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user\nHello Mary Lou: Prom Night II starts at the Hamilton High School prom of 1957 where Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage) is cheating on her date Bill Nordham (Steve Atkinson) with Bud Cooper (Robert Lewis). Bill finds out & is devastated, meanwhile Mary Lou is announced prom queen 1957 & takes to the stage to accept her award. Bill, still hurting, decides to play a practical joke on Mary Lou so he throws a firecracker on stage but the still lit fuse catches Mary Lou's dress setting it & her on fire, within seconds Mary Lou is toast. 30 years later & Hamilton High is soon to hold it's annual prom night. Bill (Micheal Ironside) is now the principal & has a teenage son named Craig (Justin Louis) who is dating Vicki Carpenter (Wendy Lyon) & are both planning on going to the prom together. Bud (Richard Monette) is now a priest, that terrible night 30 years ago still haunt both Bill & Bud. One day Vicki is looking around the schools basement when she discovers a large trunk which she opens, this turns out to be a bad move as the vengeful spirit of Mary Lou is set free & is intent on claiming her crown as prom queen & in her spare time sets out to avenge her untimely death. First up is Jess Browning (Beth Gondek) whose death is put down to a suicide, Mary Lou begins to posses Vicki's body as the night of the prom draws nearer. After disposing of some competition in the shape of Kelly Hennenlotter (Terri Hawkes) who tries to fix the prom so she wins. Mary Lou in Vicki's body is crowned Hamilton High prom queen which allows Mary Lou herself to come back from the dead to make an unexpected appearance & really liven the party up...
With absolutely no connection to the original Prom Night (1980) & directed by Bruce Pittman I thought Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II wasn't a particularly good film. The script by Ron Oliver concentrates more on supernatural elements rather than cheap teen slasher themes, whether this was a good or bad decision will depend on your expectations I suppose. Personally I found these different elements didn't really gel or work that well together at all. The whole film was far to slow to be really enjoyable, after the opening sequence where Mary Lou dies no one else is killed until the half hour mark & then the film plods along for another half an hour until Vicki is finally possessed & the film finally picks up momentum for the climax where an evil Mary Lou kills a whole one person at the prom before she is supposedly defeated, come on horror film fans you did expect that clichéd 'killer not dead & ready for a sequel' ending didn't you? Don't expect a hight body count, just five throughout the entire film & none particularly graphic although I did like the way Monica (Beverley Hendry as Beverly Hendry) tried to hide in a shower room locker which Mary Lou crushed & resulting in poor Monica's blood oozing out. The supernatural side of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is depicted by Vicki having lots of hallucinations for the first hour & Mary Lou controlling objects during the latter stages including a couple of creepy shots of a rocking horse which comes to life, the blackboard scene is quite good as well as it turns into water & zombie hands drag Vicki into it. The slasher side of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II isn't outstanding, I did like Mary Lou herself as she churns out the obligatory one-liners & she made for a good villain even if she didn't get to kill enough people. Oh, & yes I did get the running homages to various other horror film director's with almost all of the character's sharing last names with one, this obviously adds nothing to the film but is a nice little touch I suppose. The acting is OK but the normally dependable Micheal Ironside looks lost & uninterested almost as if he's asking himself what he's doing in this & if he'll ever work again. Forget about any gore, someone is hanged, there is a stabbing with a crucifix that happens off screen, someone is impaled with a neon light, a computer goes crazy & electrocutes someones face(!?) & Mary Lou bursts out of Vicki's body at first as a rotting zombie which was quite a cool scene. There are some full frontal nudity shots in the girls shower as well, if that's your thing. To give it some credit Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is OK to watch, has reasonable production values throughout & is generally well made. Overall I was disappointed by Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, it was just too slow & ultimately uneventful to maintain my interest for nearly 100 minutes. I'm not sure whether it deserves a 3 or 4 star rating, I'll give it a 4 as there's nothing specifically wrong with it I suppose & I've sat through much worse films but it just didn't really do anything for me I'm afraid.
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