Terror Train (1980)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: This train is full of terror. Who will survive the terror on this train?

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Terror Train: The Train That Terrorizes!
• I went to college, I don’t remember any gigantic bonfires.
• But I do fondly remember gigantic… Oh hey, Jamie Lee Curtis!
• Why are there so many flashing street and hazard lights in this dorm room it’s driving me fucking nuts how could anyone stand to live there?
• Soooo these frat guys set up this nerd to get laid but put a nasty cadaver in the bed? OoooK. What’s funny about that? That’s just gross. So naturally, he freaks out and twirls himself up in a curtain over the bed.
• THREE YEARS LATER
• Let me guess, the nerd is going to get revenge by killing people on the train.
• And David Copperfield as “The Magician.” I don’t buy it.
• Everyone has taken a bus to get to the train.
• Why are most people wearing Halloween costumes to a New Year’s Eve party?
• “I wish to hell they’d put a radio on that train.” Now that’s a shoehorned setup.
• Huh, right off the bat a dude in a Gene Shalit mask is murdered with an authentic Gene Shalit sword.
• Hahaha! That is hands down the least-frightening killer mask in movie history. I guess they were out of Ed McMahon masks?

Gene Gene the Terror Machine

• Stick to magic, Copperfield.
• What’s the point of casting a real magician as a magician? It’s a movie, you can fake the magic.
• It’s really a bad sign for this movie if I laugh out loud every time the killer is shown.
• How is this 90-pound guy stronger than everyone else?
• Either there’s a lot of ad-libbing going on here by people who really shouldn’t do that or the script was written by a wombat who just got out of a coma after a bad motorcycle accident.
• So the killer kills the guy in the lizard costume in the lavatory by bashing his head into the mirror, the conductor comes in later and sees blood everywhere, so he goes and gets the brakeman and when they get back the lavatory is completely clean, and the killer is now lying on the floor in the lizard suit, without a drop of blood on it. Uh, no.
• Still don’t understand the point of the costumes.
• This train party is beat.
• Were Curtis and Copperfield dating at the time or something? There doesn’t seem to be any reason for him to be in this. There’s a long scene that shows his whole act. At least it’s a little more interesting than these nimrods talking. There was a free kids’ magician at a pumpkin patch we went to today who was so awful I tried to saw myself in half.

“And for my next trick, I’ll make your hermaphroditic penis disappear!”

• “I hate magic, it’s just tricks.” Uhhh, yeah? Is it supposed to be something else?
• This movie’s about as exciting as a train ride across Oklahoma.
• Apparently the killer’s mask is supposed to be Groucho Marx. It looks almost nothing like Groucho. It’s clearly Gene Shalit.
• Pretty sure Alicia Keys is in this movie, even though she wasn’t born yet.
• Wow this is just totally awful.
• Are they implying that David Copperfield is the killer? Maybe it’s his brother or something?
• This guy is turning down a guaranteed lay because he wants to go to the magic show.
• Everyone on this train is a jerkoff.
• This guy Doc is one of the biggest movie assholes I’ve ever seen. Wait a minute, this asshole looks awfully familiar…

Holy shit, he’s Ellis from Die Hard! THE biggest asshole ever! Now it all makes sense!

• So they stop the train, and everyone goes outside but it’s really cold, so they’re going to herd everyone into one car. Why didn’t they just do that in the first place?
• Is Copperfield’s assistant a transsexual?
• These kids are gonna pay for all this train damage.
• The killer wears the costume of his last victim (miraculously sans blood). Why? There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for him to do this. Why didn’t they just have him wear one costume? Maybe one that was actually scary?
• Worst fake head EVER.
• “It’s a little dusty in here, but it’s clean.” Uhhhh…
• So the killer is wearing different costume parts of the people he’s killed. Jamie Lee’s bra is next.
• You know how the music in Halloween is amazing and sets the tone for the terrifying atmosphere of that movie? Terror Train’s music is the opposite of that. It’s like the music a clown would play at a Halloween party for 3-year-olds.
• Jamie Lee knocks the killer off the train but he holds on, then later appears outside the window of the car she’s in even though he would have no idea where she was.
• The kills in this movie are so uncreative.
• So Copperfield’s dead. I mean, obviously Copperfield wasn’t the kid they knew just three years ago. Why would he look completely different?
• I was right about the assistant being a transsexual. It’s Kenny the killer! Who kisses Jamie Lee then freaks out for no real reason and the conductor hits him with a shovel and knocks him off the train, for real this time. Then an abrupt ending, which is always the sign of great filmmaking. What a horrible, terrible, awful ending.

“Was it the Boogeyman?”
“As a matter of fact, it was Gene Shalit.”

Is It Actually Scary: Maybe if you’ve been beaten up by Gene Shalit.

How Much Gore: There’s a lot of blood and some severed body parts, but most of the kills cut away before the death blow.

Best Scene: The killer chases Jamie Lee throughout the train. Pretty much the only time he’s menacing.

Worst Scene: The ending is possibly one of the top 23 worst movie endings ever. I’m not even sure what the hell they’re talking about and why anything that happened had anything to do with magic. And I have absolutely negative zero-point-zero clue why he starts freaking out all of a sudden. I actually rewound it to see if I was missing anything. (The following video obviously spoils the ending):

Any Nudity: Like a 4-second shot of some boobs. Not nearly sufficient for a movie about drunk college kids in an enclosed space on New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t show her caboose.

Overall: I don’t really have much to say about this one. It seems like kind of a waste. The setting is unique for a slasher film, but it also doesn’t make much sense. There’s no way a train full of people wouldn’t have known something was up immediately. I know this movie has its following, but David Copperfield and I aren’t among them. It just really didn’t do much for me. The villain was lame, and the victims were just annoying, which had a lot to do with some pretty egregious acting. Jamie Lee Curtis was good of course, but that was about it. The villain was actually pretty creepy when he was given a few lines of (dumb) dialogue at the end, and if it had been more like that during the entire picture he may have actually been menacing. But as it stands, dressing like Gene Shalit, a lizard and a parrot isn’t going to jolt anyone awake with nightmares. Plus I scoured the web to see if Gene Shalit did a review of this movie but I found nothing. So to hell with it. As Gene would say, “Train yourself to not get on board this terror-able movie.”

Score: 3.5 curtain twirls (out of 10)