“I just stuffed my dead biology teacher into the cupboard. Things are not all right.”

Justin’s rating: This is pretty accurate of everything I remember about high school life

Justin’s review: Imagine a time before the internet when the discerning horror fan would only find out about upcoming movie projects through magazines. Picking up an issue of Fangoria in 1990 and seeing stuff like another sequel to Prom Night was being made must have been a rush. Maybe the larger world didn’t care about slasher universes, but you did, and through such magazines you were able to feel connected with others who shared your passion for cheap pulp fiction.

It really was a different time in a lot of ways, including the fact that you couldn’t take for granted that a sequel was actually going to continue a story at all instead of bolting in a radical new direction. Prom Night III: The Last Kiss does a little bit of both as it brings back Mary Lou (Courtney Taylor, who takes over this role) to haunt Hamilton High while also leaning far more into the dark comedy angle than before.

Mary Lou breaks out of hell (which is a neverending aerobics class?) and brings her brand of ironic terror to the halls of her old alma mater. It’s here that she connects with Alex (Tim Conlon), a struggling student who doesn’t mind forming a partnership — in crime and passion — with a homicidal specter who can possess people and summon entire thematic rooms full of ’50s memorabilia.

But when you tango with hell succubi, there’s bound to be a couple hiccups to happiness. Mary Lou becomes a clingy, overly attached undead girlfriend, and Alex is all “it’s not you it’s me” after one too many murders that end in him burying people in the football field. Mary Lou does not take this breakup well and guns for Alex at the prom, prompting his long-suffering girlfriend Sarah (Cynthia Preston) to leap to his defense.

Long story short, they all end up in hell — Mary Lou’s home turf — for a 15-minute showdown. The kids she’s killed get another chance at screen time as new foes in the hereafter, and Justin is quite entertained about the change of venue. It’s honestly too bad that more of this movie couldn’t take place in the Silent Hill version of their school.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the early ’90s stopped taking slashers even a little seriously, so it’s not that surprising that Prom Night III skews heavily to being a spoof of the genre. And not a subtle spoof, I might add. This film winks and nods at the viewer so much that I’m starting to suspect that this is one of those Canadian films. Oh yeah, it totally is.

Because there’s no attempt at any actual scares, this movie’s an exercise in dad jokes, weird kills, and a slight satire on high school culture. Alex learns that doing whatever it takes to succeed in life isn’t worth it if your biology teacher ends up with 10 pounds of bananas and ice cream and chocolate syrup in his torso.

I thought the campiness was a lot of fun, personally. This film is that unstable enough that you never know where it’s going (hell, it’s going to literally hell), so you stick around to see the next twist. The use of ’50s music and themes — Mary Lou’s time period — gets some additional play, which gives a shot of personality that this series needs.

“Camp” is going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting here, because Prom Night III isn’t exactly abounding in good acting or clever dialogue (oddly enough, the investigating cop is the only character who is good in his role). Mary Lou is supposed to be a killer in the vein of Freddy Krueger, a chatty Cathy with a mean streak, but she’s far less interesting here than in the second film. She should be the girlfriend from hell, but here she’s just Cynthia from casting.

Prom Night III pairs well with Prom Night II, if you’re looking for a two-parter that packages up late ’80s slashers and teen culture into some cheesy direct-to-video fare. I’m not going to say this third part is the best of the genre — far from it, but as a Canadian take on Americana is worth seeing for anyone who has a stack of Fangorias in a closet somewhere.

Intermission!

• This is the saddest undead dance/Rockette chorusline/aerobics class
• Death by jukebox: “Mom said I’d be a heartbreaker”
• “The vanishing students, these are all in the past!”
• How bad of a scissor cutter do you need to be to cut off your whole finger?
• That gym is a rainbow of pastels
• That’s a very distracting cactus
• Two candles on the dashboard after a drive-thru does not a “candlelight dinner” make
• I might forget my kids’ names one day, but I’ll never forget that Alex’s shoe size here is 9.
• Mary Lou’s got retractable fingernails
• That’s one way to desecrate the American flag
• Is Alex’s mom and dad cartoons? I’m guessing they are based on the phone voices.
• “I don’t get mad, I bake.”
• I love Sarah’s utterly ’80s hair
• Be suspicious of ’50s diners that appear in your classroom, you’re going to end up as a teacher-sized sundae
• Her name is MUFFIN?
• Say “Sarah” a few dozen more times, maybe then she’ll come back. No? Oh well.
• “The doctor is in.”
• They didn’t mark anything on this football field. Failure on the props department!
• “Look at those nails, that’s not a manicure, that’s a massacre.”
• Death by battery acid, no thank you
• The Last Supper painting recreation on the gym stage
• “It wasn’t a person, it was a guidance counselor.”
• Death by football drill
• The lunch lady used to work at the toxic waste dump
• Shane’s dangly earring is so distracting
• Man, don’t ruin that guy’s coat with all the blood
• EARLY ’90s RAP ALERT
• OK the TV report was genuinely funny
• “One question… why fruit?”
• That flamethrower doesn’t seem to burn up anything
• Hell Prom!
• Don’t trust ambulatory jukeboxes
• You can hotwire cars in hell