Terror Train

This effectively exploits all the inherent violence and abandon of a riotous student party aboard a hired steam train. The horror elements are accounted for 'naturally': party masks provide grotesque images and a disguise for the killer; darkness alternating with the mottled lights of a disco give an uneasy visual feel, heightened by the swaying of the train; and the feats of a performing magician arouse expectations of a supernatural dimension. Instead, there is a psychological angle: the students, the killer's victims, are fairly callous themselves, given to gruesome medical school 'pranks' and fundamentally self-centred. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the only one of the gang with a conscience - and the only one to survive. But although the film's terror mileage is fuelled by her outwitting the killer, being a woman she must - as usual - finally be saved by the fatherly guard. Still, better than most of its kind.