Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! This week’s PICKS FROM THE CRYPT are a terrible trio of often overlooked old school slasher favorites that sadly don’t get the attention or respect they deserve. Let the bloodshed begin!
“Terror Train” (1980)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0081617/
Not to be confused with “Night Train To Terror,” which I reviewed last week. This is a 1980 slasher flick with Jamie Lee Curtis of “Halloween” fame starring as Alana Maxwell, a young college girl who gets mixed up in a mean spirited New Years Eve prank. A dorky pre-med pledge named Kenny is set up for a dream date with the cock teasing Alana and falls for the old bait and switch winding up in bed with a corpse instead. The shock of it all drives Kenny completely insane and he absentmindedly twirls around in his tighty whities, screaming like a fruit as a result.
We then flash forward three years and find the very same medical students who masterminded the prank throwing a big New Year’s bash in anticipation of their final semester before graduation. They plan the party of the year – a large costume party aboard a small excursion train complete with a horrible disco-rock band and a fruity magician (played by real life fruity magician David Copperfield) with a blonde bimbo assistant. Alana is now dating Mo, one of the leaders of the gang. Alana gets pissed when she finds out that the party was really the idea of Doc, Mo’s mean spirited and most likely homo best buddy. After arguing for a while the couple makes up, but Mo seems interested in fucking the other chicks on board or perhaps Doc.
As the party goers boogie down and enjoy the evening, a masked killer with a serious grudge crashes the party and proceeds to snuff anyone who crosses his path. This psycho understands the advantages of frequently switching his disguises and moves throughout the train undetected. One by one the idiot med students and their bimbo girlfriends have deadly encounters with the silent madman. Further ingenuity is displayed by the killer as he moves corpses to further confuse his potential victims. The conductor finds a bloody corpse in a bathroom, but later discovers it missing. After a few more corpses are discovered, including Mo’s, the train is brought to a screeching halt and the kids are all forced outside into the cold.
The train crew search for the killer and the kids remove their disguises for a roll call where Alana & Doc are revealed as missing. The now frantic Doc has Alana stashed inside one of the train’s compartments and they quickly decide that the killer must be Kenny. While leafing through their old yearbooks they discover that Kenny always wanted to be a magician. Kenny shows up to snuff Doc which gives Alana a chance to warn the conductor, telling him that the killer must be the fruity magician. The conductor gathers all of the kids into one section of the train as the crew searches for the magician and Alana is left by herself in a cabin. The killer quickly makes his presence known, sporting an especially creepy looking mask and carrying an axe. Alana is forced to run for her life, and when cornered has to resort to some serious shovel swinging to stay alive.
Canadians have a real knack for making extremely potent, claustrophobic, and violent slasher films and in this case director Roger Spottiswoode proves to be no exception. Expertly made on a low budget and shot completely on an actual train in just a little over three weeks, this flick packs plenty of thrills and some nice nail biting tension along the way. Having John Alcott of “A Clockwork Orange” & “The Shining” doing the cinematography was another big plus. This one is considerably more stylish and colorful than most of its contemporaries. The end sequence where the killer stalks final girl, Jamie Lee Curtis throughout the train is one of the best scenes like that you’ll ever see.
“Terror Train” proves that when done right, a classic slasher flick could deliver just as many thrills and twists and turns as a more conventional horror flick. Why this flick isn’t more well known or frequently mentioned is beyond me. I would have to assume it’s a victim of numbers, coming out during the golden age of the slasher flicks when they were flooding the market. This one often gets overlooked or sometimes dismissed by horror fans for being rather tame in the gore department, but I consider it to be a superior slasher that deserves a much larger audience.
All aboard…if you dare!
“Hell Night” (1981)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0082511/
A very cool opening shot of a chick screaming pulls back to reveal a wet t shirt contest and a rowdy looking fraternity party already in full swing. Welcome to hell night, an annual tradition where groups of pledges rush the college fraternities and sororities. Wacky pranks and wild stunts are always the order of the evening, and this year a fresh faced foursome, including Linda Blair (The Exorcist) and Peter Barton (Friday The 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter) find themselves facing the grueling gauntlet of Garth Manor. The manor was the site of a brutal massacre twelve years before when according to legend, Raymond Garth murdered his deformed wife and mongoloid children in an act of frustration over never being able to have a normal family and then killed himself.
