TERROR TRAIN: Blu-ray reissue (Astral-Bellvue Pathe, 1980) Scorpion Releasing

Buried somewhere beneath all the camp acting and a screenplay by T.Y. Drake, brutally lacking in any sort of continuity is Donald Spottiswoode’s undernourished attempt at directing his first feature film: Terror Train (1980) – a thinly veiled, weak premised fright-fest designed to capitalize on the B-budget horror movie craze, itself prompted by the phenomenal success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). In fact, the film’s executive producer Daniel Grodnik even had the guts to telephone Carpenter’s producer, Debra Hill beforehand to inform her that he was doing ‘Halloween on a train’. With all due respect to Grodnik, he was reaching way beyond his capabilities – either as a producer or writer; even as his initial concept for Terror Train was immediately snatched up by producer, Harold Greenberg. Terror Train is the sort of ‘horror’ movie that has a lot of opportunities to scare the hell out of you, but only one direction to go if the 30-second revile of seeing a lot of half-naked twenty-something’s splayed and sprayed with red dye #9 turns your crank. Thanks to cinematographer, John Alcott (who had only just lensed Barry Lyndon for Stanley Kubrick) the picture has something of a seedy and foreboding visual flair, amplified by its claustrophobic interiors, and also the added cache of having ‘scream queen’, Jamie Lee Curtis as, ostensibly, the heroine of this piece. Taking full advantage of a Canadian film tax credit (whereby for every dollar spent by the production company, the Canadian government puts up four to match it), Grodnik and Greenberg plunge headstrong into ‘slasher’ flick territory;, Alcott hampered by their insistence to use a real moving train for much of the shoot. Working in such confined spaces lends Terror Train what little suspense the production has. Alas, not even Alcott’s lurid mood lighting can mask the film’s more glaring narrative oversights.

I recall quite vividly being smuggled into the theater by a friend and his older brother who had an even older cousin working as an usher at the local Odeon back in 1980. I was nine then and with a limited understanding and appreciation of cinema in general that basically included a handful of Disney movies – cartoon and live -action - some Abbott and Costello and Three Stooges reruns, and, a regular diet of severely edited C-grade creature features on the boob tube every Saturday afternoon. Yeah, I know…where were my parents? Actually, they thought I had gone with that same friend to play. Technically, I did. But I digress. To suggest Terror Train left an indelible mark then is an understatement. In fact, I do not think I slept for a couple of days after seeing it, and, absolutely cringed when it was announced by my father we were going to take ‘the train’ to visit his sister in Brampton later that same year. With its obligatory nudie shots and mounting carnage, Terror Train all seemed very adult to me - then, frightening and strangely, deliciously tawdry. I just knew mom and dad would not approve and that added something to my viewing experience. Remember, I was nine! But what scares us as kids rarely has the same effect once we become adults…or that is to say, it has to be a damn clever horror film to work its magical fright on us post-puberty. Sadly, Terror Train lacks such good judgment. It isn’t anything like a ‘good’ horror movie. Instead it veers into horrid schlock, brutalizing the audience, although without even the guts to actually show us anything except several mutilated bodies once they have already been butchered.

I don’t know how savvier horror fan feels about all this, but revisiting Terror Train after an absence of many years left me cold - and not in a sweat, or suffering from some voyeuristic chills because of its frigid Montreal locales. It’s just tacky and tasteless and really lowbrow – a movie that could have only appealed to a child of the seventies; a decade where such debase grit, grunge and gruesomeness were simply par for the course of most movie-going experiences. Our story begins at a wintry frat party for a bunch of med students. Doc Manley (Hart Bochner), of the chest-thumping jock stereotype ilk, sets up mama’s boy, Kenny Hampson (Derek McKinnon) into thinking he is going to get some action with college babe, Alan Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis). Using his own girlfriend, Mitchy (Sandee Currie) as a lure, poor old Kenny hurries up to a darkened dorm, appropriately lit by flashing ‘caution’ signs. Take the hint! Alana’s standing behind the bed, beckoning Kenny to crawl in next to…well, she’s not quite sure. But not even she has fathomed Doc and his cohorts would be so ruthless as to have stolen a real female corpse, already dissected, from a nearby mortuary, planting it beneath the sheets. In the half-lit room, moodily lit with twinkling Christmas lights, it all looks very sexy…until. Discovering the body after he is already half-naked and one of its half-rotting arms detaches, throws Kenny’s already fragile psyche over the edge. He gets tangled in the gauzy overhead drapes of the four-poster bed and collapses in a heap as other frat pledges enjoy a sadistic chuckle at his expense. Alana is horrified. Three years later, she is about to be very, very sorry.

For this is the night Alana’s boyfriend, Mo (Timothy Webber) has decided to surprise her and all their alumni with a New Year’s Eve train trip as part of their going away graduation present. But what is, at first, promised as a night of fun-filled adolescent debaucheries, quickly turns deadly when friend, Ed (Howard Busgang), after entertaining his fellow dead-heads on the platform with some truly terrible jokes while disguised as a demonic looking Groucho Marx, fails to get aboard. Actually, he has been prematurely gutted with a magician’s sword – the first of the casualties - left on the tracks to have his head run over as the train pulls out of station. The killer, now disguised as Groucho, stalks a drunken Mitchy next, but decides to derail his ambitions in order to Ginsu another classmate, Jackson (Anthony Sherwood), who is dressed as a lizard man. Jackson is repeatedly stabbed inside one of the bathrooms. Meanwhile, in the dining car, Ken, the magician (David Copperfield) is busy doing rather pedestrian card tricks and disappearing dimes to impress the ladies. Alana thinks he is cute, but is unimpressed to learn Mo merely paid for their train trip. The idea for it came from Doc. After participating in Doc’s last great idea, that sent Kenny to the asylum, Alana swore she would never agree to anything he planned ever again.

