Terror Train is a strange little film.  It is the sort of film that die hard horror fans can quote lines from and use as a trivia fountain (like the fact that it was one of the five movies rented by Stu for his party in Wes Craven's Scream), but it is also the sort of film that more recent fans of the genre will most likely pass over at the local video rental joint.  In a year when Friday the 13th, Watcher In The Woods and The Shining debuted, it is a shame that this film wasn't able to capture more attention and hold a little higher place in the horror pantheon...it certainly deserves more mention as it is a firm classic of the slasher sub-genre and sets as many standards as it does borrow ideas.  Besides with a tagline like this, how can you go wrong:  "The boys and girls of Sigma Phi.  Some will live.  Some will die."

I suppose that the above quote is all you really need to know about Terror Train, because at the base root of it all this film is about a bunch of college kids getting themselves killed off by a crazy.  But if you throw in the combined intrigue of steam-powered locomotion, the magic and acting stylings of David Copperfield (uhhh...), and the fact that this was Jamie Lee Curtis' third horror flick in a year (The Fog and Prom Night completing the triple play), what you get is a much more interesting prospect.  This is Terror Train's real strength; beyond being a pretty decent slasher film, it is just chock full of interesting tidbits and original plot devices that make it one for your DVD collection.   

A year ago on New Years Eve, a group of college co-eds are having a huge party, complete with bonfire, booze and of course a bozo.  Kenny is that bozo; a pledge who would do anything to please his future frat.  So when the frat decides to do something nice for him, Kenny is amazed.  These guys are going to help him get laid!  They have it all set up with a willing girl and a dark room, but when Kenny arrives, he finds something a little other than what he expected.  Seems these yahoos are medical students and have arranged for Kenny to be sleeping with the corpse of a medical cadaver!  While the prank does not go so far as, let's say, Nacho Cerda's Aftermath film, it is still enough for young Kenny to suffer a mental breakdown and get himself checked into a loony bin.  That's about it for then...let's check out now...

It is New Years Eve again and the same frat is celebrating one more time, but this time with a bigger and better plan.  They have chartered a private steam engine train to take them on an all night ride of drinking, debauchery and, unbeknownst to them at the moment...danger.  This here is going to be a masquerade party, so everyone is disguised in one way or another for the duration of the evening, which makes it all too easy for one guest extra to make his way on board uninvited.  Soon the dead students begin to pile up and the train's crew and a few select passengers must try to figure out what the hell is going on, who is responsible, and how they they can be stopped!   

The setting of the train is perhaps the one novel and original idea in this film.  Trains have played prominent roles in several tense thrillers and mysteries, but to my knowledge this was the first appearance of a locomotive as locale in a horror/slasher film.  Narrow hallways, small rooms, limited hiding spots and even more limited running room make for a maniacal slasher's dream stalking grounds.  And when we learn that this particular train does not have a radio to communicate with the outside world and that if anything goes wrong there is no hope of getting help...well, let's just say that suddenly this setting makes even more sense.  A veritable buffet table of screaming coeds all trapped in a hurtling steel box makes for wonderful fun if you are a killer bent on revenge, and even more, it makes for wonderful fun if you are in the audience watching it all go down.

The murders themselves are nothing horribly unique or original.  By this point the amount of creative deaths allowable by budget, skill and ratings boards was getting slim and it shows in Terror Train.  But where the gore is lacking, there are other factors to pick up the slack.  The use of masquerade costumes was a slick one, as it allows the killer to get up close and personal with his victims before they have any ideas who he is or what he is about to do.  This is turn allows the audience a heightened sense of paranoia and rising tensions as we scream at the screen, "Look out ya dumb bimbo...that's the killer!".  Also adding to the sense of terror and claustrophobia is the acting of Jamie Lee Curtis.

Jamie plays Alana, a frat girl herself who was suckered into playing a major part in the prank on Kenny.  This accomplishes two things for the plot of this film.  One, that she is now righteously pissed off at the boys who led her astray and caused the poor bastard Kenny to wind up in a loony bin and is consistently suspicious of the things they are up to; and two, that she is now firmly pegged as a target of the revenge seeking killer.  Jamie has gotten real good by this point at being the poor soul who is targeted for unwarranted reasons by a psychopathic killer and she lets it shine here in Terror Train.

As mentioned before, Jamie Lee would do three horror films in this one year alone, and four in a row since Halloween two years previous (Terror Train was even re-released as After Halloween in an attempt to cash in on not only the popularity of the classic, but also because of Jamie's starring role in both films).  There are a lot of reasons why Halloween was such an enduring classic and one of the biggest was the addition of Jamie Lee to the cast.  This girl knows how to relate fear through her facial expressions and body movements well enough, but combine to all that the windpipes that earned her the title of "Scream Queen" and you have a lot more going for this film.  In fact, Jamie Lee does such a good job at doing what she does best here, she almost makes up for the fact that the filmmakers cast David Copperfield as a suspicious magician hired to be entertainment for this overnight ride.  I don't know if there was a casting process or not with this film, but whoever gave Copperfield a speaking role must not have been at his audition!

One of the most interesting things about this film is that we KNOW who the killer is from the very beginning, yet the filmmakers insist on trying to make it a mystery.  We see each and every student get onto the train except for one, who is then killed by a sword through the torso.  This poor shmuck's costume is stolen and one last "unknown" gets on.  Well, geesh, we know it is Kenny coming back for revenge and the filmmakers can't even play that whole "we don't know what he looks like NOW" thing that is ever so popular because only a year has gone by and the guy only went a little nuts...not get his face burned off with acid or anything.  At times this gets a little annoying, but never as much as when the story starts to throw suspicions onto David Copperfield and we realize that he is only in this film to be a distraction from something we already know.  This in turn leads to the realization that we could have forgone his inclusion altogether!  Oh well, the film would have been a lot shorter had we not had his magic act to watch here and there.

But despite all this, Terror Train is a vastly underrated slasher that has come home at last to your DVD collection.  The taught atmosphere and claustrophobic confines of a rattling steam train make for a wonderful setting, and the writing keeps things moving fast enough that you won't find yourself yawning.  While director Roger Spottiswoode went on to direct mostly for television (with the notable exception of the Bond flick, Tomorrow Never Dies), he has shown a viable understanding of the craft with Terror Train.  There are plenty of hacked students to keep horror fans attention, even if the gore level is middle of the road.  All in all, there is a reason that serious fans of the genre have been clamoring for this one for a long time now.  I am glad that someone was listening. 

-aaron-