1980: "Terror Train"

                                     Terror Train is an 1980 slasher film (starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Ben Johnson) about a group of medical students celebrating their graduation by having a party on a train. However, there is a killer on board who kills off the students one by one, disguising himself in his victims' costumes.

                                     The Lady Vanishes, this movie is not. Though not terrible, it lies somewhere in the middle between boring and semi-enjoyable. The boring aspects: the story/plot being overly standard and predictable, the characters typical, the kills uninteresting. The location is ideal for a slasher, with its claustrophobic spaces and unique lighting, but it wasn't enough to suppress the yawns.
                                     However, the movie has two things going for it when it comes to the semi-enjoyable aspects. The first is Ben Johnson, who adds a dignified presence to a movie that doesn't deserve it. He was a natural, unpretentious actor that gave off a supremely warm radiance. You expect him at any second to break out in a monologue reminiscing about a girl with a silver dollar. The second is David Copperfield, the magician (with his young sensual lips), who I most definitely wasn't expecting to appear in a slasher film, let alone play the red herring in a slasher film (I was actually disappointed that he wasn't the killer). The movie is a magic show for parts of it and the tricks are pretty fun to watch (I almost forgot I was watching a slasher). I'll admit that, though the identity of the killer is obvious (a medical student who is hazed at the beginning of the movie and wants revenge), the reveal actually got me (the killer was disguised as Copperfield's female assistant). It was cleverly done (he disguises himself as various people throughout; there is at least an attempt at a clever slasher here) and managed to not dwell too much on that character for the audience to notice.

                             It's a semi-decent slasher, though it's still a product of an shameless slasher film glut.