Terror Train-1980
Director Roger Spottiswoode
Starring Ben Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis
Scott’s Review #1,098
Reviewed January 5, 2021
Grade: B+
Terror Train (1980) is a creepy slasher film released amid the heyday of the genre’s popularity. It embraces a familiar formula of teenage party victims but adds a helping of red herrings/whodunit twists, which catapults it above mediocrity and will keep audiences engaged until the finale.
Helpful is the casting of the “scream queen” of the time, Jamie Lee Curtis, who is the main attraction and the “final girl”. Her casting adds credibility and star power.
The film serves as a puzzle and the ending is difficult to predict with many twists and turns along the way. A perfect watch for a snowy New Year’s Eve, when the film is set.
Events begin three years before the happenings in the main story, naturally at a New Year’s Eve fraternity party, inhabited by a group of energetic pre-medical students looking for a good time.
Alana Maxwell (Curtis) is coaxed into participating in a cruel joke meant to lure an insecure pledge, Kenny (Derek MacKinnon) to a bedroom with the promise of sex.
Instead of becoming a light-hearted prank the group later laughs about, the joke spirals Kenny into insanity and a long stay at a mental institution.
Reunited for another party, this time on a train, bitterly cold and snowy New Year’s Eve is again the setting. The same group, now forgetting all about the prank, unwittingly boards the train for a night of booze, laughs, and partying.
This time, a costume party is on the menu, which is convenient for a disguised killer intending to spend the night murdering the partygoers. He first kills Ed (Howard Busgang) on the tracks and takes his Groucho Marx costume to confuse everyone else.
A mysterious magician and assistant are aboard to provide entertainment.
The film belongs to Curtis since the idea was to create “Halloween on a Train”.
As much as Halloween (1978) is superior and scarier, Terror Train is cleverer. Many a red herring can be found throughout the story so that a deduction of the killer’s identity can quickly be questioned.
Curtis, a popular star with the younger set in 1980, inevitably led fans to the movie theaters to see Terror Train. The comparisons to Halloween are apt- both feature disguises, masks, costumes, and mayhem.
The casting of Ben Johnson as Carne, the train conductor, an actor making films since the 1930s, and who won an Oscar for The Last Picture Show in 1971, provides the patriarchal character as Donald Pleasance did in Halloween.
Despite the vulnerability of being on a train speeding through the middle of nowhere on a frigid winter night with a killer on board, having a father figure and voice of reason is reassuring. And the casting agents were lucky to get him.
The vibe in Terror Train is great and the setting works wonderfully. An ode to Hitchcock, the train is an effective place for suspense or murder. The victims have few places to hide and a long tube with dark seats and hidden compartments while they disappear one by one is perfect horror fodder.
The gripe is that the identity of the killer is painfully obvious. Spoiler alert- it’s who you think it is!
After the film, I was left feeling tricked and bamboozled. But, just like the mysterious magician, all is not what it seems.
Newcomer director, Roger Spottiswood, casts real-life magician, David Copperfield, for good effect, and the star does a fairly good job of adding tension and looking sinister. When the big revelation is upon us, a cool gender-bender treat awaits, but the killer is predictable, nonetheless.
A quick nod to the inclusion of some diversity, few and far between in 1980 slasher fare. One of the fraternity brothers is a black male. The character is handsome, arrogant, and quickly gets his comeuppance, but the addition is to be noted.
Terror Train (1980) is an atmospheric and surprisingly good holiday-themed slasher film that flies under the radar. Snuggle under a warm blanket, break open the midnight champagne and enjoy the claustrophobic and frightening post-Christmas trimmings.