead Zone,” are starting to wonder why she’s top billed, we move to “Prom Night IV’s” present day and she appears as virgin Meagan. She’s not necessarily safe from the resurrected Jonas, since she is thinking about having sex with patient boyfriend Mark (J.H. Wyman).

For the promiscuous pair – who deliver the film’s promise of “nudity, foul language and sexual situations” – we have Laura (Joy Tanner, admirably trying to add energy) and Jeff (Alle Ghadban). Almost adding a humorous spice is Mark’s kid brother, Jonathan (Fab Filippo), who tries to make a covert sex tape of Mark and Meagan in order to make big bucks, but generally “Prom Night IV” goes back to the original “Prom Night” in its level of comedy. Which is to say, none.

That’s not to say the film thinks entirely inside the box. It eschews a climactic prom scene for another tradition: This quartet is so cool that they ditch the prom and go to a remote house in the woods, with an unusually late-season snowstorm dusting the ground.

Although the “Prom Night” films don’t have a great reputation (aside from part two being a cult favorite), even with “Deliver Us from Evil” I can’t say the filmmakers are cranking out trash as fast as they can. In particularly, composer Paul Zaza creates new spooky beats to match Father Jonas’ stalking, and cinematographer Richard Wincenty exceeds the straight-to-video standard.

Meagan is a cliché, but de Boer is a good casting call as the good-hearted Final Girl. She’s the closest the series has come to a character I care to see survive. And while Father Jonas can’t match part two’s Mary Lou in entertainment value, his motivations make more sense than part three’s comedic Mary Lou. Put this pure good and pure evil together, and there’s a traditional momentum to the conflict of “Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil.”

2.5 stars

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