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TERROR TRAIN

ABRACADABRA. YOU'RE DEAD.



★★★★☆ (Worth the Watch)

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

1980



I like scary stories about trains and I like scary stories about magic, and Terror Train combines both in a slasher film full of college student victims. If you’re suspicious, I don’t blame you. Most gimmicky vintage horror is anemic with the goodies, but Terror Train is not that kind of film. You want magic? We’re gonna give you magic. The plot, the villain, the murders…they all involve presto-chango and David Copperfield in a starring role. You want trains? How about Jamie Lee Curtis kicking the bad guy’s caboose all over a locomotive’s engine room.


Did you ever see that South Park episode where a manatee chooses the jokes for Family Guy by kicking an “idea ball” in a hole? That’s what Terror Train felt like to me. What sober person would have ever come up with this concept on their own? Terror Train has a terrible quality to it (feels like 80s, smells like 80s), but I cannot knock a movie that is stuffed full of interesting scenes and Copperfield doing pathetic tricks in a train car in front of a group of drunk hecklers. All aboard the massacre express!


Jamie Lee Curtis opens the film with her mean girl Alana going along with a crowd of college freshmen jerks to play a trick on Kenny (Derek MacKinnon)—a bizarrely convoluted gag involving a decorated bedroom at a party and a corpse stolen by one of the medical students. You will experience flashbacks of Slaughter High as Kenny sets the dweeb factor to eleven, and the film treats his meltdown as operatic. Terror Train then cuts to almost four years later, when the college students book an old-fashioned locomotive to celebrate their graduation. There are some flimsy explanations of why this mode of transportation is the site of the costume party—most having to do with Alana’s rich boyfriend—but the point is to isolate these young adults before a stowaway slices and dices them. One thing Terror Train does well is introduce us to the victims, making them distinct characters with complicated dynamics. They cheat, they have goals and dreams. We remember who they are when their bodies are found by the train staff. Some of these kills are frightening because they’re committed in broad view of drunk revelers who don’t understand that these are screams of murder and not screams of partying.


As for Alana, her and her boyfriend are at the crossroads so many graduates find themselves at: Now that we’re in the real world, where is this going? The time jump has revealed that Alana has grown as a person since she tricked Kenny, and has repented for what she’s done. This unseen arc makes her our heroine, and I think that’s a pretty neat thing to do. Of course, Curtis sells Alana’s likability in a way most actresses cannot, so we root for her as she fights tooth and nail to save her own life. The ending will have feminists fist-pumping the air.


“YOU WANT TRAINS? HOW ABOUT JAMIE LEE CURTIS KICKING THE BAD GUY’S CABOOSE ALL OVER A LOCOMOTIVE’S ENGINE ROOM.”


When the older train employees get a whiff of murder, they decide to hide the crimes until reaching the next station, but we all know they ain’t gettin’ to that next station. As if there wasn’t enough going on, we have David Copperfield doing a decent job playing the soft-spoken, hired magician flirting with Alana and using his sleight-of-hand trickery to get back at the college students making fun of him. When the second act begins to lag, he’s pulled out to entertain the audience watching the film, and to me, this is the most befuddling thing about Terror Train. There was enough story here to leave out the magic element, yet, adding it really does give the plot more depth, and the killer layers. When it comes to magic scares, it’s difficult to compete with the ridiculousness of The Wizard of Gore, but Terror Train is up to the challenge. Jamie Lee Curtis fights harder than she did as Laurie Strode and Copperfield hides murderous secrets while winking at us. When it comes to silly 1980s horror, Terror Train will get your motor running.






GENRES: Diverse Characters, Feminist-Friendly, Serial Killer


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