{"id":1252,"date":"2024-07-23T18:25:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T18:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:55:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:55:40","slug":"terror-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/23\/terror-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Terror Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Terror Train<\/strong>\u00a0 (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, brief nudity, sexual content, partying, alcohol use, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Roger Spottiswoode\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: T.Y. Drake\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Mills-Cockell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Alcott\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 3, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Ben Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hart Bochner, Sandee Currie, Timothy Webber,\u00a0 David Copperfield, Derek MacKinnon, Anthony Sherwood, Joy Boushel, D.D. Winters (Vanity), Greg Swanson, Howard Busgang, Steve Michaels, Victor Knight, Don Lamoureux.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8 million (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0As Halloween approaches each year, I like to pick a few movies out of the horror archives and revisit them. My traditional Halloween movies are Prince of Darkness and Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but I always augment them with other scary movies like the 1980 slasher flick Terror Train<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ah yes, 1980, one of the golden years of slasher movies. It stars the original Scream Queen herself Jamie Lee Curtis whose presence graced such blood-drenched classics as Halloween I & II, Prom Night, The Fog and Road Games. I\u2019m not saying that all of these movies are great (or any good for that matter), but her presence in these movies elevates them slightly above other entries in the genre. Terror Train<\/strong> is her best non-Halloween slasher flick.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It goes without saying that I didn\u2019t see this one at the movies (the trusty parental block in action once again!) even though the poster hung on my bedroom wall. I saw in April \u201982 at a friend\u2019s house during an overnight visit. I remember it well because his mother gave us a good scare as we watched it in the comfort of a dark living room. It\u2019s one of the only times that I ever screamed while watching a horror flick. Good times, right John B.?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I would even go so far as to say that Terror Train<\/strong> is one of the best slasher movies that I\u2019ve ever seen. True, it lacks the copious amount of bloodshed that I typically look for in such a movie, but it has a sense of fun and style that makes it impossible to overlook. As you know, many of these movies feature a once-big star whose shine has faded in the face of a new generation of actors. In this case, Ben Johnson (Shane, The Last Picture Show) shows up as the conductor on the ill-fated train ride.<\/p>\n

\u00a0These movies tend to start with a horrible tragedy that ultimately brings about a bloody massacre some years later. In Terror Train<\/strong>, it\u2019s a fraternity prank gone horribly wrong. At a New Year\u2019s Eve frat party, a bunch of pre-med students decide to prank a shy and awkward pledge named Kenny Hampson (MacKinnon) by having one of their girlfriends, Alana (Curtis), lure him into a bedroom with the promise of sex. When he gets there, he finds a woman\u2019s corpse in the bed and totally freaks out. He ends up confined to a psychiatric hospital.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Three years later, the same students gather for another party, this time on a train. It\u2019s one of those old-fashioned jobs that run on coal. It\u2019s a costume party which means that the killer could be hiding anywhere in plain sight. We already know it\u2019s Kenny, but it takes a while for these supposedly intelligent future doctors to figure this out. What makes this killer different from every other mad slasher is that he assumes the mask and costume of each murder victim as he goes down the list. Like I said, the killer could be anybody. Suspicion even falls on the magician (real life illusionist Copperfield) that some unknown person has hired to entertain the rowdy partygoers. It\u2019s Carne (Johnson) the conductor who first sees that somebody is killing his passengers. As you might guess, it all comes down to Alana facing off against the killer. I will say that some of these kids deserve what happens to them, especially Doc (Bochner, Die Hard), the ringleader of the group. The prank was his big idea.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like I said, Terror Train<\/strong> is a fun movie. It\u2019s perfect for young teens watching their first R-rated horror flick. It\u2019s violent, but not overly so. The nudity is brief and the sexual content relatively mild. Young children still shouldn\u2019t watch it, but it\u2019s a refreshing change of pace from any given entry in the Saw franchise. I would even say that Terror Train<\/strong> is innocent (comparatively speaking).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nobody in the cast turns in a performance that could be mistaken for an Oscar attempt, but why should they? We\u2019re not talking about a Fellini film here. Hell, we\u2019re not even talking about Hitchcock. I doubt that the Master of Suspense would have even liked it. It\u2019s directed by Roger Spottiswoode who would go on to bigger and better things (in some cases anyway) like Under Fire, The Best of Times, Shoot to Kill, Turner & Hooch and Air America. I\u2019ll refrain from bringing up Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ben Johnson knows he\u2019s starring in a no-brainer, but he still brings his A-game to the table. Jamie Lee Curtis is very much at home in this genre. It\u2019s easy to see why she would go on to become a big star, but I never would have guessed that she had a gift for comedy (Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Don\u2019t watch Terror Train<\/strong> expecting any kind of horror classic, but feel free to raise your expectations slightly as it\u2019s a pretty good slasher flick. It does exactly what it\u2019s supposed to do, it racks up a respectable body count and even provides a decent scare or two. No, I\u2019m NOT counting Mrs. B sneaking up behind us although I thought that was the scariest part of the movie (LOL!). What I\u2019m getting at here is that Terror Train<\/strong> is a lot of fun and worth checking out. Or checking out again.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Terror Train\u00a0 (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, brief nudity, sexual content, partying, alcohol use, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Roger Spottiswoode\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: T.Y. Drake\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Mills-Cockell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Alcott\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 3, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Ben Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hart Bochner, Sandee Currie, Timothy Webber,\u00a0 David Copperfield, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Terror-Train-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6044,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/6044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}