Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is a 1987 Canadian supernatural slasher film directed by Bruce Pittman, and starring Michael Ironside, Wendy Lyon, Louis Ferreira, and Lisa Schrage. It follows a high school student who becomes possessed by Mary Lou Maloney, a student who died at her high school prom in 1957. A sequel to the slasher film Prom Night (1980), it was originally intended to be a standalone film titled The Haunting of Hamilton High, but was retitled in order to capitalize on the success of the original Prom Night. The only story connection between the two films is that they are set at the same high school. However, both films were executive produced by Peter R. Simpson.

Filmed in Edmonton, Alberta in 1986, the film was retitled Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II by its Canadian distributor, Alliance Films. It was released theatrically in the United States by The Samuel Goldwyn Company in October 1987, and grossed nearly $3 million at the U.S. box office. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with many drawing stylistic comparisons to various other films of the era, ranging from David Lynch's Blue Velvet to its horror contemporaries Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The character Mary Lou Maloney would also appear in the next installment, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990).

Plot
In 1957, at a high school senior prom, student Billy Nordham discovers his date Mary Lou Maloney making out with another boy named Buddy Cooper. Mary Lou breaks up with Billy and infuriates him when she reveals that she was just using him. Shortly after, Mary Lou is announced prom queen, and Billy, looking for revenge, throws a stink bomb onto the stage as a prank. However, the fuse of the bomb accidentally ignites Mary Lou's dress, and she burns to death in front of the horrified students, but not before looking up and seeing who was responsible.

30 years later, student Vicki Carpenter goes looking for a dress in the school prop room after being denied a new dress by her overly religious mother. There, Vicki finds an old trunk containing the cape and crown that Mary Lou was supposed to wear during the crowning process. She takes the accessories and leaves them in the school overnight, inadvertently releasing Mary Lou's spirit in the process. That night, Vicki's friend Jess is killed by Mary Lou's ghost after she tries to remove the jewels from her crown. Jess's death is ruled as a suicide brought on by an unexpected pregnancy.

Vicki begins experiencing surreal, nightmarish hallucinations involving Mary Lou and informs Buddy, who is now a priest. The following night, Buddy's bible spontaneously combusts after he attempts to bless Mary Lou's grave. Worried, Buddy approaches Billy, who is now the high school principal. He tries to warn Billy that Mary Lou has come back from the grave, but is dismissed as crazy. Later, Vicki winds up in detention after she inadvertently slaps her rival Kelly Henenlotter during another hallucination. There, Vicki is possessed by Mary Lou after she pulls her through a blackboard that transforms into a whirlpool. That night, Vicki confronts Buddy at the church and murders him after revealing her possession.

The next day, Vicki's friends notice that her personality and fashion style have suddenly changed drastically. One of Vicki's friends, Monica, privately confronts Vicki in the locker room, but is killed quickly after doing so. Vicki then reveals her possession to Billy and taunts him. That night, Billy finds Mary Lou's corpse missing from her grave, with Buddy's corpse in its place.

At the prom, Kelly, desperate to become prom queen, fellates her classmate Josh since he is in charge of the voting results. When Josh changes the outcome to make Kelly the winner, Vicki electrocutes him to death through his computer and reverses his changes. Once announced as prom queen, Vicki goes up on stage and eagerly waits for her crown. Before she can get it, Billy shoots her multiple times to the horror of the crowd. Shortly after, the now-fully resurrected Mary Lou bursts out of Vicki's body, and uses her powers to wreak havoc on the prom, killing Kelly in the process. Billy tries to shoot the undead Mary Lou, but falls and injures himself.

Mary Lou sets her sights on Billy's son and Vicki's boyfriend Craig, whom she chases into the prop room. She attempts to use the trunk that held her spirit to open a vortex to suck Craig into the Underworld, but before she can, Billy arrives with her crown and finally gives it to Mary Lou, seemingly bringing an end to her murderous wrath. Vicki, now free of possession, comes out of the trunk and reunites with Craig, and Billy offers to drive them both home after making sure they are both okay. After they all get into his car, however, Billy reveals that he is now possessed by Mary Lou, before driving off with the terrified Vicki and Craig.

Production
The film was originally titled The Haunting of Hamilton High, and includes many references and homages to past horror films in its script, including A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Carrie (1976) and The Exorcist (1973). In addition, several characters were named after popular horror film directors and other cult figures, including John Carpenter, George Romero, Wes Craven, Frank Henenlotter, Stephen King, John Waters, Dan O'Bannon, Edward D. Wood Jr. and Tod Browning.

The film was shot on location in Edmonton, Alberta at Westmount Jr. High School, on a budget of approximately CA$2.5 million. Other portions of the film were shot inside an abandoned furniture store. The Toronto-based Simcom Limited produced the film, while the media company Allarcom also co-funded its production. Filming began in early August 1986. The production chose Edmonton due to the local school board's enthusiasm about shooting a film in the city, as well as the fact that the local schools had the neo-Gothic architecture the producers had envisioned.

