Eleventh Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 Terror Train

Because I'm lazy, I'm just going to use the blurb on the Netflix DVD insert as the plot summary:

A fraternity prank goes wrong and lands one student in a mental institution.  [Three] years later, when his fraternity brothers host a costume party on a trail to celebrate graduation, the student sees this as his opportunity to exact revenge.  He sneaks on the train and begins killing the party-goers one at a time, masking himself in the costumes of his victims.  Will anyone make it off the train alive?

This movie - Terror Train - is why I pay extra for Netflix DVDs: quality entertainment.  This not-very-well received slasher (seriously: Roger Ebert hated it upon its release) came out after the unexpected success of Halloween (1978) and Black Christmas (1974).  It stars scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, in her THIRD slasher of 1980 (along with The Fog and Prom Night), and her last original slasher movie.  It also, for some reason, features David Copperfield as "the Magician," hired to perform at the party.   Apparently this role was written for him and inserted into the original script; I think it would have improved the flick, or at least tightened it up, if he'd been left out as his magic trick scenes are overlong.

There are a total of seven kills in TT, although every single one is off-screen, only showing the audience the bodies after the fact.  The killer's struggle with Jamie Lee Curtis is quite brutal, however.  And the train's whistle, fading into the credits, sounds like a scream.

I thought Terror Train was way better than it should have been.  Sure, the magic show scenes were weird but the acting was pretty good and the dialogue and characterization were above average for sure.  A decent addition to the 1980s slasher pantheon.