Terror Train
Short description
A group of medical students charter a steam train for a New Year's Eve costume party, years after a cruel prank at their school ended with one classmate sent to a psychiatric hospital. As the train rolls through an isolated region, someone in disguise begins killing the passengers one by one, taking each victim's costume along the way. With no telephone on board and no way to turn back, the remaining students can only try to survive until the journey ends.
Roger Spottiswoode directed Terror Train, his first feature as director, ahead of Under Fire in 1983. The screenplay is by T.Y. Drake, and Harold Greenberg produced. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Alana, with Ben Johnson as Carne, Hart Bochner as Doc, Sandee Currie as Mitchy, Timothy Webber as Mo and Derek McKinnon as Kenny Hampson among a credited cast of thirty-two. The production, a Canadian-American horror thriller running 97 minutes, had a budget of about four million dollars.
Audience response has been modest: on IMDb the film holds 5.8 out of 10 from roughly fifteen thousand votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 5.8 from around three hundred votes. A critics' rating of 4.7 out of 10 from eighteen reviews places it somewhat below those viewer scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The idea for the film "Terror Train" came to screenwriter Daniel Grodnik in a dream. After watching John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978) and Arthur Hiller's (1923-2016) "Silver Streak" (1976), he asked his wife in the middle of the night: "What if we staged Halloween on a train? How does that sound?" She replied, "Horrible," and he wrote "Horrible Train" on a piece of paper. The next morning he changed the title of the future film to "Terror Train," wrote 22 pages of the script, and by 3 p.m. had made a deal with Sandy Howard's (1927-2008) production company.
- The film was shot on board a real train in specially converted cars (they had to be converted to accommodate staff and equipment). To create the effect of movement, the train traveled back and forth inside a huge hangar-warehouse in Montreal.
- The very last scene filmed was the bonfire scene that opens the movie. It was added during post-production, about a month after principal photography wrapped, to tie in with the character of Kenny, played by Derek McKinnon.
- Cinematographer John Alcott (1930-1986) devised a unique lighting scheme. He ran lighting throughout the entire train and installed individual dimmers inside the cars. By using bulbs of varying wattage and controlling them via external dimmers, he was able to quickly illuminate the entire set. He also sometimes used handheld flashlights to light the actors' faces.
- Most of the filming on the train had to be done at night because during the day the hangar-warehouse was teeming with people and very noisy. Filming began at 6 p.m. and ended early the next morning.
- David Copperfield had so much trouble delivering his lines, and it irritated him so much, that he vowed never to act in films again.
- The steam engine smoke was the result of burning coal and church incense.
- During the final fight scene, the heroine, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, defended herself against a stuntman portraying the villain attacking her. At one point, she slammed the door shut right in the attacker's face. The door was supposed to fall apart with the slightest impact, but for some reason, that wasn't done, and the actress's partner suffered an injury to the facial area. The actress was so upset that she left the set and didn't appear on set for two days.
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