As you might have noticed, Tubi has been ramping up their production of genre originals and just in time for this Halloween Season. And one of the more interesting titles is the fact that they actually remade an early Jamie Lee Curtis hit Terror Train (1980).
I mean- you can’t go wrong with clowns!
Made originally as a Canadian production with Curtis fresh off the heels of Halloween (1978) Terror Train was a who-dun-it with a masked slasher on the moving train. Twist was- it was a masked party and the slasher was constantly changing his disguise. And it even had a famed magician David Copperfield in it!
Even though the movie had it’s share of super- goofy moments it’s a fun concept to revisit, and I’m for one interested to see what the new director Philippe Gagnon do with it. Movie is written by Ian Carpenter and Aron Martin of the Shudder’s Slasher fame- so they definitely have the experience in the genre.
The new leading lady is Robyn Alomar (Utopia Falls) and movie also features Tim Rozon, Max Laferriere Romy Weltman, Corteon Moore and Kenny Wong. A very Candadian cast-as it should be. Now, without any further ado here’s the trailer and let’s see what others horrors does Terror on Tubi brings us this year!
PS Movie will be out on October 21st, for those who don’t want to wait ’till Halloween!
You wonder what this movies is about? Well, in 1980s we were still in the first wave of Jamie Lee Curtis career as a Scream Queen. She followed up the all- time classic John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) with another Carpenter gem- The Fog(1980). The she took a bit of a detour to Great North with Prom Night (1980) and then continued the Canadian tour some months later with a New Year themed Slasher featuring none other then at the world famous illusionist David Copperfield! So, how did it go? We’ll let’s go through it step by step.
Movie predictably starts with a bunch of nerds. Sigma Phi fraternity pulls a prank by promising him young Kenny a hook- up with a hot chick. They just fail to tell him that the chick was dead for a long time! Can you imagine someone going to all the trouble of getting a dead body into a student bed just for a stupid prank. I know they’re medical students but still. Kenny is horribly traumatized by the prank ends up in the mental institution!
When going insane make sure to spin in circles!
Three year later the gang is back to it’s usual hijinks, this time preparing to board a train. They are already drunk and wearing costumes (not a must have for a New Year celebration, but to each their own) but the real party is just about to begin.
Nerdy prankster with a Groucho Marx is looking for his girlfriend. Girlfriend is of course a blow up doll. He keeps spouting his lame comedy routine to everyone’s delight. Now, predictably he is the first to go (seemingly killers hate pranksters even more than their regular victims- slutty blonds). They board the train not noticing that somebody put a (real) sword trough the comedian and then took his place.
Being a funny guy always ends in tragedy
The Magician (David Copperfield) is talking with his assistant, tall blond called Charlie, feeling he is not yet prepared for his performance. Who is financing his thing? You’d espect these students to be in debt by now- not living it up.
Black dude in a lizard costume compliments the “new and improved” Groucho and his comedy and offers him some hard liquor.Groucho accepts and then proceeds to murder him in one fall swoop by busting his head on the bathroom mirror.That’s what you get for liking bad comedy.
Train conductor finds the murder victim in the bathroom .The only logical thing to do-hide the murder! I’m not sure that’s helping anyone in the long run. They even say “Bathroom is out of order”– man, that’s cold.
At some point the main organizer and OG Prankster Doc (dressed like a monk) comments that he didn’t hire a magician at all? But Alana’s boyfriend Moe just shrugs it off like it’s no big deal. The killer somehow manages to throw the body away and take the lizard costume (this is starting to become a pattern) and conductors decide to just accept that the dude was just drunk (ignoring all the gallons of blood that were there just minutes ago). It seems people will believe anything as long as it’s easier for them.
Bubbly girl Mitchie (also a bit drunk at this point) runs into train conductors carrying the Lizard. She helps Lizard Man walk and starts hitting on him instantly. That will prove to be a fatal mistake.
I guess she likes them coldblooded it seems.
After finding Mitchie dead too conducter finally figure out that there’s something wrong with this whole trip. Alana (Curtis) figures out that she’s gone and they finally admit they found her dead. If that wasn’t enough we are treated to another Copperfield act but thankfully Moe shows up bleeding like a pig in the middle of it. It seems bodies are starting to pile up.
They finally stop the train to try to prevent further killings. They trice to organize everybody and make them take of their masks. While freezing outside Alana finally figures out that Kenny is back and Doc then seals himself in the sleeper car where murderer is hiding. Naturally he doesn’t make it. After finding his decapitated body Alana figures out that the Magician must be Kenny in disguise. Carne looks him up but the Magician manages to disappear?
Now with a new gimmick, a witch killer goes after Alana. She barely escapes with her life and manages to lock her self up in the compartment. He still tries to stab her but she turns the tables on him and stab him in the face. He continues going after her but she pushes him from the train car. Nightmare seems to be finally over.
Or is ti? They finally find the Magician but he is in fact murder by his own swords.Alana tells that to Charlie, his assistant but the wig comes off and it turns out that she is in fact Kenny! Kenny was cross- dressing as the assistant this whole time. She tries apologizing for her part in the prank but he doesn’t want to hear it. He insists on a kiss, and she finally obliges him. Unfortunately for Kenny he again looses his mind and starts spinning uncontrollably. Old man conductor shows up and whacks him with a shovel. He drops like a rock (and something rolls out from the ovbious stand in dummy). Water washes the body away with only a single shoe remaining while the train rolls on.
