Expelled Grey Matter

Writer Daniel Grodnick came up with an idea in 1979 for a horror movie.  He wondered, what if he remade Halloween , but put it on a train?  His wife thought it was a terrible idea, but the story pretty much flowed from his pen.  He found a producer that liked it and, by 1980, it was a reality. The main advantage it had was that Jamie Lee Curtis was cast in one of the main roles and, at the time, she was on her way to becoming a popular scream queen.  Terror Train was filmed in Canada at the same time as Prom Night , allowing her to work on both movies at once.  It also insured that both movies came out one after the other, again increasing her exposure.  But, just like Prom Night , there is not a whole lot memorable other than her being in it, and this time even she is not that outstanding. Doc (Hart Bochner) is the head of a fraternity of pre-med students.  He decides to pull a prank on a pledge named Kenny (Derek McKinnon) with the help of Alana (Curtis) and her best friend Mitchy (S

"Graveyard Shift", the short story from the collection of the same name, has long been one of my favorite Stephen King stories.  It is almost a cosmic horror story in the style of Lovecraft, building up until the ultimate horror is revealed and the protagonist realizes that the situation is beyond his understanding or control.  It is a well-done bit of claustrophobic horror and I am sure it is a nightmare for those who do not like rats. The movie version forgets the entire idea of building up the horror and, instead, it is intent on building up a reveal of the practical monster that was created by the effects crew rather than building up any real tension.  Graveyard Shift is one of the King adaptations that was done solely to ride the coattails of Pet Sematary and other recent adaptations and doesn't try to do anything with the material other than set up some creative kills using some excellent practical effects.  Stephen King himself didn't care for it, thinking it

The 1980s was the golden age of action films in the United States.  There were some interesting ones in the 1960s and 1970s, but it was the 1980s that perfected the framework they established.  Quite popular were gritty police dramas where the lead was bound to be almost as bad as the villain, someone close to him was going to die and eventually he would have a redemption arc after battling an unstoppable or brilliant killer.   Once the pattern gets going and the money starts coming in it isn't long before everyone starts jumping on board.  Sometimes that means surprising, forgotten classics, while other times it means a movie that has been forgotten for a reason.  The Night Stalker is one of the latter.  J. J. Striker (Charles Napier) is an alcoholic police inspector in the robbery division of the Los Angeles Police Department.  He is partnered with Charlie Garrett (Robert Viharo) and is more than a little close to an ex-prostitute named Rene (Michelle Reese), who takes care of a

Angel was always a movie I knew about but had never seen.  As a preteen there was no way I was going to ask my parents to rent this for me and, as an adult, it didn't seem the kind of thing I would want to get unless I felt like ending up on an FBI list.  Donna Wilkes, who plays the title character, was 24 when she made the movie, but try explaining that when renting something that appears to be just this side of child pornography.  The last thing I expected of Angel was for it to be a good movie.  I figured it would be sleazy, featuring lots of nudity from 30-year-old actresses playing teenagers and generally be an excuse to show lots of skin.  There is gratuitous nudity sprinkled throughout - none of it Angel - but instead of exploiting child prostitution the film somewhat explores how she gets into it and concentrates on a number of strange characters that she interacts with on regular basis who become her family.  The production values are great, the grittiness of 1980s Los Ang

Long before the driving need to create cinematic universes Alexander and Ilya Salkind tried to do just that with the Superman series.  With no new movie featuring their main character on the horizon they decided to bring on another Kryptonian, Kara Zor-El, in hopes of starting a parallel series.  The hopes were also that Christopher Reeve and other actors from the main features would pop in every now and then.  Reality quickly struck.  The Salkinds had used up every bit of good grace they had with the firing of Richard Donner after Superman   and, to make things worse, Superman III was a critical and fan flop even if it did make money.  I'm sure with the way Margot Kidder was treated they didn't even bother asking her to make a cameo in this film.  They did ask Reeve and he was able to find other things to do, leaving the only person they could get to come back for this one Mark McClure, reprising his role as Jimmy Olsen.  A creepy Jimmy Olsen at that, as some questions about

Italian cinema is known for a number of things.  The giallo film, strange horror movies that make little sense, spaghetti westerns and hard-boiled police procedurals are just a few.  Occasionally they try to branch out into fantasy or science fiction, but most of those turn out to be Hercules movies or entertaining disasters like Starcrash .  It is as if many of the famous Italian directors from the 1970s wanted to do that huge Hollywood blockbuster, and many of them tried, only to be hamstrung by a big dose of reality.  That seems to have happened with Sergio Martino on Island of the Fishmen , known in the U.S. as both Something Waits in the Dark and Screamers .  Although there are sci-fi and fantasy elements it seems like it was Martino's attempt to make a tribute to the old-fashioned zombie films of the 1940s, where some mad scientist was holed up in his isolated mansion outside the reach of modern society and holding a weird spell over the natives, often to the point of using &