Cinema: Scream Queen

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TERROR TRAIN

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

Screenplay by T. Y. Drake

Jamie Lee Curtis gets into the worst scrapes. Tracked and trapped by homicidal maniacs in Halloween and Prom Night, deposited by leprous spooks into The Fog bank, and now manhandled by a psycho transsexual on a Terror Train, Curtis is the new virgin queen of shivers. No-nonsense intelligence shines through her friendly, angular, leonine face (a gift from her mother, Janet Leigh, who pioneered the modern horror trend 20 years ago by taking a bloodbath in Psycho). Thus when she flees into a dark closet or abandoned sleeping car—where, of course, the evil one waits, knife at the ready—she must have a logical reason. She does: to act as avatar of the movie audience's delicious vulnerability. Also to reap big bucks for the merchants of low-budget menace who have revamped an honorable film formula.

Most horror movies are of paper-plate disposability, piled high with ground round and too much ketchup. But class will tell, and Curtis has worked with the men at the head of the scare-picture class: John Carpenter, who directed her in both Halloween and The Fog, and Cinematographer John Alcott, who makes this toy locomotive of a film look as sleek and eerie as the ghost of the Twentieth Century Limited. Curtis brings her own class to the genre, though one wonders where her career will lead her next. Into an ominous shower stall? Like mother, like daughter, bless 'em.