This scene is comedic gold
Verdict: Even thou I must say I sincerely enjoy the early part of Jamie Lee Curtis‘s career I would still say that Terror Train is a bit of a weak link for me. Gimmick of changing the costume after every kill sounds interesting on paper but in reality murderer lacks visual identity (see Jason Voorhees) and that definitely hurts the movie. Also, it takes them way too long to “get the train rolling”, it takes pretty much an hour for tension to really rev up. And as much as I loved Coperfield‘s stuff as a kid, cutting to his performances every 10 minutes is not helping the pacing of this film.
Trivia: Jamie Lee Curtis would continue with the Horror genre with Australian Roadgames (1981) and go back to playing Laurie Stroude with Halloween II and her Horror streak would finaly be broken in ’82 with a comedy Coming Soon. She wouldn’t return to the genre ’till Halloween H20 (1998) and now mostly forgotten but batshit crazy SF/ HorrorVirus (1999).
Trivia #2: Marie was played by none other than D.D. Winters, real name Denise Katrina Matthews– later known as Vanity. You might remember her from another cult classic- The Last Dragon. She was also in a Carl Weathers‘s awesome Action Jackson and had a sucesful musical career with Prince– produced Vanity 6 trio and two solo records. Unfortunately, she died way too soon in 2016.
Now that Dark Horse Comics is again gearing up to co- produce and produce a fair amount of movie adaptation ( Jonas Akerland directed Polar is on Netflix as we speak with Hellboy reboot now in post- production) it’s as good time as any to look back at some of their early and lesser known adaptations.
Hope they do an animated Usagi Yojimbo next!
That means we’ll skip the usual suspects like Time Cop featuring Jean Claude Van Damme (a personal favorite of mine) and even the Barbwire with Pamela Anderson. No, I’m talking about one that seemingly erased from everyone’s collective memory but at the time hailed as start of a potential franchise, Virus (1999) featuring Jamie Lee Curtis!
Now, what’s a Virus, you may ask? Well, you’re in for a treat.
Story starts with a Russian science vessel in the middle of the ocean having performing some kind of a reading from a newly launched satellite. Unfortunately things get tough when some kind of a solar storm ( real Fantastic Four kind-of-shit) hits the satellite and it somehow transmits a weird purple lightning all the way to the ship. That can’t be good.
(slika munje ili nesto)
We jump forward in time and we’re with a motley crew of sailors chasing a lost ship that has a nice bounty on it’s sail. Unfortunately a typhoon has another plans for them. Losing a bounty, the almost lose their lives too but by a shear coincidents they end up on a abandoned Russian high-tech ship (that promises an even greater bounty).
That makes Captain (Donald Sutherland) very, very happy. Considering he was ready to blow his head off just minutes ago that’s an improvement. Now, there’s a catch- they can’t claim the vessel unless there’s no survivors so they go out to investigate (having no idea a small spider- robot is watching them). As we always know, that never ends well.
In fact a bizarre accident almost cripples a Maori crew member Hiko and brave Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis) runs like hell to save him. Baker (William Boldwin) suspect there’s someone else on board, who’s guilty of sinking the tug. He turns out to be right when a gas- mask wearing Russian attacks them. After they detain “him” it turns out to be a cute redhead scientist from the beginning. So say goodbye to all those millions, right Captain?
Russian tries to run away but Curtis goes after her and cornered she tells her everything.She killed all electricity on the ship because machines were accessing everything and using the knowledge from the computers to hunt and destroy humans. And that was all before the times of the readily available Wi-fi Internet? (I somehow think that if they accesed the internet they would realize that we are all doomed and they would just leave us to self- destruct on our own).
In the meantime a couple of crew members are exploring the ship and they have a first real run- in with the machines but are still in denial of what’s really happening. They barely escape with their lives.
Do need feed the mechanical- spiders!
Now, on the other hand they find the ship’s original Captain Alexie, who’s been transformed into some kind of cybernetic monstrosity. Sutherland still refuses to believe in Aliens and tries to ignore everything. And then to make things even worse another storm hits as hard as the first one that got them here. To top it off a robotic skull attackes them at the same time!
(slika skull attack ili snimak)
They go down to the lower deck and they run into their colleague Sqeak, already transformed into a cyborg, with an even bigger robot right on his heels. Those that manage to escape try to make a contact with the Alien entity via the computer and explain themselves, but in a shocking twist it turns out they consider us a VIRUS, and we must be eradicated (can’t argue with that).
Captain Everton completely looses it and Curtis relieves him of his duties (by punching him square in the face). He seems confused and bewildered by that and being left behind decides to betray all of his crew. He types in that he is superior life- form and offers up his services to his new Robot overlords.
Crew decides that the only course of actions is to stop the ship before they hit a British Coast and spread the robot plague. Their plan was to flood the part of the ship with fuel and blow everything up but before they can get going a (newly) Cyborg Sutherland shows up!
Cyborg Sutherland- gone too soon!
Curtis gets into a Ripley from Alien mode but still barely survives. Russian girl gets caught and ends up sacrificing herself by shooting the gas bottles. Baker (Baldwin) and Curtis are only ones left alive but remaining robot is still after them. Trough all the fire they find an ejecting seat and finally escape while the rest of the ship explodes in a giant hail of fire.
Verdict: This movie had the bad luck to come out in ’99, the same year as The Matrix , movie that dealt with the evil machines much more elegantly.
But still, the highlight is unexplainable acting of Donald Suterland who isn’t doing the usual stuff like phoning it in or even overacting. No, his decisions are so off the wall that it will have you going “WTF?!” again and again and make you questing what the hell are you watching. And Cyborg Sutherland really deserves some kind of an award- I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like that again!
Trivia: Different than most of the movies on our blog, Virus actually had a fair bit of merchandising and tie- in content like a line of action figures, the Virus Collector Series and (Europe exclusive) Video Game -the Virus: It’s Aware for PlayStation 1.
Worsemovies 