Terror Train

I remember surfing the idiot box one night after my dad had fallen asleep on the couch and my mom had gone to bed. I’m guessing I was in fifth or sixth grade at the time. There’s no doubt I was looking for something to satiate my perpetual preteen lust for the opposite sex, when I came across a program with the title Women of Terror or Women in Horror, or something along those lines. From what I gathered, the show contained bits of scenes from scary movies featuring women in horrific situations; or maybe it was a show paying tribute to scream queens. I had only caught the last ten minutes or so of the program, so I don’t remember much about it, but I do recall the scene that was playing when I first switched to the channel it was on: My eyes were glued to the picture box containing this distressed woman being chased by an axe-wielding villain wearing a robe and a creepy mask. I had to turn down the volume as to not wake my dad, because there was so much screaming. The scene was nail biting. I couldn’t believe at the time that so much blood and torture was being shown on television, especially when the pursuer pulled out the lady’s earring, right before she jabbed a paper spike through his cheek. The segment was shortly over, along with the program, but the images had been burned in my impressionable mind and I often wondered about the movie from which that nightmare had been taken.

Fast forward to the year 2004 when the movie Terror Train (1980) was released on DVD. At that time I already owned a pretty big horror film collection and never thought twice about picking up new DVD releases of older movies that I had heard were classics. I had never seen the film so I was ecstatic when, to my surprise, the protagonist got her earring ripped out by a psycho in a creepy mask and a robe. That terrified cutie was Jamie Lee Curtis, and the scene wasn’t nearly as bloody or as scary as I had perceived as a child. No matter, I had finally found the film that had so frightened me as a boy while flipping through the boob tube looking for boobs.

Anyway, I’m reminiscing about this experience because tonight is New Year’s Eve, and the atrocities featured in Terror Train take place on New Year’s Eve. This is another one of those films I love to watch every year at this time. The movie is by no means a masterpiece, but it is entertaining enough, and getting trashed (not axed) with a bunch of friends in a train on New Year’s Eve sounds like a blast! I think I’ve just made my party plans for next year…minus the psycho killer.