Terror Train is a 1980 horror movie directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson, Hart Bochner and David Copperfield.
The movie starts with a group of college students who play a prank on a guy called Kenny. They set him up with a girl but it all goes wrong and he loses his sanity and gets sent to an institution. Three years later, all of the college kids are going to have a New Year's party on a train. These are the same college kids who set up Kenny. One of the group gets killed before he can board the train and replaced by the unknown Killer. There is also a magician(Copperfield) on the train with his assistant.
A girl called Alana(Curtis) is going on the train but she isn't happy because it reminds her of what happened to Kenny three years ago. She feels guilty about it. The leader of the group is called Doc(Bochner). Alana is dating his friend, Mo(Timothy Webber). The others are Jackson(Anthony Sherwood) and Mitchy(Sandee Currie).
There is a conductor on the train called Carne(Johnson) and he has porters with him, as well and the driver. The killings continue with Jackson meeting his demise in the bathroom. The conductor sees the dead body but when he shows others, the body has been moved. The killer is wandering around in the lizard outfit that Jackson was wearing.The conductor thinks that it was a prank and moves on. The others are murdered by the killer, who is mixing with the party goers. The conductor tells Alana that her friend Mitchy is dead. She doesn't believe him until she sees the dead body. The two of them know that there is a killer on board. The driver goes missing. The conductor has to take everyone off of the train and find the killer. Everyone disembarks while the conductor looks for the killer. There is nobody there. Alana thinks that it is Kenny coming back for revenge.
Then they wonder if the magician could be the killer. They lock him into a train car. Carne goes to have it out with him. The killer comes for Alana. He chases her and he tries to kill her. She manages to stab him. There is a struggle and she tries to push him off the train. He is still hanging on. They think that the killer is dead. Alana goes to lie down after her ordeal. The magician's body is discovered, so it wasn't him. It turns out that the killer was the magician's assistant. It was Kenny dressed up as a woman. He was hiding in plain sight. He is crazy and he wants revenge. He forces Alana to kiss him and he totally loses it. Carne saves the day by pushing him out of the train and into a freezing river, where he meets his death.
This is a fun slasher movie. I think that it is one of the better entries from the 1980's. I liked the premise of the killer on a train. It was original and the cast were pretty good. The movie is what you would expect from a slasher film, but I found it entertaining. I liked it on the whole and I would definitely recommend it for slasher fans and fans of 1980's horror movies. There is an interesting cameo from David Copperfield and of course Jamie Lee Curtis is decent as the lead. I don't hear much about this film when people discuss 1980's horror, but it should be there as it is a good movie. I will give it a 6/10.
