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Terror TrainRating:
Release Date: 07 September, 2004 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $9.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: |
Terror Train Reviews
Don't expect "Halloween" material here...still, not too bad for an 80's slasher flick.
When I finished watching "Terror Train", I didn't know what to think at first. It's easy to see why this movie has such extreme reviews written about it. Literally, some people give this movie 5 STARS and some give it 1 STAR. However, all things considered, I would have to say that the movie is a pretty strong TWO STAR horror movie, but that means it is only average as far as my grading scale is concerned.
"Terror Train" is about a large group of typical college kids that want to party and what better place to have a masquerade/costume party than on an excursion train? Sounds like a lot of fun to me, but something is not quite right with this situation. Indeed, prior to this party, the audience saw a rather nasty trick gone bad played on a fraternity pledge and this is a very important part because the movie is based in large part on what happened that night. As one might expect, a killer is on the loose killing people one at a time on the train using different costumes to facilitate his evil deeds.
I think one of the problems with this movie is that there are some good parts and some very bad parts. It is quite true that the magic theme which dominates an inordinately large amount of time in this movie gets old very quickly and becomes downright obnoxious. Two, with Jaimee Lee Curtis as the scream queen star of this movie, many people probably expected something close to the caliber of "Halloween", especially coming out just a couple of years later after Carpenter's masterpiece...imagine what a downer it must have been to have gone to the theaters to watch this movie on the heels of having seen the seminal slasher flick in John Carpenter's "Halloween". "Terror Train" is just another lesson folks that it doesn't matter if you have great actors starring in a movie if the movie's script isn't very good...now, this is not to say that "Terror Train" is a bad movie, but it certainly isn't a very good flick either.
The bottom line is that "Terror Train" is a very average 80s slasher flick with a penchant for being very annoying while also attempting to be somewhat original with setting, lighting and circumstance. True, the magic theme and David Copperfield was downright lame, boring and irritating to say the least, and it is so surprising that this takes up so much time in the movie, but then again, it's also logical within the context of the plot of the movie because the magician's role is crucial to the misdirection with which Spottiswoode attempts to accentuate surprise and horror...the problem is that the magic theme is overdone and qutie frankly, the scenes involving Copperfield's magic acts are quite boring and drawn out. It would have been much better if Spottiswoode had tried to develop the characters a little more than he did.
Although there is no question that Ben Johnson and Jaimee Lee Curtis give outstanding performances in this movie, the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast and this hurts the movie's plot development and hinders the ability of the movie to keep the audience interested. While you can't have horror all the time, you can have quality plot and character development and "Terror Train" fails in this respect...perhaps the lack of ability in the cast overall prevented the character development necessary to enable the audience to sympathize and relate to the main characters in this movie.
The killer's prowess in this movie is credible while he is masked from costume to costume, but becomes suspect and somewhat diminished by movie's end when the audience actually sees his face a la "Prom Night". The kills in this movie really are rather benign, but are effective enough for a horror movie...still, some of the special effects and gore are rather poorly done. I thought the costume theme that the killer uses to perfection in this movie was well done and effective in creating horror...more than likely, this element was borrowed extensively from "Halloween". Also, there are a couple of scenes here and there that are quite suspenseful and even quite chilling, especially the scene where Doc locks himself up in one the train compartments trying to evade the killer. Also, to the movie's credit, "Terror Train" does a good job of hiding the killer's identity and creating quite a murder mystery...the movie has the ability to keep you guessing and kudos to Spottiswoode for that as well.
Overall, "Terror Train" is an average horror movie/slasher flick with some boring filler space scenes...still, as I mentioned above, "Terror Train" has some distinguishing characteristics that are quite creative and the movie should be credited for that much. I mildly recommend this movie to those that love the horror movie genre especially the slasher sub-genre so to speak...TWO STARS for "Terror Train". That said, I would recommend the clearly superior "He Knows You're Alone" and "The Funhouse" as examples of classic 80's slasher flicks which are far superior to the very average "Terror Train".
All Aboooaard!
Terror Train isn't the best example of an 80s slasher flick, but it certainly isn't the worst either. Of course it's got Jamie Lee during the early horror phase of her career. She's not given much to do that you haven't seen her do in Halloween, though she does use the "F" word this time out. Another interesting point is the appearance(and disappearance and reappearance) of illusionist David Copperfield. Copperfield doesn't really do the movie thing, and it kinda makes you wonder why he'd choose to be in Terror Train of all things. Plotwise, it's pretty standard. A fraternity prank lands a geeky guy in the sack with a dismembered corpse rather than Jamie Lee, who he was originally expecting to devirginize him(a rather extreme and demented prank if I may say), thus driving him to madness. Well, we all know that when tramatizing pranks and pranks gone awry are done to children and nerds, you've got the blueprints for some deadly revenge. See Prom Night, Carrie and The Toxic Avenger for a couple more examples. The murders are carried out during a costume party on a train.....The TERROR TRAIN. There's no secret to who's doing the killing, you know from the start. That's not the gag though, the gag isn't so much who the killer is, but where the killer is. The movie spends a great deal of time pointing the finger at Copperfield's character, but it's forced upon us so much that it's obvious that he's the only one you can be sure isn't the killer. The trick to keeping the killer a mystery is the fact that he dons the costume of his most recent victim. This keeps him moving through the train pretty freely. This is also probably the only original thing about the film as well. Terror Train is best viewed in the wee hours of the morning over one of those microwavable chicken cordon bleu thingees and a room temperature of 76 degrees. It's a rather harmless film and works best as a piece of slasher flick history.
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