Census Bloodbath: Climb Aboard The Murder Train

For the crossover review of this film over at Kinemalogue, click here.

For our podcast episode about this film, click here.

Year: 1980

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Derek MacKinnon, Ben Johnson

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You didn't think I would kick off 2014 with just one 1980 slasher set on New Year's Eve, did you? (Seriously, what is it with these things?) Terror Train, an early slasher that came out a solid two months before New Year's Evil, is everything that film is not. Namely - Canadian.

It has been a long-standing belief held by the horror community at large that Canadian slashers are just magically better than their American counterparts. Happy Birthday to Me, Prom Night, Visiting Hours, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine... All Canadian, all viewed as classics of the form by one group or another.

Terror Train has mostly been forgotten by all but a select few, but for those who make the journey, it is a true delight. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis in her second Canadian slasher of the year (the first being Paul Lynch's Prom Night), her presence alone is enough to boost this flick to the upper tier.

And though her presence is a great gift, Terror Train is good enough that it could have almost survived without her. But as it is, she is here - a great anchor to a pretty terrific slasher.

The film is worth it for the opening titles alone.

It's New Year's Eve and the brothers of Sigma Phi have planned the prank of the year - at their bonfire, resident virgin and Mick Jagger lookalike Kenny (Derek MacKinnon) is going to be lured into a room by the prospect of getting it on with Alana Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis). Although she is reluctant, she goes along with it and Kenny is tricked into kissing the corpse of a dead woman one of the med students lifted from the morgue.

He should have known that nobody in a slasher movie gets to have sex with Jamie Lee. She's the Final Girl, for crying out loud. This is sacred business.

Whaddya know but things went terribly wrong and Kenny was committed to the local hospital.

Cut to three years later as the frat sets off on yet another New Year's Eve party, this time a masquerade (dun dun dun) on a train. I hope they know where the train is going cuz I sure as hell don't. We Meet the Meat in a whirling jumble of shouting and as such, have no idea what anybody's name is until about the time that they die. But I, your ever dutiful scribe, have compiled a comprehensive list here.

There's Mitchy (Sandee Currie, also of Curtains and no other film outside of the 80's), Alana's best friend who's sore about her graduating early but supportive of her success; Doc (Hart Bochner), Mitchy's douchey prankster boyfriend and the man behind the scheme that destroyed Kenny; Mo (Timothy Webber), Doc's best friend and Alana's boyfriend who convinced her to come under false pretenses despite her immense hatred of Doc and the frat boys. Their endless combinations and interactions fuel the first third of the plot and are surprisingly compelling as a narrative, not just filler between the death scenes.

Also on board are Pet (Joy Boushel of the Labor Day-themed Canadian production Humongous), a skanky blonde whose terrible costume is just giant pants pulled all the way up to her shoulders; Jackson (Anthony Sherwood), the token black fellow; the Conductor (Ben Johnson) who likes to cockblock with card tricks; and Ken the Magician (the David Copperfield), the hired entertainment. Oh and Ed (Howard Busgang), the merry prankster who never actually makes it on board due to that pesky saber in his gut, the poor bastard.

At least he got to wear this cool mask before he kicked it.

And off we go! The first half hour or so is a whirl of college partying, parlor magic tricks (at the hands of at least three characters), and that old slasher standby - impressions. Was this an 80's thing that I don't understand or did every slasher writer have recurring nightmares about Saturday Night Live?

It's fairly demure and bloodless, so for a while the whole thing seems like a bust. I mean, come on, raising a knife and cutting away might have worked in the 60's, but you gotta keep up with the times, man!

However, once Mitchy dies (spoilers? no.), the gloves come off. It doesn't get more gory, but Terror Train pulls out all the stops and becomes a secretly pretty great murder mystery thriller. The setup is brilliant - having the movie on the train means it's chock full of cramped, sinewy, and ill-lit corridors. Not to mention isolation is built into the scenario.