But it’s too late. The vintage locomotive and its train cars are already hurdling across a barren and snow-covered countryside with no radio contact available. The train’s conductor, Carne (Ben Johnson) discovers Jackson’s remains. But when he returns with Charley the brakeman (Steve Michaels) a few minutes later, he is astonished to see the lifeless lizard man stir and all of the blood spatters miraculously cleaned up. Assuming he has been part of an elaborate hoax, Carne allows the lizard man to leave the bathroom stall; a mistake, since the killer has already disposed of Jackson’s body (we’re never told how or where) and assumed his costumed disguise. Mitchy gets hers next, throat slashed inside her upper birth. Alana discovers the body and is consoled by Carne who takes her to another car to calm down. In the meantime, the rest of the unsuspecting crowd are enjoying the magician’s act inside the dining car. It is unclear what happens next, but Mo, who has been seated next to Doc while viewing the performance, suddenly keels over into Doc’s lap, his chest covered in blood. The usually callous Doc is reduced to a frantic pile of unhinged goo, racing through the train with Mo’s body in his arms. Eventually, he slumps over in the lower birth under Mitchy’s corpse with Carne and Alana arriving to comfort him.

The emergency cord is pulled but the train doesn’t stop. Carne rushes to the locomotive to discover it unattended. We never do learn what has become of Charlie. Carne stops the train and orders everyone off. As the class president (Greg Swanson) begins to take inventory of who is left, Carne quickly ushers Alana into a private car. Alana, who has had time to figure things out with the aid of a yearbook, decides Ken the magician must be Kenny the killer, the boy they were all responsible for sending to the asylum with their prank. Carne agrees. He confines everyone to a single car, isolating Ken, the magician in another containing his props. Doc panics and after kicking Alana out of her safe room, locks himself inside it instead. Unfortunately, Doc has also barricaded himself in with the killer who wastes no time decapitating and stashing Doc’s head and body in a pull-down upper birth. Alana begins to have second thoughts about Ken. Sneaking into his prop room, she finds the magician crammed inside one of his escape boxes, pierced by a succession of swords. Racing to the conductor’s car, Alana is stalked by the killer who reveals himself, at long last, as Kenny. After several attempts to murder Alana, Kenny is instead killed by Carne who sends him flying out of an open door and to his death, plummeting off a bridge into some icy frigid waters below.

Terror Train is so obvious in its premise, so transparent and one-dimensional in its narrative that it is virtually impossible to appreciate it as an adult. No one but Kenny could be the killer and – big surprise – no one else but Kenny is.  There really does not seem to be much point to the murders that occur except to say that they do, and, with increasing regularity and grisliness that has the opposite effect on the audience. We are not particularly challenged, surprised or even shocked when another body turns up, so much as keeping score of Kenny’s kills. Jamie Lee Curtis phones in this performance. It isn’t really her fault. She is given the most unimaginative and sparse dialogue; forced to play pouty for the first third, and utterly shell-shocked for the latter two. However, unlike her performance in Halloween, the fear in her eyes this time around generates little, except tedium for the exercise of being everyone’s favorite ‘scream queen’. 

Created in the wake of Halloween, Terror Train never comes anywhere near replicating its level of bone-chilling suspense and fear. Winning no awards for originality, Terror Train has received a new 2K scan from Scorpion Releasing, and derived from the original internegative with additional restoration efforts applied. This is a definite upgrade from the 2012 Blu-ray released via Shout Factory. Don’t expect perfection. Owing to its low-budget origins, Terror Train definitely sports the look of a B-grade slice n’ dice, shot quick n’ dirty. Some source-related artifacts, speckling, scratches, etc. remain baked into this presentation. Overall, image clarity has crisped up from the old Shout! release and there is some good texturing in close-ups. Colors are also richer here. The original Blu looked faded, dull and muddy. Grain structure is preserved and, predictably, is very heavy, though nevertheless, film-like. The 5.1 DTS is strident, but adequate, given the limitations of the original mono mix. Dialogue still sounds slightly muffled and the SFX lack spatial spread. Let’s be honest, there is only so much you can do with vintage audio. Extras include a 17 min. interview with Roger Spottiswoode who shares some remarkable recall on the making of this movie. There’s also 6-min. with Judith Rascoe, and a pair of 12-min. reflections, separately, from producer, Daniel Grodnik, and Don Carmoody. We get 11-min. with production designer, Glenn Bydwell and 8-min. with composer, John Mills-Cockell, plus – a stills gallery, TV spots, and a theatrical trailer. All in all, this is an exceptionally comprehensive coming together of the clan. I really cannot think of anything more one would wish to know about this middling slasher flick that never quite lived up to Spottiswoode’s aspirations to create another Halloween. If you are a fan of Terror Train, you’ll want to snatch this one up. Despite some inherent flaws in its video master, we get superior image quality and better extras this time around. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

5+