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Terror Train
[20th Century Fox]
1980; color
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson, Hart Bochner, David Copperfield, Derek McKinnon, Sandee Curri, Timothy Webber, Anthony Sherwood & Howard Busgang
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Terror Train is an unfortunately sub-par slasher flick that falls flat every time the opportunity rises for it to redeem itself. Without the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis, who was a full-on scream queen at this point in her then-young career (her next movie was Prom Night), this would be almost completely unmemorable. If not unbearable. The basic plot revolves around a group a college frat boys (and their girlfriends) who once played a practical joke on a frat pledge that went horribly wrong, resulting in the victim freaking out and ending up in a mental hospital. Three years later, it's New Year's Eve and the fraternity has rented an excursion train (as in excursion to nowhere—it's a party train) for a masquerade party. As everyone's boarding the train, one of the brothers—dressed as Groucho Marx—ends up with a sword protruding from his belly; no one pays this any mind because everyone assume it's another practical joke. Of course, we all know it isn't because we then see the killer's hands stripping the body of it's costume and rolling the corpse under the train. And we all know what happens next… the body count begins to rise. (A point must be made here that, despite the relatively high body count and copious amounts of blood, we don't see any stabbings, slashings or real splatter movie violence of any kind with the exception of a guy's head getting slammed into a mirror.) In one of the movie's few inventive twists, the killer continues to change into selected costumes of his victims as works his way through the group of frat boys and their girls. As the bodies begin to pile up, Jamie Lee figures out who the killer is, meaning—if we all follow the rules of splatter—she'll eventually be facing off against him in some sort of showdown. In the interim we're treated to a fair amount of messily dispatched victims, and a magic show. Yes, that's right, a magic show. Given by no less than magician-who-thought-he-could-act David Copperfield. And, believe me, when Jamie Lee stumbles on his sword skewered body I was more than thankful he'd done his last trick. Anyhow, after much offscreen bloodletting, the killer ends up wounded by Jamie Lee with a sword through the back of his ribcage yet still manages to pursue her all over the train for at least 10 more minutes. Eventually it all comes down to a surprise gender-bending face-off that'll leave you scratching your head… and then the killer gets beaned with a shovel and falls off the train—which is conveniently on a bridge at the time—into an icy river. Once again following the rules of splatter, since there's no Terror Train 2, we can safely assume the killer is dead. This one is recommended for genre die-hards or Jamie Lee fans only.
—the Kommandant
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