Roger Spottiswoode's Terror Train (1980)

Roger Spottiswoode's Terror Train (1980)

Roger Spottiswoode's Terror Train (1980)

Director Roger Spottiswoode's 1980 Canadian-made locomotive slasher Terror Train is low in the gore department, but has an assortment of other goodies for horror fans. It is one of the most suspenseful slasher films of the '80s, with some scenes that will literally make you uncomfortable to be alone or in a darkly lit room, and it stars The Scream Queen herself Jamie Lee Curtis, still fresh from Halloween but sporting a shorter and more stylish moptop. The concept for Terror Train was reportedly inspired by a dream that screenwriter Daniel Grodnik had after seeing Halloween and Silver Streak in the same day, and it is the very first slasher to utilize the locomotive setting. The film is very stylishly directed by Spottiswoode, who inexplicably hates this film today and won't even speak about it in interviews. Hard to believe he would feel this way considering how solid Terror Train is, certainly much better than some of his later films that followed this.

Terror Train, like many of its slasher kin, starts out with a grim prologue that establishes a motive for the brutal killings to follow. Kenny Hampson (Derek McKinnon) is a nerdy college virgin who is determined to chuck his beanie once and for all during a freshman graduation party when he hears word that Alana Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis) has requested to see him, alone, in her dorm room. It's a prank, of course, and Kenny winds up fondling a recently deceased corpse from the med school planted by cocky med students Doc (Hart Bochner) and Moe (Timothy Webber) and most of the rest of the graduating class. He loses his mind after the incident and is supposedly committed to an institution for treatment. Flash forward four years later, and the prank-pulling gang is now boarding a train for their senior graduation costume cruise party, including Alana, Doc, Moe ... and an unknown masked assailant that switches disguises with each of his victims after dispatching them like a chameleon. When their friends start turning up murdered in a variety of gruesome ways, Doc and Alana begin to suspect that Kenny has returned to extract his twisted revenge on the classmates responsible for the humiliating prank that caused him to lose his mind and dignity.

Jamie Lee Curtis (who also appeared in the early '80s horrors The Fog, Prom Night and Halloween II) proves again why she is the definitive scream queen of modern horror and is totally natural and likeable as Alana, and Academy Award winner Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show)provides distinguished support as train conductor Carne, who finds himself besieged with a spate of murders. Hart Bochner (Supergirl, Apartment Zero) is very good as practical joker Doc, who finally learns why it's not nice to pull cruel, demeaning pranks on people when he's decapitated by the vengeful killer. World-reknowned magician and illusionist David Copperfield has his first and only film role as Ken, a mysterious man of magic hired to entertain the young guests aboard the train trip -- and who Alana and Doc begin to suspect of being a physically transformed Kenny. Terror Train was highly acclaimed if not a box office smash upon its release, receving nominations for Best Actress (Curtis) and Best Film from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, and nominations for Best Score (John Mills-Cockell) and Best Art Direction (Glenn Bydwell) from the Genie Awards, Canada's equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Terror Train was remade as a trendy torture porn film in 2008 as Train, which, unlike the original, is awash in gore. If you're looking for lots of red stuff, you'd probably be best off sticking to the remake; but if it's suspense and edge-of-your-seat creepiness you're after, 1980's Terror Train is the rail to ride. I give Terror Train an 8 of 10 and recommend it to all slasher fans and anyone partial to Jamie Lee.

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