On Thursday, while channel surfing, I happened upon the movie Terror Train.
Now, this isn’t the sort of movie that anybody is likely to seek out, but still, it’s something of a classic in my mind. Made in 1980, it features Jamie Lee Curtis, who was the undisputed Scream Queen of the era, having established her slasher cred in Halloween, Prom Night and The Fog.
Terror Train revolves around six college kids who years earlier were guilty of some sort of prank that went wrong. Now, as they celebrate New Year’s and their graduation at a lame-o costume party aboard a train, they’re stalked by an unknown serial killer who is seeking revenge.
For me, the most striking thing about the movie is the presence of magician David Copperfield. I don’t know, I suppose at the time, he was imagined to be the next great superstar of the entertainment world, and so, he was pointlessly thrown on the Terror Train as the mysterious magician. He’s handsome, I suppose, but also extremely weird looking. His thick black hair looks like a woven helmet that’s been affixed to his head, and his bee-stung lips and rosy cheeks give him a kind of androgynous look. To make matters yet odder, he has these huge dark eyes that makes him look like one of those black velvet paintings of a sad girl.
No matter, he gets a sword in the head.
Of course, the reason to watch Terror Train is not just to see David Copperfield receive his just desserts, but to see Jamie Lee Curtis. Like Copperfield, but also very unlike Copperfield, Jamie Lee Curtis is also kind of odd and androgynous looking. She has a long, narrow face and the slim body of a teenaged boy. She’s not gorgeous in an overtly feminine way, but looks more like a tomboy, the girl you grew up next door to, but never actually noticed.
But then, POW!!!
Suddenly, she’d developed this body that simply would not quit! (There is an entire generation of boys who have the scene in Trading Places when she takes off her top, burned brilliantly into their imagination).
Horror films are really all about the messy passage through puberty to sexual maturity. Jamie Lee Curtis, who we initially hardly even notice, fights off monsters and gets covered in blood, before emerging, sadder and wiser, as a full-fledged woman who has once and for all, left childish things, and her innocence behind.