During an interview with Terror Trap, producer Peter R. Simpson reflected on one of his most polarizing releases: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), formerly known under the title The Haunting of Hamilton High. The low-budget Canadian supernatural horror film was met with a fairly mixed reception upon its release. Simpson posited that had the film been released as a standalone film as opposed to a Prom Night sequel, then the reaction would have been much more positive. After an extensive amount of reshoots, changing over half of the film, the rebranding of The Haunting of Hamilton High was complete by giving it an obtuse linking to the original Prom Night film and a new title courtesy of the production company Simcom. But in the grand scheme of things, what did this film really gain as a sequel?
1980's Prom Night, directed by Paul Lynch and featuring the talents of Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis, garnered a successful box office run, becoming Canada's highest-grossing film of the year. Critics varied on just how much appreciation the film warranted, but it has undoubtedly become a cult classic. This surely would warrant the film to receive a sequel or two, especially in the slasher-saturated decade of the 1980s. Like many slasher sequels, Prom Night II would ideally have a fair number of connections to the original film. It's been seen time and time again in slasher franchises, from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Halloween and many more. Original cast members occasionally return, or the locale and villain recur in some facet. Unless a film series is being anthologized, it pays to make connections between sequels and the previous films, as it's what fans expect to see.
The premise of Hello Mary Lou starts in 1957 and follows the story of Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage), whose promiscuity she flaunts even in the confessional booth. After being given a ring by Billy (Steve Atkinson/Michael Ironside), one of her many flings, she is caught making out with another boy at Hamilton High's senior prom. To get revenge, Billy attempts to drop a stink bomb on Mary Lou after she wins the title of Prom Queen. However, the stink bomb's fuse lights Mary Lou's dress, setting her on fire and killing her in front of the entire crowd. Fast forward to 1987, an innocent Hamilton student named Vicki Carpenter (Wendy Lyon) discovers Mary Lou's prom night belongings in an old trunk, inadvertently releasing her spirit. It isn't long before Vicki falls under Mary Lou's influence, racking up a body count and using every ounce of seduction to her advantage.
What's confounding about Hello Mary Lou is how little it's connected to the original Prom Night. Aside from the film's title, which is one part Prom Night connection and one part reference to a Ricky Nelson song, the only connection between the sequel and the original is that the films both take place at the same high school. The original Prom Night was a slasher in the conventional sense, while Hello Mary Lou takes on a supernatural theme. There's nothing wrong with changing things up, but if Hello Mary Lou didn't have Prom Night in its title, most watchers would likely be completely unaware that it had anything to do with the 1980 slasher flick.
One could even argue that Hello Mary Lou has more references and homages to other slasher films of the 1980s than connections to the film it's supposed to be a sequel of. Director Bruce Pittman and writer Ron Oliver were very clearly inspired by the likes of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie (1976), David Lynch's thriller Blue Velvet (1986), and Italian Giallo films, and this shows in the cinematography and references. When you have a Prom Night sequel referencing just about everything except Prom Night, why brand it a sequel at all? It's likely that as a low-budget Canadian film, some people working on the film believed that attaching The Haunting of Hamilton High to a known property would improve its chances at catching on at the box office, both in Canada and abroad. Since Prom Night had been successful in its box office gross, it likely seemed like a natural fit.
With so little linking it to its predecessor, Simpson remarked in his interview that Hello Mary Lou received much of Prom Night's "baggage," but not really any of its success. One of the most notable parallels that many horror fans are likely familiar with is the story of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), where Tommy Lee Wallace and John Carpenter sought to convert the Halloween series into an anthology film series featuring different stories centered around the concept of the Halloween holiday. Fans flocking to theaters naturally expected to see something connected to the previous two films, continuing the blood-soaked escapades of the Shape, Michael Myers (Nick Castle/Dick Warlock). Instead, fans were met with a story concerning witchcraft and pagan child sacrifice during the times of Samhain. As expected, many fans were upset, leading to a critical and box office botch. Despite the film eventually garnering respect in years past when viewed as a standalone horror movie, Halloween III wasn't even really viewed as a "true" Halloween sequel.
Hello Mary Lou is a film heavy on the supernatural, utilizing styles from many classic horror filmmakers, and even throws in a heaping helping of satire towards organized religion. If that doesn't sound anything like the original Prom Night, that's the exact problem. Although Prom Night wasn't technically a series until Hello Mary Lou's release, the title still placed the film in an uphill battle commercially and critically. Viewers entered theaters to watch a Prom Night sequel, and they got a film more akin to Carrie or The Exorcist (1973). When you place a known name in horror in your film title, expectations come along with it. It's why Season of the Witch struggled, and Hello Mary Lou inevitably met the same fate.
Had the film been released as intended, as The Haunting of Hamilton High, there's no guarantee it would have been more successful with critics or with its box office gross. However, viewers would have been going in understanding this low-budget indie horror film was attempting to stand on its own merits. Instead of seeing it as a stepping stone in a slasher series, Hello Mary Lou would live or die on its own presentation instead of how well it continued the story and approach of Prom Night. It's a pitfall many horror series have fallen into, and for Simpson, hindsight is clearly 20/20 for him as an executive producer.