OK, so David Copperfield isn’t strictly an actor – heck,
these days he barely even qualifies as a celebrity - but his “acting” debut
in this early slasher offering is more than bizarre enough to warrant
some attention.
It’s New Years Eve, and the rowdy medical students of the Sigma
Phi fraternity are celebrating as only boorish American college jocks
know how – with an elaborately sadistic prank played at the expense
of someone weaker and less confident than themselves, in this case one
Kenny Hampson.
Poor Kenny thinks he’s about to score with Alana, the hottest chick
on campus (Jamie Lee Curtis). We barely have time to register the alarming
notion of a college where the hottest chick is Jamie Lee Curtis before
the prank goes wrong, in true horror movie style. Kenny doesn’t
climb into bed with Alana, he climbs in bed with a dismembered corpse,
liberated from the morgue by head prankster, the impossibly named Doc
Manley. The poor sap doesn’t react well to the ghoulish trick – in
fact Kenny freaks out big time, and winds up in an asylum.
Skip forward three years and the jovial crew of collegiates have pushed
poor Kenny out of sight and out of mind. They’re about to embark
on another celebration – their graduation – and Doc has hired
an entire train to house this mother of all frat parties. There’s
a band, fancy dress and even a magician, played by a 24-year-old David
Copperfield, though nobody can recall hiring him. Hmmm.
“I wish to hell they’d put a radio on this thing” complains
the guard as the jubilant kids board the train, conveniently and pre-emptively
silencing any hecklers in the audience who refuse to believe that foul
play could take place on a major form of public transport without the
alarm being raised, or the vehicle being stopped.
Before the train has even left the station, the first of the kids has
been despatched. Run through with a sword, his Groucho mask stolen, nobody
bats an eyelid because – hey! – that’s the sort of
wacky jape they’re expecting on this non-stop ride to Hilarity
Central. Cue boozing, some sexual carousing and plenty of extended scenes
during which Copperfield is allowed to ply his magical trade for the
camera – from card tricks to levitating his obligatory glamorous
assistant.
The bodies soon start piling up though, and it doesn’t take a genius
to work out that Kenny has come back to get revenge. But where is he?
With everyone wearing masks, he could be anywhere! Considering the timely
revelation that Kenny had a fondness for magic tricks, and recalling
that he shared the same wide-eyed stare and enormous hair of a certain
conjurer, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the movie is nudging
your suspicions in a certain direction.
Is this really a slasher movie in which David Copperfield is the killer?
Hell no. In a surprisingly effective (and rather kinky) plot twist, Kenny
is revealed as Copperfield’s assistant. Yep, the killer has been
in drag for the whole film. And what is our famous magician’s reward
for not mentioning his assistant’s lack of breasts and prominent
penile bulge? He gets locked in one of his own magic boxes and skewered
by yet more swords.
Luckily for everyone else, Jamie Lee Curtis is an old hand at fending
off psycho killers and she stabs Kenny in the back with yet another sword
(this train apparently having an inexhaustible supply of medieval weaponry),
jabs him in the face with a paper spike, squirts him in the eye with
a fire extinguisher and then – having exhausted all the available
modes of attack – she simply kisses him, an act which plunges Kenny’s
psyche into vivid memories of his New Year’s Eve brush with necrophilia.
While he’s distracted, the conductor smacks him shitless with a
spade and shoves him off the train and into an icy ravine.
That’s
what you get for besmirching the professional integrity of magician’s
assistants, you murderous ladyboy.
Need to know: Terror Train marked the directorial debut
of Roger Spottiswoode, the man who would go on to bring us such touchstones
of movie magic as
Turner & Hooch, Tomorrow Never Dies and the beloved Stallone classic,
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. If the actor playing Doc Manley looks familiar,
that’s because he’s Hart Bochner, and you probably remember
him from Die Hard, where he played Ellis, the sleazy coke-snorting Nakatomi
executive who schmoozes John McClane’s wife, tries to cut a deal
with Hans Gruber and takes a bullet to the chops for his trouble. He
can also be found playing yet another sleazy stud in the robotic sex
comedy, Making Mr. Right (see: John Malkovich). For another movie featuring
a
bizarre gender-bending killer, see: Sharon Stone.
Availability: Terror Train is out on DVD in the UK.
