Let's fix 'Prom Night,' or maybe not... Okay, kinda...🚂🛤👺.

Goddammit, where should I begin? So, someone thought, 'Hey, remember 'Prom Night,' which came out a few months back? Let's make a slasher flick like that... I mean, just like that... with the only difference being that it takes place on a TRAIN... and people like trains, don't you know?'

Mmhmmm
I should file a fucking lawsuit against these people for emotionally manipulating me.

Now, on a more serious note, this wasn't all that bad, even though choices for the antagonist were already narrowed down to a few people, with one being rather obvious. There was a consistent sense of thrill and suspense that propelled the narrative to its conclusion. Having…

Rotten Tomatoes: 33%
IMDB: 5.9

64/100

Release Date: 03 October 1980
Viewing Medium: Amazon Prime
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Budget: $3.5M
Worldwide Gross: $8.6M

Ed: "Come on, baby. Open your eyes. Come on. Look at me. Just my luck, she's a lesbian!"

Terror Train is a little more complicated than most slasher fares. It is about a fraternity holding a New Year's Eve costume party on a train but someone has boarded the train with a vendetta against the college kids for an accidental prank that occurred several years beforehand. While on the train, the killer takes on the costumed identity of whoever he kills, so who is the killer and who is just dressed up. Its got a great…

During my horror coming of age years when I’d ransack the video store shelves for every slasher movie I could find, Terror Train was probably in the second or third wave of pickups along with stuff like Happy Birthday to Me/April Fools Day—and like both of those movies the boxcover art sucked me right in.

Melding a suspense mystery story and the ‘nerdy kid gets pranked and returns years later to seek revenge’ trope but setting it on some frat party train full of asshole med students (and queen Jamie Lee) getting trashed while David Copperfield does a few disco tricks is right up my alley. There’s some nice shots in this movie and a solid atmos... although I will…

Slasher magic 🤔 but what kind of magic.

Well I'm a bit disappointed. I was ready to embrace a perfectly cliché, cheesy 80s slasher, the kind of “so bad it becomes good” entertainment, but the end result really stabbed me hard in the side, and not even the unique setting or a film playing within its own small budget can save it. The idea came to Spottiswoode as an epiphany in the middle of the night, and the result really feels like a work born quickly but clearly made with genuine fun.

The whole setup is unique and the film’s particular ambition is admirable, but this was… I’m sorry… a little bit boring… and that is never a good sign…

Action! - The March of the (3) Rogers: Stop Or Buddy Spottiswoode Will Shoot

Well, it's about time I watched this one. And what a way to finally see it, on a marathon from a director (the last Roger) who I never assumed would be behind something like this, especially at a time when slashers weren't as popular as they would later become. Maybe this is the reason why screenwriter TY Drake didn't feel compelled to make some "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Friday the 13th" ripoff but something more or less original. I say sort of, in that a lot of the premise feels a bit too much like "Prom Night": a killer terrorizes a group of young people,…

I’m goin’ off the rails on a terror train.

A plethora of slashers were released in 1980, mainly riding the coattails of 1978’s blockbuster Halloween. There were many, but only this one and Prom Night have Halloween’s own Jaime Lee Curtis. And only Terror Train has a killer that looks like Groucho Marx.

You’ve probably seen or heard of most of these slashers, ALL from 1980: The Children, Christmas Evil, Don’t Go in the House, Fade to Black, Friday the 13th, He Knows You’re Alone, Maniac, Motel Hell, Mother’s Day, New Year’s Evil, Nightmare, Prom Night, Schizoid, To All a Good Night, and The Unseen. With so many films to compete with, there was often an angle. In this case, it…