directed by roger spottiswoode
astral bellevue pathé ltd
Much, much better than it has any right to be, this often forgotten gem features terror, on a train. Said titular vehicle is carrying a New Year’s Eve party of medical students, some with a shady tragedy in their past. Also David Copperfield, the magician. And also a terrific character actor performance by Ben Johnson in his role as the train’s engineer; and also Jamie Lee Curtis in her fifth scream queen role; and also a fairly transparent exposition for the identity of the evil perpetrator, albeit with plenty of questions and suspicion for everyone. Basically, this is a classic ’80s-type slasher without any of the cliché … okay, without most of it. A good one.
why did i watch this movie?
You don’t really think I would pass up a flick called “Terror Train,” right? The presence of early career Jamie Lee Curtis in the cast helped, as that’s a reliable indicator of a certain je ne sais quoi. The inclusion of David Copperfield, the magician, cemented it for me, though. “THIS I gotta see,” I realized.
should you watch this movie?
A slasher pic released as the 1980s dawned with its manifold promises … ah, to once more stand at the threshold of such burgeoning opportunities for human endeavor.
highlight and low point
Really, the filmmakers do a pretty good job with the confined territory available, and the presence of an illusionist is a clever touch, as it presents multiple layers of uncertainty. The downside is a touch of redundancy in a few scenes.
The type of independently made film of which one assesses the various costs the filmmakers must have incurred and wonders why they bothered, Nightmare (imaginative title, no?) boasts cultural oddity Tiny Tim as an apparently disturbed clown, and his irritating performance may well be the film’s highlight. With almost no cast – five or six characters – and a likewise limited storyline, it does not take long to figure out the SHOCKING identity of the Killer, and not even the Bloody Death scenes are any good, containing as they do no frights, no scares, and little gore. It is seriously hard to understand why this movie was made when they had so little with which to work. The lead Actress is naked for large stretches of the Action for no apparent reason.
Ya know, I could swear I saw a capsule review of this one that claimed it was at LEAST as good as Halloween, a true forgotten classic of the genre and … yeah, no. Not really. Kinda dating itself in that not a whole lot of action takes place – killings or anything else – Unhinged is mostly an atmospheric study of some creepy people in an old house in the middle of nowhere, where three young women wind up secluded after a suspicious auto accident. (At least, I gather it was to be perceived as suspicious, in the fine cinematic tradition, but I couldn’t actually tell what caused it.) The SHOCKING TWIST ending in this one is not all that shocking, and neither is it all that plausible, even for a movie of this sort. This information probably should not come as any sort of surprise to you. 
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 