Terror Train (1980)

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Jamie Lee Curtis gets to rest on her post Halloween laurels in a fun slasher film directed with far more skill and panache than you would expects kill.  Even in 1980, no-one would have mistaken this a a groundbreaking, genre-redefining film but it is still enjoyable.

This is definitely one of the better examples of post Halloween / Friday the 13th tongue-in-cheek slasher silliness.  While the frankly dull Prom Night might be the one that everyone reveres, this cheerfully gory little film should enjoy a far more prominent place in the slasher cannon.

Rather than imitating Black Christmas / Halloween / Friday the 13th and throwing a dart at a calendar and using whatever date it lands on as the 'justification' for someone murdering a bunch of co-eds / cheerleaders / babysitters / camp counsellors, this time they decide to shake things up by Putting It On A Train.

FACT - everything is better on a train.  Sex is better on a train.  Food is better on a train.  Murder is better on a train.  So even a really dumb slasher film (and this one is pretty dumb, let's be honest) is going to be better on a train.  It's just a rule.  Citizen Kane would have scooped more Oscars if only Welles and Houseman had thought to have more locomotive action and less opera singing.

Jamie Lee Curtis and her school buddies decide to have a party on a train exactly a year after an initiation ritual went terribly wrong and mumble mumble something or other - you get the gist.  Something bad happened and now Someone Is Going To Get Revenge while the train trapped teens get drunk and make out.

Worse, for some reason David Copperfield is on board - yes, David Copperfield, the magician, and he does magic stuff. 

There are plenty of knowing winks to earlier slasher films - what would JLC use to defend herself when trapped in a cupboard?  A coat hanger, of course.

Oh, and because reasons everyone is wearing masks which adds - far more effectively than you'd expect - to the hilarity and the horror.

Roger Spottiswoode directs the whole thing with aplomb.  The claustrophobic interior of the train lets him have all manner of fun with composition and camera angles, and playing about with scenes which don't really advance the plot, or even create much atmosphere, but are just fun, damnit.  And sometimes delivers scenes of impressive tension and drama, just to show he does know what he's about.

It makes you wonder what might have been if he had decided to 'do a Carpenter' and become a genre director, rather than going on to make modern masterpieces like Turner and Hooch and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.

As an aside, Terror Train's final gift was to bring a blog called Obscure Train Movies to my attention.  Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what Al Gore invented the internet for.  Needless to say (but I will, anyway) they are all great movies because they involve trains.

Star Rating: **

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