Review of Terror Train (1980) by Donald B — 12 Dec 2009

I personally love slasher movies, but they are obviously not high art. For every Halloween there are at least two dozen Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers'. Terror Train is no Halloween, but it isn't The Curse of Michael Myers either.

Kenny wants to join the fraternity "Sigma Phi". At a party, they play a prank on him that backfires and lands him in a mental ward for a couple years.

Three years later, a bunch of fraternity and sorority seniors throw a big costume party on a train to celebrate their graduation. Soon after taking off, the bodies start to pile up. Is Kenny back for revenge or is there someone else with a personal vendetta?

As you can tell from this brief description, there isn't a whole lot of plot to follow. So what works for Terror Train? Well, There seems to be just enough suspense littered around each scene. In one train compartment, designated for making out, there are sheets draped from the ceiling. Each time someone has to pass through this area, you can feel the suspense thickening and you expect the killer to jump out from behind these drapes. Also, because this is a costume party, the killer can move about undetected.

The acting is about on par with what you usually get with these movies and the gore effects are competent at the very least.

Overall, while there isn't anything down right awful about Terror Train, it isn't perfect. My biggest complain is that the killer has the uncanny ability to clean up his messes in a matter of minutes. Someone finds a body or blood splattered everywhere, but when they bring another person back to show them, the blood has completely vanished. The killer also changes into the costume of his victims, but the blood stains on them vanish when he does so.

On a final note, this was the third slasher movie that Jaime Lee Curtis starred in in 1980 (the others being "The Fog" and "Prom Night").