| Terror Train | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster for Terror Train |
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| Directed by | Roger Spottiswoode |
| Produced by | Harold Greenberg |
| Written by | T. Y. Drake |
| Starring | Ben Johnson Jamie Lee Curtis Hart Bochner |
| Music by | John Mills-Cockell |
| Cinematography | John Alcott |
| Editing by | Anne Henderson |
| Studio | Astral Bellevue Pathé Sandy Howard Productions Triple T Productions |
| Distributed by | Astral Films 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | October 3, 1980 |
| Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country | Canada United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,500,000 |
| Box office | $8,000,000 |
Terror Train is a 1980 Canadian horror film, directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson, and David Copperfield.
Contents |
At a college pre-med student fraternity New Year's Eve party, a reluctant Alana Maxwell is coerced into participating in a prank: she lures the shy and awkward pledge Kenny Hampson into a darkened room on the promise of a sexual liaison. However some other students have placed a woman's corpse in the bed. Kenny is traumatised by the prank and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Three years later the members of the same fraternities and sororities hold a costume party aboard a train. Class clown Ed is disguised as Groucho Marx. Prank ringleader Doc Manley is disguised as a monk. Jackson is disguised as an alien lizard. Doc's girlfriend, Alana's best friend Mitchy, is disguised as a witch. Alana's boyfriend Mo is disguised as a bird. Also along are Carne, the train conductor, and Ken, the magician hired to entertain the crowd.
As the train journeys into the icy wilderness, the students responsible for the prank are murdered one by one, with the killer assuming the mask and costume of each murder victim in turn. Carne discovers some bodies and sequesters the students in one car as the train begins its return journey. Alana recalls the prank, and, remembering that Kenny loved magic, suspects the magician is the killer. However the magician has disappeared, presumed to have leapt off the train.
Alana is sequestered in a locked compartment for her safety, but the killer is still aboard, stalking her. The killer enters the compartment but Alana escapes, and is pursued by the killer through the train. The killer is revealed as Kenny, who was disguised as the magician's female assistant. Kenny refuses Alana's apology and forces her to kiss him, but the kiss causes Kenny to relive his memories of the prank, driving him deeper into insanity. Carne rushes to the scene and beats down Kenny with a shovel, causing him to fall out the train door to his death. His body lands on ice. The ice breaks and the body falls into the river and floats away. The final shot shows the train roaring off.
To create the train for the film, the producers leased an actual Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive from the Steamtown Foundation. The train's engine was renumbered from its original 1293 to 1881, and, along with five passenger cars, painted black with silver stripes. Afterward, the Steamtown Foundation reverted the engine back to its original number and had it restored to a historic color and lettering scheme. As of February, 2002, Canadian Pacific Railway No. 1293 continued to be an "operable locomotive." [1]
It was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada from November 21 to December 23, 1979. Terror Train was the first motion picture directed by Spottiswoode, who would go on to make such films as Tomorrow Never Dies, Turner & Hooch, and Air America.
Cinematographer John Alcott devised a unique method of lighting Terror Train. He rewired the entire train and mounted individual dimmers on the exteriors of the carriage cars. Utilizing a variety of bulbs with different wattages, and controlling them with the external dimmers, Alcott could light the set in a very fast, efficient manner. At times, Alcott also used medical lights - "pen torches" - to hand light the actors' faces.[2]
Taking a cue from director John Ford, veteran actor Ben Johnson originally asked director Spottiswoode to give his character Carne less dialogue in Terror Train, rather than more.[3]
Derek MacKinnon, who played Kenny, played eleven roles in Terror Train, including Kenny.
The film was released theatrically in the United States by 20th Century Fox in October 1980. It grossed an estimate $8,000,000 at the box office.[4]
The film was first released on VHS home video in 1988 by CBS/Fox Video.[5] The film was released twice on DVD by 20th Century Fox; once in 2004 as a single edition release[6] and again in 2008 in a triple pack alongside Candyman 2 and the original The Fog.[7]
In March 2010, the film screened at the New Beverly Cinema.[8]
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