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Underappreciated Slasher ‘Terror Train’ Gets a Welcome New 4K UHD Showcase
Terror Train, like so many other horror films of its era, was drowned out by a genre cacophony. The film hit theaters just a few months after Friday the 13th in 1980, at the dawn of the post-Halloween slasher boom, and despite the presence of budding scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis (Prom Night, also starring Curtis, came out the same year), it simply didn’t find its audience.
To say that a lot has changed in the ensuing 46 years is an understatement. Today, slasher devotees hail Terror Train as an early forward thinker in the subgenre, a film that plays within the established rules of the game while also daring to try new things with the form at a time when that form was still being set in stone. Many cult films stay cult films even as they find a bigger audience, but others find a more mainstream following when curious viewers realize that they missed something special. Thanks to a new 4K from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Terror Train seems destined to find its permanent place among the best slashers of the golden age.
As film historians Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson point out early in their excellent commentary, one of two on the disc – on the film, Terror Train stands out for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is the presence of cinematographer John Alcott. Alcott spent the late 1960s and early 1970s building a reputation as one of the most gifted DPs of his era, thanks to several films with the legendary Stanley Kubrick, including A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, and he brought all of that legendary talent to bear on Terror Train.
Working with director Roger Spottiswoode, Alcott imbues the film with often stunning beauty, painting shadows in among the firelight of the prologue sequence and the bright lights of a party train traveling by night across the Canadian landscape. His knack for shooting horror and framing slasher kills is on full display in this new restoration. The colors pop, the costumes are glossy and exciting, the expressiveness of the characters comes through, and yet the film loses none of its gritty, low-budget charm. As Nelson and Heller-Nicholas point out, the film was rushed through production in a matter of weeks in order to get tax credits lined up, giving it a seat-of-your-pants energy that’s buoyed by Alcott’s consummate professionalism and artistry.
Terror Train is also, I was pleased to find upon rewatching this disc, a wonderfully mean-spirited slasher at a time when the subgenre was still all over the place, finding its footing amid rising box office demand. Like fellow Canadian classic Black Christmas before it, the film goes for the throat from the very beginning, putting its characters in absolutely merciless situations that are made all the more dread-inducing by the theatricality of the party on board the title train. Like My Bloody Valentine, which would arrive from Canada in early 1981, it’s a film that balances tremendous mirth and showmanship with pure brutality, from the opening prank to the final kill.
This new restoration highlights all of that and more, revealing a film that seems destined to reveal more depth with each new generation of fans.
There’s so much potential exploration in this restoration, in fact, that I came away wishing the disc offered a little more in the way of behind-the-scenes flair. The features we do have, including both commentary tracks, are excellent, but I wanted to go deeper, and the features just aren’t there.
Maybe another future box set will shine an even brighter light on Terror Train‘s intricacies and the way this rushed, frantic production managed to deliver such a compelling piece of Canuxsploitation. As it is, though, this is a gorgeous restoration ornamented with solid special features, and it deserves a place on every slasher fan’s shelf.
Terror Train is available now in 4K UHD from Kino Lorber.
Scream Factory brought Frank LaLoggia’s 1988 Halloween movie Lady in White to Blu-ray several years back, and now Vinegar Syndrome gives the film a 4K Ultra HD upgrade.
Vinegar Syndrome’s Lady in White 4K release is available now and shipping now!
Watch the trailer below and grab your copy from Vinegar Syndrome today.
This limited edition 4-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray x 3 set comes with a spot gloss hard slipcase + slipcover combo (designed by Dylan Haley), includes a 40-page perfect bound book and is limited to 8,000 units. It is only available on their website and at select indie retailers.
The full Special Features package includes…
- 4-disc Set: 1x 4K Ultra HD (High Bitrate BD100) / 3x Region A Blu-ray
- 4K UHD presented in Dolby Vision High-Dynamic-Range
- Newly scanned & restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative
- Presented in three versions: 126-min Pre-Release Director’s Cut (UHD+BD), the 118-min Extended Home Video Cut (BD), and the 113-min Theatrical Cut (BD)
- New group commentary track with writer/director Frank LaLoggia, alongside actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut
- New commentary track with Frank LaLoggia, moderated by Scott Neumyer for the Extended Home Video Cut
- New commentary track with authors Emma Westwood and Stephen A. Russell for the Extended Home Video Cut
- Archival commentary track with Frank LaLoggia for the Extended Home Video Cut
- “Learning How to Fly” (10 min) – an interview with actress Karen Powell
- “A Snapshot in Time” (9 min) – an interview with actress Lisa Taylor
- “Human Touches” (6 min) – an interview with actress Lucy Lee Flippin
- “Still Relevant” (16 min) – an interview with actress Rose Weaver
- “75% Listening, 25% Editing” (9 min) – an interview with editor Steve Mann
- “Welcome to Willowpoint Falls” (6 min) – a location featurette hosted by Benjamin Scrivens, founder of Fright-Rags
- “Dream Talking: Looking Back” – a visual group commentary for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut with Frank LaLoggia, and actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou (103 min)
- Deleted Scenes with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (36 min)
- Behind-the-scenes footage with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (16 min)
- Extended behind-the-scenes footage (73 min)
- Introduction from the 20th anniversary dvd release
- Promotional ‘industry sales’ trailer (7 min)
- 40-page perfect bound book with essays by film historians Molly Henery, Mark H. Harris, and Heidi Honeycutt (limited edition only)
- Multiple radio spots
- Theatrical trailer
- Multiple TV spots
- Workprint trailers (7 min)
- Still gallery
- Reversible sleeve artwork
- English SDH subtitles
1962. Nine-year-old Frankie Scarlatti enjoys a homespun childhood in a rustic Western New York town. The entire community gets into the spirit of Halloween, but then two bullies prank Frankie by locking him in his school cloakroom, leaving him trapped for the night. Alone and afraid, his slumber is interrupted when the ghost of a little girl appears, and Frankie witnesses the specter of her murder by an unseen assailant. Later, while recovering at home, the girl’s ghost appears to him again. With help from his older brother, Frankie begins investigating the circumstances of her death. He soon discovers that her murder was one of several unsolved crimes connected to a local child-killer. As the town’s bucolic veneer fades and long-buried secrets and tensions bubble to the surface, all of the clues to the mystery seem to point towards a huge mansion inhabited by a reclusive woman known as “The Lady in White.”
A nostalgia-driven ghost story wrapped within an intricate murder mystery and coming-of-age drama, writer-director-composer Frank LaLoggia’s passion project Lady in White remains one of the most beautiful and original American horror films of the 1980s. Featuring acclaimed actors Alex Rocco (The Godfather), Len Cariou (Executive Decision), and Sydney Lassick (Carrie, The Unseen), it boasts the first starring role by Lukas Haas (Mars Attacks, Inception) as well as breathtaking photography by Academy Award® winner Russell Carpenter (True Lies, The Lawnmower Man). Vinegar Syndrome is honored to bring this genre masterpiece to 4K UHD, newly restored from its original 35mm camera negative and presented in three versions: its pre-release director’s cut, its extended home-video version, and its original theatrical version, along with an abundance of both new and archival extras.
Paul Lê wrote here on Bloody Disgusting back in 2023, “Over the years, fans have described this film as gateway horror, but they liken it more to The Watcher in the Woods than, say, Hocus Pocus or Casper. There are chilling moments that warrant its PG-13 rating.”
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