Terror Train

Here is a little film very dear to my heart.....not so dear to that of the director! TERROR TRAIN marks the directorial debut of Roger Spottiswoode who would go on to direct the best of the Brosnan JAMES BOND films as well as many other great action adventures. Sadly, he won't even talk about TERROR TRAIN and it's a shame because it's one of the finer slasher films from the early eighties. Scream Queen supreme Jamie Lee Curtis joins a cast of now very well known Canadian character actors on a train where somebody has come on board looking for a bit of the old revenge. Magician David Copperfield as well as Hollywood vet Ben Johnson (who does some fantastic Clint Eastwood impressions here...wait...maybe Clint has been doing Ben all of these years!) are here doing there very best to look all scared and serious. In fact, Curtis does her best screaming ever in this one and damned if she don't look right smart and sexy in a bloody white dress shirt. Only Jamie can pull that look of with style! All os this aside, the film is dear to me because it is shot on the train run between Halifax and Montreal, a trip I've done numerous times and my only complaint here is they don;t make use of the observation deck car which would have been a nice touch. Also, the inside joke of using a very popular (at one time) Rene Levesque mask (which was based on a Macpherson political cartoon) struck me as an absolute riot. Not as much splat as I would have liked from this type of movie but a strong ending sequence which still holds up well today. Nothing at all here for Spottiswoode to be ashamed of...........also...look for Vanity in a neat little role!