It's a terminally cheesy slasher, but once the tension kicks in a sense of overwhelming dread inhabits the film. In fact, it's one of the only slasher films to be genuinely scary - to any degree - without resorting to cheap jump frights.

Nope. Nothing wrong here.

And the twist. The twist. I would be a loathsome heathen if I were to reveal it here (nope, not even in white text - mum's the word), but it's a brilliant little thing. At once absolutely obvious and completely mind-boggling. It's exactly what you expected but from such a totally confounding direction that it leaves you completely blindsided.

Not to talk it up. I don't want anyone to go in with expectations. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it doesn't exist. Who knows?

Phew. Got outta that one.

Terror Train has a lot going for it. The killer displays a sense of humor rarely seen in the usual crew of silent murder machines and Jamie Lee Curtis always has wattage as a star. She commands the camera from the very first second she's onscreen - buried in the middle of a crowd shot.

This film is a great one-off that I'm glad stands alone, one solid glittering structure among the teetering and mouldering franchises. Although I would pay good money to see Terror Train IV: The Little Engine That Could... KILL.

This time, he's really steamed!

Killer: Kenny Hampson (Derek MacKinnon)

Final Girl: Alana Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Best Kill: You know those boxes magicians use when they pretend to stab swords into people? Well this time it's not pretend.

Sign of the Times: No 2013 teenager would be so pumped to ride a train, believe you me.

Scariest Moment: Alana is trapped in a caged area while the killer stabs through the grate with an iron pole.

Weirdest Moment: The conductor dances in the train office while a woman in a wheelchair rolls from side to side.

Champion Dialogue: "I never saw anybody so dead as that."

Body Count: 11; including the killer.

1. Ed is impaled by a saber and pushed under a train.
2. Jackson's head is slammed into a mirror.
3. Mitchy is strangled offscreen.
4. Mo is stabbed during a blackout.
5. Walter the Engineer suffers a head wound.
6. Shovels the Locomotive Fireman dies offscreen. 
7. Doc is decapitated offscreen.
8. Donnly gets a sword in the stomach.
9. Ken the Magician is impaled inside his own box of swords.
10. Charley is killed offscreen.
11. Kenny is hit with a shovel and knocked into the icy river. 

TL;DR: Terror Train doesn't have much in the way of gore, but what it does have is a taut thriller with Jamie Lee Curtis, so what does blood matter?

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1232

Census Bloodbath: Happy Labour Day, Eh?

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1982

Director: Paul Lynch
Cast: Janet Julian, David Wallace, John Wildman
Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Well, happy belated Labor Day. But Henri and I watched this movie on the holiday Monday, I swear. This is authentic.

Seeing as I'm always keen on topical slashers movies, Humongous was the perfect film for this holiday because not only does it take place on Labor Day Weekend but it's a Canadian production, which gives me great pleasure for two reasons. One, Canadian slasher movies generally tend to be of a higher quality than American ones. Two, Canada doesn't have a labor day. In another desperate bid to fit in with their American brethren, this film takes place on a holiday that, to them, doesn't even exist. Basically, Humongous is a fantasy on the level of Lord of the Rings in Canada.

The fact that the entire cast speaks like they're two loonies away from becoming a Mountie is a source of unending joy.

The film opens with its most unpleasant scene (which, after extensive film major training, I have learned is a bad thing) in 1946 at a Labor Day Party on a remote island in the center of a large lake. A woman is raped by a partygoer, who is summarily eaten alive by her guard dogs (She may or may not have some sort of Dog Magic. This is unclear.).

Cut to 36 years (and one sitcom title card) later.

Wholesome family entertainment.

And of course she had the baby and of course it's hideously deformed and we also know it's a giant because it's in the title. A pat on the back for us on that one.

