Terror Train
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Movie Reviews of Terror Train
Movie Review: More 80's Horror
Summary: 4 Stars
A classic horror movie, Jamie Lee Curtis was perfect for these movies of the 80'sMovie Review: All Aboooaard!
Summary: 3 Stars
Terror Train isn't the best example of an 80s slasher flick, but it certainly isn't the worst either. Of course it's got Jamie Lee during the early horror phase of her career. She's not given much to do that you haven't seen her do in Halloween, though she does use the "F" word this time out. Another interesting point is the appearance(and disappearance and reappearance) of illusionist David Copperfield. Copperfield doesn't really do the movie thing, and it kinda makes you wonder why he'd choose to be in Terror Train of all things. Plotwise, it's pretty standard. A fraternity prank lands a geeky guy in the sack with a dismembered corpse rather than Jamie Lee, who he was originally expecting to devirginize him(a rather extreme and demented prank if I may say), thus driving him to madness. Well, we all know that when tramatizing pranks and pranks gone awry are done to children and nerds, you've got the blueprints for some deadly revenge. See Prom Night, Carrie and The Toxic Avenger for a couple more examples. The murders are carried out during a costume party on a train.....The TERROR TRAIN. There's no secret to who's doing the killing, you know from the start. That's not the gag though, the gag isn't so much who the killer is, but where the killer is. The movie spends a great deal of time pointing the finger at Copperfield's character, but it's forced upon us so much that it's obvious that he's the only one you can be sure isn't the killer. The trick to keeping the killer a mystery is the fact that he dons the costume of his most recent victim. This keeps him moving through the train pretty freely. This is also probably the only original thing about the film as well. Terror Train is best viewed in the wee hours of the morning over one of those microwavable chicken cordon bleu thingees and a room temperature of 76 degrees. It's a rather harmless film and works best as a piece of slasher flick history.Movie Review: HALLOWEEN Meets Amtrak--What a Wreck!
Summary: 3 Stars
In 1979's TERROR TRAIN, pre-med students hold a masquerade party on a quaint old passenger train and are picked off one by one as a costumed maniac lurks about. With this mediocre slasher flick, Director Roger Spottiswoode quite literally tried to ride the coattails of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978). Indeed, the film was produced and released within a year of Carpenter's watershed flick, and Spottiswoode even borrowed his predecessor's star, Jamie Lee Curtis!
A first-rate cast does its best, but even good actors can only do so much when working with lame material. TERROR TRAIN's biggest fault is the often excruciatingly slow pacing, and it doesn't help that the identity of the killer is telegraphed to the audience right from the opening scene. Copious gore or a little T&A might've livened things up a little, but even these slasher requisites are kept to a minimum.
In addition to the talented players, TERROR TRAIN does have a few other qualities that almost redeem it. Almost. Gaffer Lou Bogue's lighting creates perfect highlights and shadows, turning the quaint steam train into a haunted house on rails, and John Alcott's gorgeous cinematography gives the whole thing a vivid sense of the Gothic. But TERROR TRAIN is still, at best, just a footnote in the slasher sub-genre, and only ardent fans will not wish they could reclaim the 97 minutes they'll spend watching it. (Of course, big-time fans of Ms. Curtis might also enjoy a run-through.)
The dual-sided no-frills DVD from Fox offers the film in both anamorphic-widescreen and full-screen versions, and the digital transfer is crisp, vibrant, and relatively clean. Still, even at the low price of admission, most should be wary of forking over ANY cash for this one.
Note: The three-star rating is only for avid fans of slasher films. For the average viewer, this film would rate at two stars.
Movie Review: THIS ONE JUMPS THE TRACKS
Summary: 3 Stars
Jamie Lee Curtis became the screen scream queen after her career-defining role in HALLOWEEN. She has gone on since then to show an immense diversity and talent in such films as TRUE LIES, MOTHER'S BOYS and FREAKY FRIDAY. However, after HALLOWEEN, Jamie did films like this and PROM NIGHT; hey why not milk a good thing? Jamie does well in this lurid little thriller, but she's not quite as innocent as in her other outings. She's part of a fraternity prank that makes an effeminate loner named Kenny (Derek McKinnon) goe bonkers. Fast forward to three years later and now Jamie and her pre-med friends are on a specially rented train to celebrate their successes. Oscar winner Ben Johnson (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) is on board as the venerable engineer; his performance is lethargic and needed someone more spirited like Jonathan Harris or Peter Cushing. Hart Bochner (SUPERGIRL, APARTMENT ZERO, LIBERTY STANDS STILL) is the handsome Doc, the perpetrator of the Kenny scheme, and he's not changed a bit. Jamie is hooked up with Mo (Timothy Webber), a worthless friend of Doc's; and the magical talents of David Copperfield are wasted, as his presence, other than a potential red herring.
Someone of course wants revenge for Kenny and has managed to sneak on the train and is offing the participants in this heinous prank. I have to admit that when I saw this the first time back in the 80s, I was fooled by the identity. It's still a good surprise, even though if one looks at the killer's fingernails in a near climax killing, you'll soon figure it out.
The movie is not bad for a slasher film, but its direction and performances are wooden, and it ends rather abruptly. Not bad though.
Movie Review: Great atmosphere, not much else
Summary: 3 Stars
This is basically a bunch of kids having a costume party on a train. Lucky thing about the costumes, as this allows the killer to walk around unnoticed. As someone else said, the movie consists of a bunch of scenes of kids talking, then the conductor talking to the train crew, then the kids watching a magic show, more kids talking, more magic, then a lot of scenes with the train conductor talking to the kids. Somewhere sandwiched in between all that is the ocassional kill. I couldn't believe the amount of David Copperfield scenes in this thing. It's more than obvious that the film makers were banking on him being a huge draw for the audience. Now it just makes the movie seem incredibly dated.
There aren't any real scares, and the revenge motive of the killer is quite silly. A prank is pulled on him, and to everyone's surprise, he decides to start doing a bunch of pirouettes while standing under some loose draperies, thereby nearly hanging himself. Nobody to blame but his own laughable stupidity. Jamie Lee Curtis' character motivation seems very odd as well - she holds a grudge against the head fraternity guy for years just because he was responsible for the prank which really shouldn't have hurt anybody, but the guy started spinning under the drapes. I mean, who would anticipate that some guy would start spinning around when he got surprised?
The only good part of the movie is the atmoshpere on the train. It could have been a good movie, but the focus on the train conductor character seemed very odd and none of the characters were sympathetic, not that we even got to know them at all.