The obnoxious head of the frat house thinks the isolated and long abandoned mansion would make the perfect location for a night of hell night hilarity and rigs up several elaborate pranks throughout the manor including hidden speakers, doors that can open and close themselves, and three dimensional ghosts. The incredibly small and inexplicably coed pledge group consisting of two young couples are then ushered into the house and locked in for the evening, trapped behind the manor’s large and razor sharp iron wrought gates. A trio of pranksters including the fraternity head sneak in via the mansion’s elaborate underground tunnels to ensure that the four pledges won’t get a moments rest.
In the middle of all this hilarity we discover that Raymond Garth is still very much alive and very pissed off! Ray doesn’t appreciate snot nosed punks breaking into his home and viciously stalks and slashes his way through the pledges and frat brothers with swift decapitations, neck snappings and impalements. Vincent Van Patten (How’s Your News?) plays one of the smarter pledges who knows enough to try to escape and manages to scale the deadly fence to go for help. Thinking it’s just another hell night prank the cops don’t believe him, so in desperation he steals a shotgun and goes back to the manor to save the day.
Vince manages to take care of Mr. Garth, but is then killed in retribution by the youngest surviving Garth family member – Andrew. Andrew then sets his sights on Linda & Peter and a lengthy game of cat & mouse begins as the kids make their way through the cobweb and corpse filled basement, run through the massive hedge maze, hole up inside a bedroom for a while, and finally try to climb out of a window. Pretty boy Peter is then thrown to his death by the monster and Linda is left to fend for herself. Can she survive hell night? Only if she prays for day.
“Hell Night” was produced by Irwin Yablans, who had previously struck slasher gold with “Halloween” and was directed by Tom DeSimone, who had previously worked on gay porno flicks and went on to helm the Sybil Danning/Wendy O Williams classic “Reform School Girls!” It was written by Randy Feldman, who labored for another eight years on his next writing effort – the legendary masterpiece “Tango & Cash.” All these creative geniuses collaborated on “Hell Night,” and the end result is a rather restrained, yet beautifully shot and composed slasher film that successfully incorporates classic gothic horror and schlocky “old dark house” elements.
Unlike a lot of horror flicks of the same era, this one focuses more on atmosphere and scares than blood and guts. The murder scenes are all convincingly brutal, yet quickly edited for maximum impact with minimum gore. You don’t see a lot, but you see enough. The on-screen violence is relatively brief and there is also a disappointing lack of gratuitous nudity, but this one still satisfies in a big way. Anchor Bay released a very nice looking dvd of “Hell Night” that includes goodies like the original trailer and a commentary track with the director, producers, and Linda Blair.
Check out the trailer!
“Mother’s Day” (1980)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0081186/
This holiday favorite begins inside a rather tatty looking self help meeting. After the graduation ceremony a young couple bums a ride home from a sweet looking old lady. The shady acting couple seem to have sinister intentions, and when the old woman’s car suddenly breaks down on a lonely stretch of road in the woods her imminent demise seems inevitable. Suddenly a pair of masked psychopaths show up and attack the couple. They swiftly decapitate the dude sitting in the backseat and then violently assault the girl on the roof of the car. Then things take a turn for the bizarre when the old woman joins in. She strangles the girl and then congratulates the killers for a job well done. The psychos are the demented old woman’s sons - Ike & Addley, and they have made their mother very proud!
As the opening credits roll we take a trip down memory lane with a tasty trio of wacky prank pulling college roommates that call themselves “the rat pack.” We then get to spend a little time with each of the girls all grown up after college. Trina is a pool party throwing high roller enjoying the fast life in Beverly Hills, Abbey is a mousy loser suffering under her sick and dying mother’s oppression in a tiny apartment in Chicago, and Jackie is a spineless slut constantly being taken advantage of by men in the Big Apple. The girls had made a vow to stay friends forever and reunite once a year for a “mystery weekend” where they meet at a different place chosen by that year’s “leader.”
