Terror Train

It's very rare that a horror movie scares me, especially a slasher flick. I've always preferred the supernatural monsters to knife wielding psychopaths. I'm a big, powerful guy, so I'm pretty confident I could handle a slasher, even if he had a large butcher knife in his hand. But if I had to fight off a werewolf? I have no doubt I'd be torn to shreds. Occasionally, however, I come across a movie that terrifies me the way any good horror show should. Terror Train is one of those. It takes the idea of the slasher flick and puts two very nice twists on the clichéd formula, and in doing so lives up to the dread its title implies.

The movie begins with a bunch of pre-med students gathering for a beer blast. Kenny, a pledge for a fraternity, is promised a shot at a sexy night with Jamie Lee Curtis. Arriving to the bedroom and removing his shirt and pants, he finds himself in bed with what I think is a corpse stitched together from different cadavers' parts. Traumatized, he spins in place, catching himself up in the netting that shrouds the bed. Flash forward three some odd years, to the same crew of students boarding a train. The revelers are garbed in costume for a New Year's Eve celebration. What they don't know is that several of them won't leave the train alive. Ed, the first victim, doesn't even make it onboard. The train departs, leaving his corpse behind, the first corpse of many.

Terror Train distinguishes itself from the average slasher flick in two ways: the train and the costumes. The train itself is a perfect setting for this type of movie. There's nowhere to go. Once the characters are on board, they're trapped in with a merciless killer. I felt a sense of claustrophobia overcome me as I watched the movie one late night last week. Now I'm not claustrophobic at all, and knife wielders don't scare me. But I was so into the film that I felt trapped on the train with the characters. Notching up my sense of paranoia was the killer's system of hiding himself. Almost every time he killed someone, he switched masks. Unlike a Halloween movie, where everyone knows Michael Myers is out to slash them, in Terror Train, the characters thought they were safely in the company of a friend. This freaked me out, and made my skin crawl more than a little. This was a compelling hour and a half of fright.

The characters themselves are fleshed out well enough. Viewers probably won't like Doc, but may fear for him as he locks himself in a compartment with the killer. Jamie Lee plays the woman in distress with a very realistic performance including tears, and does enough to craft this character distinctly from Laurie Strode; it's a credit to her acting skills, even at a young age. The most interesting performance comes in the presence of the Magician. His name is Kenny, but is he the Kenny that was traumatized those 3 years ago? Or is this just another miscue to throw the audience off the path? But that's not even the cool part. For the Magician, director Roger Spottiswoode brought in David Copperfield. Though I'm showing my age and my love of magic nostalgia, it was really a master stroke to hire the young man who would years later make the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television as the magic man. Cris Angel has nothing on the old masters.

The only disappointment I had with Terror Train was that I picked up on something about half way through the flick that hinted to me who the killer was. I won't reveal it here, as I don't want to ruin the movie for those who are uninitiated to it. But I will say that in a movie where things are not what they appear to be, my eagle eye was able to discern an important illusion. See if you catch what I mean when you watch it.

I did, however, have major problems with Terror Train the DVD. The disc itself is double sided; one side for widescreen, the other for full screen. Hey, if you want to go watch 2/3 of a movie, go ahead and knock yourself out. I'll stick with seeing every inch of the film, but it's still nice to have the choice. A trailer that felt like it ran for a quarter hour and gave away too much of the story graced the disc. WARNING: Do NOT watch this trailer if you haven't yet seen the movie. As with so many ads for movies, including Urban Legends and What Lies Beneath, this trailer will give you roughly 97% of the movie, and ruin the experience of the film itself.

What else does this disc offer? Nothing. I never expect films like this to have a slew of extras. Fox probably figured this was a bargain bin flick for hardcore fans. But I like to imagine what Anchor Bay would have done with this flick. Anchor goes by the philosophy that every movie they put out is special, and therefore worthy of a special edition. I agree, and I only wish that Fox did too.

For a man who doesn't scare easily and shuns slasher flicks, I found that Terror Train did the trick. The movie had me thinking what I would do if I were a partygoer on that train, and that induced the type of terror I rarely encounter watching movies. I think it will do the same for you. Highly recommended.

--Phil Fasso