Terror Train

What distinguishes 1980's TERROR TRAIN from dozens of other, similar slasher movies of its era? Essentially it has the same plot as so many others - nerd gets humiliated by the cool kids, goes berserk, comes back years later to get revenge.  Somewhat tough heroine has a conscience and tends to survive while her friends and classmates are carved up. Bad dialogue.  TERROR TRAIN has all of that and places its action aboard a moving train for novelty's sake

During freshman year, some frat boys engineer a gag where their pledge is led to believe he is about to make it with a beautiful coed.  Instead of said coed, a female cadaver is waiting in the bed (these are pre-med students).  The pledge freaks out and ends up in a psych hospital.  Senior year - the frat boys throw a New Year's Eve costume party on the titular train.  There will be an uninvited guest.......

Director Roger Spottiswoode, who would go on to helm some decent and not so decent films later on, does a creditable job within the confines.  Competent.  Milking suspense? Eh, not really.  This is aside from the typically intense finale, where Alana (Jamie Lee Curtis, in one of her several "scream queen" roles), said heroine, goes one on one with the killer, Kenny (Derek McKinnon), our nerd victim (this ain't no whodunit).  But we know how it will turn out.  Writer T.Y. Drake has a high concept, and some awkward attempts at explaining Kenny's downward spiral, but not much else.  This is standard genre hokum, and for much of the running time, somewhat dull.  Dull and not scary? Oh you kid....

I see I haven't answered my opening question.  Well, TERROR TRAIN does have the killer dress as each previous victim (including a woman).  And none other than magician David Copperfield (playing Ken the magician) is aboard to amuse the horny undergrads with his illusions.  Copperfield never acted again and its easy to see why; he's as wooden as a 2 x 4.  Rarely have I seen anyone look so uncomfortable in a movie.  Conversely, Ben Johnson does fairly well playing a conductor named Carne.  He's a salt of the earth type, deliberate in speech and action, who is the first to discover the terrible events of the evening.  Apparently, he was friends with the director and that's why he's in this thing.  His presence, to quote another critic discussing another horror movie, is like a rose in a cesspool.

So finally I guess I can say that TERROR TRAIN is best left for completists of the genre, and maybe Curtis' resume.   John Alcott, who photographed some of Kubrick's films (including BARRY LYNDON), gives the film a sharp palate it perhaps does not deserve.