Jim Doyle, a special effects designer based in Los Angeles, served as the effects coordinator on the film. Doyle had previously worked on Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart (1982), and WarGames (1983). Some sequences required elaborate set-ups to film, such as the surrealistic sequence in which Vicki collapses into the chalkboard, which becomes a metallic liquid: Though only a 45-second sequence, the production crew scheduled five days to complete the scene, at an estimated cost of $2,000 per hour. Doyle designed the set with the blackboard lying flat on the floor, and filmed it so as to appear that it was standing on end.

Producer Peter Simpson and The Samuel Goldwyn Company reshot half of the film before it completed production, with writer Ron Oliver directing the new scenes himself. The film was subsequently rebranded as a sequel to the slasher Prom Night and retitled Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II by its Canadian production company, Simcom, peripherally connecting the films. Simpson later stated that he felt branding the film a continuation of Prom Night damaged its reception.

Release
The film was released theatrically in October 1987, and later expanded to a wide release on November 13, 1987. It grossed $911,351 in its opening weekend, and ended up making $2,683,519 at the U.S. box office. The film was more of a success on home video.

Critical response
Contemporaneous

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, praising Lyon's performance and drawing comparisons to Blue Velvet, adding: "You don't ... have to take Hello Mary Lou at all seriously, and it probably would be a mistake to do so. Certainly, it's not on the deeply personal, highly idiosyncratic artistic level of the David Lynch film, but it is a splendid example of what imagination can do with formula genre material." Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the film's extended "grand guignol" finale, writing: "Bruce Pittman, the director, and Ron Oliver, who wrote the screenplay, have constructed the movie as if it were a gourmet banquet for toddlers. From the first course to the last, it's all ice cream." Bill Cosford from The Arizona Republic called it "a badly made film, as awkward as can be, and long stretches of it make no sense whatsoever. Nor does it manage, as the better slasher films do, to re-create a high-school milieu of even passing authenticity."

Betsy Sherman of The Boston Globe deemed the film a "miserly slice-and-dicer: Carrie without the bucket of blood," though she conceded it is "somewhat livened by the presence of Michael Ironside." The Philadelphia Daily News's Ben Yagoda panned the film, writing that it "can be credited with nothing other than providing temporary employment for a group of untalented individuals," and drawing comparisons between Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and The Exorcist (1973). Richard Harrington of The Washington Post drew similar comparisons, writing that the film "may be derivative, but for the most part it's clever enough to trade on its sources with humor and class. It's Peggy Sue Lives on Elm Street, with dollops of Carrie, The Exorcist and a half dozen other genre stalwarts."

Stephen Hunter of The Baltimore Sun criticized what he described as a "rudimentary" script as well as the "waste" of Ironside. The Atlanta Constitution's Eleanor Ringel wrote: "for all its rip-offs, Hello Mary Lou is never a total chore to sit through. As vengeance-minded females go, Ms. Schrage makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction come off like a Girl Scout leader," adding that it serves as a "black-comic commentary on the whole notion of prom queens." Juan Carlos Coto of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reviewed the film favorably, writing that "despite its lack of original material, this film is well-scripted, directed, and acted–and surprisingly entertaining." A review in TV Guide awarded the film one out of five stars, praising the special effects and Pittman's direction, but ultimately deemed the film "all too predictable."

Modern assessment

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II holds a 56% approval rating based on 18 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5.30/10.

In a retrospective assessment, film scholar and critic John Kenneth Muir wrote, "In the annals of unnecessary sequels, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II rates high. Contrarily, in the ranks of 1980s horror movies, it's merely a mediocre effort." Film scholar Mike Mayo said the film is only a Prom Night sequel by title, and that it in fact bears more similarity to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Writing for Syfy in 2017, Rebecca Pahle praised the film's special effects and acting, and deemed it a "slasher masterwork." Jacob Knight of ComingSoon.net similarly praised the film in a 2015 retrospective, writing: "It's a shame Hello Mary Lou never became a bigger hit, because it's an oft-forgotten gem of the horror genre, standing the test of time nearly thirty years on. An amalgamation of national tax shelter weirdness, brazen borrowing from better films, and the tossing of creative caution to the wind, Pittman's picture evokes numerous classics while indubitably carving its own identity."

Home media
Virgin Vision released the film on VHS in May 1988.

As a tie-in for the release of the 2008 remake of Prom Night, MGM Home Entertainment (distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) released a new widescreen DVD of Hello Mary Lou on April 1, 2008. The film had earlier been released in Canada in 2003 as a full-screen DVD from Alliance Atlantis, who has since regained rights to release Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II again, as part of a 5 horror movie collection DVD set from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment in 2013.