This year it’s Jackie’s turn to pick the destination and she chooses an out of the way stretch of woods in upstate New York called Deep Barrons. A toothless prophet of doom in a country store warns the “Lez-Beans” not to go messin’ up in Deep Barrons, but being your typical know-it-all city slickers they choose to ignore him. The gals set up camp and have a few laughs stepping in bear shit, fishing, and splashing around topless in the river. We’re then treated to an unbearably wacky 70’s flashback of the rat pack in action, humiliating a dipshit former lover of Jackie’s named Dobber to the tune of Tommy James & The Shontelle’s classic “I Think We’re Alone Now! ” The fun is short lived however. Unfortunately for the girls, Deep Barrons also happens to the home of Ike, Addley, and Momma!
Soon enough, the girls are kidnapped by Ike & Addley and brought back to their isolated house deep in the woods. It turns out that Mother is training her sons to be the very best murderers and rapists that they can be. She also needs her sons for “protection,” as she is convinced that her supposedly dead feral sister “Queenie” is actually still alive and stalking the woods at night. Her beloved boys Ike & Addley are a real pair of winners. They have a Sesame Street alarm clock in their bedroom, brush their teeth with beer, eat EZ Cheese out of the can, and debate endlessly as to wither “Punk Sucks” or “Disco’s Stupid.” (reminds me of some of my former house mates!) They are also consummate media junkies, with a television constantly blaring in the living room. Being called a “sadistic motherfucker” simply makes Ike smirk but the accusation of being “backwoods” is enough to make him snap and exclaim “Don’t you ever say backwoods again! We’re CITY-FIED! You look around!”
The two dim witted savages have a blast humiliating, beating, and raping Jackie, as Mother happily watches and barks out orders. The next morning during the brothers’ daily workout the girls manage to escape, but Jackie is badly injured and Abbey suffers a nasty hand wound in the process. Trina tries to make a break for their car but discovers that the brothers have already sabotaged it and that there is no way to escape. Jackie dies soon afterwards from her wounds and Trina & Abbey swear revenge. The girls pool their resources and begin an unbelievable final assault on the sadistic family, which includes hatchets to the groin, electric knife chest carving, Drano down the throat, television set head bashing, and suffocation via inflatable plastic breasts! And just when you think you’ve seen it all, the always annoying “post-Carrie shock epilogue” is unleashed to further shock the audience and confuse the proceedings.
This infamous 1980 revenge epic from writer/director Charles Kaufman is easily my favorite of Troma’s original productions. (I almost always prefer the films that they only distribute) This one is a lot less silly than the usual Troma fare and plays out more in the vein of flicks like “Last House On The Left.” Your brain will be battered by the constant switching of tones, which vary from light hearted comedy to gut punching misery. The special effects are also hit and miss. The opening decapitation is laughably fake, while the hand wound suffered by Abbey is hideously realistic looking. There is plenty of splatter along the way to keep gorehounds happy. I have to say that the rape scene, which includes forced role play, photography of the outrage, and a particularly savage beating is one of the most disturbing that I’ve seen. This especially brutal scene makes the final turning of the tables even more satisfying.
Another big positive is the surprising amount of characterization on display. The brief scenes of the girl’s day-to-day lives give us considerable insight into their characters and add a lot of impact to the film’s climax as well. There’s a lot of irony and a considerable amount of satire too. I’d say more, but I don’t want to ruin any of the surprises. Speaking of surprises, the “shock” ending is pretty weak in my opinion. It doesn’t ruin the film by any means, but it’s a bit of a groaner. Bonus points if you see it coming, as a lot of fans seem to miss the obvious set up on their first viewing. Troma released a beautiful digitally mastered director’s cut dvd of “Mother’s Day” that includes commentary by Charles Kaufman, interviews, and all of the other cheesy crap you’ve come to love and expect from a Troma dvd.
Train to kill with Ike & Addley!
KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!
Read All of “Brain Hammer’s Picks From the Crypt!”