A group of teens who aren't as savvy as we set out on the lake to enjoy their three day weekend and they bring plenty of Meat. There's Eric (David Wallace), a handsome and sweet, if a little bland young man; his girlfriend, model Sandy Ralston (Janet Julian); his brother Nick (John Wildman), a toking pranking douche of epic proportions; and his girlfriend Donna (Joy Boushel), who provides the bulk of the nudity. Tagging along with them is Carla (Janit Baldwin), Eric and Nick's younger sister, and what a shrill, annoying, slut-shaming piece of work she is. With her thick glasses and virginal ways, you just know she's gonna be the Final Girl. Oh also there's this dude Bert (Lane Coleman) who they found adrift in a rowboat.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, their boat runs into some rocks and to the surprise of what I imagine to be a considerable amount of people, the boat freaking explodes.

I know, right?

So here we have our castaways washed up on the beach and ripe for the picking. The interpersonal drama that ensues isn't quite captivating and the acting is uniquely terrible (Wildman in particular sounds like he tried to mark down which syllables to emphasize but spilled coffee on his notes), but it's charming in an 80's nostalgia kind of way.

The monster doesn't waste much time, nabbing Nick as he hides in a boathouse. We hear him scream, but he dies offscreen. Then he heads down to the sand and flings a Bert-straddling Donna to the ground. Cutaway.

And then I cry. You see, Humongous is utterly stingy with its gore sequences, which would have elevated a pretty OK movie into the stratosphere of 1982 slashers. Unfortunately, it is positively toothless and as such loses a lot of fuel. It sputters and starts for its middle third, puking up botched jump scares and tedious sequences where we learn that yes, there's a monster and yes, he wants to eat them.

Luckily, Humongous seems to become aware of what a low-fi crock of BS it is and picks up the pace for the Final Girl sequence. After an "I'm Your Mother" bit lifted directly out of Friday the 13th Part 2 (Somebody plagiarizing a Jason movie? Something is dangerously wrong here. It's supposed to be the other way around!), Sandy escapes the monster's lair and meets up with Carla at the boat house. Much to my delight, Carla gets her face crushed.

She wasn't too cut up about it.

What follows is a fairly routine final scene. Hiding in the Boat House, The Killer Isn't Dead, Oh Wait Yes He Is. But the one thing Humongous has going for it, and it's a fairly big one, is that Final Girl bait and switch. Allowing Sandy the luxury of survival is an unprecedented move. She's a model who shows ample cleavage (Well, she does what she can. We can't all be spectacularly endowed.) and we even see part of her butt in an early scene.

Allowing such a woman to live and killing off the virginal square is a huge step forward for the genre. It's perhaps a little too bad that it's this movie that makes such a remarkable leap, but this is what we get and Humongous is a better film because of it.

And though it may seem like I'm complaining a lot (And I am. To be honest, the movie wasn't very good at all.), this movie has a secret weapon. It's directed by Paul Lynch.

The hack auter behind Prom Night, Lynch movies are characterized by excessively dark night scenes (The final thirty minutes of the film are almost completely pitch black) and seedy low fi gore scenes that are few and far between, but somehow in spite of it all remaining absolutely lovable.

Filled with scenic ocean vistas and spurts of creative effort (the canted shots in particular show that at least he was trying), this film, much like Prom Night before it is hopelessly idiosyncratic and somehow more joyful than other slashers of its ilk.

I think. It really is hard to tell what we're looking at. I may have been watching The Cosby Show the whole time.

Killer: Ida's Son (Garry Robbins)
Final Girl: Sandy Ralston (Janet Julian)
Best Kill: Eric is hugged to death by the monster.
Sign of the Times: Nick's outfit of choice is Daisy Dukes and nothing else.
Scariest Moment: The monster's eye is spotted through a keyhole.
Weirdest Moment: Donna collects blueberries in her cleavage.
Champion Dialogue: "You're not the only one who can do things!"
Body Count: 7; including the killer, but not the dog he stangles.

1. A man is savaged by dogs and hit in the head with a rock.
2. A boy is killed offscreen.
3. A girl is thrown onto rocks.
4. A boy is decapitated.
5. A boy is bear hugged to death.
6. A girl's head is squished.
7. Ida's son is set on fire and impaled on a spike. 

TL;DR: Humongous is overly dark (literally) and tame, but the presence of Paul Lynch makes it palatable.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1145