That's right, I said it. "Terror Train" apparently has a rep as a minor classic in the slasher genre, but after viewing this rather boring film last night I'm puzzled as to the reason why, exactly. The only thing I can think of is that this was part of Jamie Lee Curtis' three film hat trick that earned her the title of the premiere "Scream Queen" of the early 80s (the other two films, of course, are the original "Halloween" and "Prom Night"), and for that it automatically gets a free pass from horror geeks even though the movie itself isn't very good at all. I'll grant that "Terror Train" has an original setting and a few decent set pieces but the finished product was slow moving, filled with annoying characters and wasn't terribly gory or scary, even by 1980 standards.
Our story opens during a college fraternity's New Year's Eve party in which a prank on a pledge (involving a corpse in a bed that he thinks is going to be a real girl) goes horribly wrong and said pledge ends up institutionalized. Three years later, the same fraternity is throwing another huge New Year's bash (it is apparently an annual tradition), this time on a train trip through the mountains. A gaggle of stereotypical drunk party animals board the train in a variety of distracting costumes, and as the train leaves the station, we learn that a homicidal killer has climbed aboard as well, as he kills one of the frat brothers with a sword, steals his disguise, and leaves him behind on the tracks.
Once the train is moving, not much happens for a while. Jamie Lee Curtis' character is still wracked with guilt over her part in the pledge-hazing fiasco three years before, she argues with the a-hole frat brother who set up that prank to begin with, then the bodies eventually start turning up. A kindly old train conducter fills the Dr. Loomis role (if you catch my drift) when he discovers the first corpse in a sleeper berth and he spends the rest of the movie trying to keep a lid on it to avoid mass panic while also trying to figure out who the killer is. After several more (relatively bloodless, offscreen) kills, comes the predictable showdown between J.L.C. and the masked slasher.
The problem with "Terror Train" is that even though you'd think a train would be a pretty claustrophobic setting for a horror film, the killer is able to roam freely around the cars, some packed with crowds of people no less, and yet he remains undetected till the middle of the movie, which doesn't seem terribly realistic to me. Since the introductory scene pretty much blares a neon sign as to who the killer is going to be later on, the attempts at making a murder mystery out of it once the train gets going are unnecessary and somewhat laughable. (Do they really think we're going to suspect someone else after they telegraphed it so heavily before the opening credits, for cryin' out loud?) In addition, there are simply too many characters in this movie!! The train is packed with what seems to be hundreds of revelers, yet the body count ends up being rather small by comparison. You don't need a cast of thousands in a slasher flick. Take eight or ten people at most, set'em up in an isolated place, and add a nutty killer and you've got your movie. "Terror Train" seems to have delusions that it's a high class Agatha Christie murder mystery rather than just another slasher flick. The cameo appearance by famed magician David Copperfield (!) as the on-board entertainment seems like it was jammed into the movie at the last minute just to have a celebrity name attached to the project.
Though it has a run time of just over 90 minutes, "Terror Train" moves so slowly that it feels like twice that long. Unless you absolutely have to see every movie ever made in which stupid teenagers get hacked up by a masked psycho, feel free to miss this "Train."
Our story opens during a college fraternity's New Year's Eve party in which a prank on a pledge (involving a corpse in a bed that he thinks is going to be a real girl) goes horribly wrong and said pledge ends up institutionalized. Three years later, the same fraternity is throwing another huge New Year's bash (it is apparently an annual tradition), this time on a train trip through the mountains. A gaggle of stereotypical drunk party animals board the train in a variety of distracting costumes, and as the train leaves the station, we learn that a homicidal killer has climbed aboard as well, as he kills one of the frat brothers with a sword, steals his disguise, and leaves him behind on the tracks.
Once the train is moving, not much happens for a while. Jamie Lee Curtis' character is still wracked with guilt over her part in the pledge-hazing fiasco three years before, she argues with the a-hole frat brother who set up that prank to begin with, then the bodies eventually start turning up. A kindly old train conducter fills the Dr. Loomis role (if you catch my drift) when he discovers the first corpse in a sleeper berth and he spends the rest of the movie trying to keep a lid on it to avoid mass panic while also trying to figure out who the killer is. After several more (relatively bloodless, offscreen) kills, comes the predictable showdown between J.L.C. and the masked slasher.
The problem with "Terror Train" is that even though you'd think a train would be a pretty claustrophobic setting for a horror film, the killer is able to roam freely around the cars, some packed with crowds of people no less, and yet he remains undetected till the middle of the movie, which doesn't seem terribly realistic to me. Since the introductory scene pretty much blares a neon sign as to who the killer is going to be later on, the attempts at making a murder mystery out of it once the train gets going are unnecessary and somewhat laughable. (Do they really think we're going to suspect someone else after they telegraphed it so heavily before the opening credits, for cryin' out loud?) In addition, there are simply too many characters in this movie!! The train is packed with what seems to be hundreds of revelers, yet the body count ends up being rather small by comparison. You don't need a cast of thousands in a slasher flick. Take eight or ten people at most, set'em up in an isolated place, and add a nutty killer and you've got your movie. "Terror Train" seems to have delusions that it's a high class Agatha Christie murder mystery rather than just another slasher flick. The cameo appearance by famed magician David Copperfield (!) as the on-board entertainment seems like it was jammed into the movie at the last minute just to have a celebrity name attached to the project.
Though it has a run time of just over 90 minutes, "Terror Train" moves so slowly that it feels like twice that long. Unless you absolutely have to see every movie ever made in which stupid teenagers get hacked up by a masked psycho, feel free to miss this "Train."