Entertainment
Extreme ‘80s Thriller Starring The Ultimate Scream Queen Keeps You Guessing
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For horror movie fans, there’s something sublime about discovering a bonkers movie from decades ago that really blows your mind. The perfect example of this is Terror Train (1980), a slasher that most audiences overlook because it gets lost in the bloody noise of more familiar franchises like Halloween and Friday the 13th. However, this is a movie with an unforgettable setting, and it uses its crazy premise (a slasher hiding in plain sight at a costume party) to keep you guessing until the very end.
As an added bonus, this underappreciated slasher features Jamie Lee Curtis, the OG scream queen who transformed the first Halloween into a pop culture powerhouse. She is just one among a weirdly star-studded cast, all helmed by an acclaimed director in his feature film debut. All of this makes Terror Train a horror film like no other, and you don’t need a ticket to ride: all you have to do is stream this cult classic for free on Tubi.
A Bloody Good Time
The premise of Terror Train is that a group of frat brothers and sorority sisters who previously tormented a virgin pledge decide to throw a raucous New Year’s Eve costume party aboard a train. There’s just one problem: a mysterious killer is stalking the train, donning different costumes and taking out victim after victim. Unless these party-hearty students can figure out who is out to get them, the final stop on this terror train will be death!
The cast of Terror Train includes some eclectic talents, including Ben Johnson (best known for The Last Picture Show) as a conductor and Hart Bochner (best known for Die Hard) as a prank-loving frat leader. Perhaps the strangest addition to the cast is the famous magician David Copperfield in a role that lets him practice his craft onscreen. But the actor who really anchors this quirky horror film is Jamie Lee Curtis (best known for Halloween), the original scream queen who helped to create the slasher as we know it.
X Marx The Spot
While Terror Train wasn’t a runaway hit at the box office, it made a decent profit, earning $8 million against a budget of only $2.7 million. This wasn’t enough to warrant a sequel, but in 2022, Tubi released a remake of the original film. The remake proved to be successful enough to get its own remake, and Terror Train 2 premiered on Tubi in late 2022.
When Terror Train came out, the critics decided they should have gotten out at the first stop. The film has a 44 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers generally griping about the film feeling derivative and its central mystery making no sense. They did consistently praise two elements, though: the innovative train setting and the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis, whose performance reminds audiences why she is the first and best scream queen in all of horror history.
The Weirdest Horror Movie You’ve Never Seen
Like any good weirdo, I was attracted to Terror Train because of the novelty: as its name implies, most of the film takes place on a train, which is a very unconventional environment for a slasher. Even if you don’t really love riding trains yourself (and first of all, how dare you), the setting helps make this horror movie that much scarier. Unlike in iconic slashers such as Halloween and Friday the 13th, there’s nowhere to run for this film’s hapless victims!
Additionally, while it’s not executed perfectly (in fact, the remake handles this far better), the gimmick of the killer donning different outfits to stalk people during a costume party is weirdly effective. It contributes to the atmospheric fear of Terror Train because anyone you see onscreen could be the killer in disguise. At the same time, the killer has a built-in excuse for wardrobe changes, and that works well for the audience: if you don’t find one mask scary (Groucho Marx, really?), you might find the next one a major improvement.
The Original Scream Queen, Full Speed Ahead
Finally, aside from some notable novelties (like David Copperfield basically playing himself), Terror Train is worth watching for the awesome performance of Jamie Lee Curtis. The movie isn’t as good as her iconic breakout film, Halloween (honestly, few movies are), but she elevates this scrappy film in a very tangible way. She easily steals every scene she appears in, and this is a movie where Curtis constantly reminds you why she’s the best scream queen and everybody’s favorite final girl.
Will you agree that Terror Train is a terrifying ride worth taking, or will you want to pull the brakes on this film long before the credits roll? The only way to find out is to grab your remote and board this train at the earliest opportunity. Don’t worry about the film getting impossibly weird very early on: with this vintage ‘80s slasher, going off the rails right away is a big part of its charm!
