Name: Prom Night (1980)
Start: 2025-10-02T21:30:00-04:00
Location: Tampa Theatre

13th Annual "A Nightmare on Franklin Street" series
******************************
1h 32m / R / Slasher
******************************
All movies are the result of thousands of tiny decisions. Nearly perfect movies like 1978’s Halloween, for example, therefore require thousands of good decisions. Many of those decisions are legible in the work itself: the soundtrack, Michael Myers’s mask, casting Jamie Lee Curtis, etc. But some are almost imperceptible, like the fact that when you name your movie after an annual holiday, it’s going to get watched every year forever. Congratulations, you just made yourself a cult classic.
Prom Night has at least three things in common with Halloween: the good decision to cast Jamie Lee Curtis, a plot about a shadowy killer in a mask stalking and murdering suburban teenagers with an implied motivation of revenge, and an effective and memorable soundtrack (in this case, soundalikes of popular disco songs that got the film hit by a copyright lawsuit). Oh, and a fourth thing: producer Irwin Yablans, who suggested to director Paul Lynch that instead of making a picture about a doctor who kills his patients, he should make a movie based on a holiday. Voila, Prom Night.
**********************************
VIEW the rest of the 2025 “A Nightmare on Franklin Street” series lineup at https://tampatheatre.org/movie-categories/nightmare/
**********************************
Support for the 2025 A Nightmare on Franklin Street series is provided by the following sponsors: “Mummy & Me” screenings are sponsored by Tampa Electric. Additional support is provided by First Florida Insurance Brokers. Promotional support is provided by Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine and Scaradise.