Cinema Canada (Mar 1980)

IN PROGRES... Train To Terror d. Roger Spottiswoode asst. d. Ray Sage: David Macleod, Paul Gravel sc. Tom Drak ph. John Alcott cam. op. Jimmy Davis, Jor athan Goodwill ed. Ann Henderson key gri Don Caufield cont. Brigitte Germain uni man. Paul Wisenthal sd. rec. Bo Harwoo boom op. Jean-Marc Magnan gaf. Lou Bogu p. designer Glenn Bydwell a.d. Guy Comto set dress./props Jenepher Hooper make-u Joan Isaacson stills photog. Alan Carruthe cost. design. Penny Hadfield ward. Susz Hall l.p. Ben Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ha Bochner, David Copperfield, Derek Ma: Kinnon, Howard Busgang, Sandee L. Currie Timothy Webber, Anthony Sherwood exec. Sandy Howard, Lamar Card p. Harold Gree berg p. sec. Sa? Flynn p. manager Willia cere oak p.c. Triple-T Productions Ast Ltd. (1980). “Rock!” “Rock more slowly !” “Cut hi On-set choreography for the late disco-rock slock ? Don’t bet your Travolta poster! The are the instructions to grip, Jerome South, who is on the command end of a 15 ft, 4x8 wooden lever. He’s rocking a vintage rail car containing one Academy Award winning actor, Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show), and one Academy Award winning Director of Photography, John Alcott (Barry Lyndon). It’s somewhat ironic that the success of Harold Greenberg’s latest, Train To Terror, budgeted at $2.7 million, could hinge, so to speak, on such primitive technology. “But we tried hydraulic devices and they just didn’t work,” explains veteran executive producer, Lamar Card. A potentially big production problem was solved by inexpensive -ingenuity. But there were others requiring more than resourcefulness. For instance, where do you find heated, inside parking for a 6-car, 425 ft. train, complete with steam locomotive and 1948 CPR tender ? How about the mammoth All-Pak warehouse in the Montreal suburb of Ville St. Pierre — a sprawling industrial area of factories, warehouses and acres of unpaved parking lots that rate five stars for urban blight. Even then the rail spur had to be upgraded and the space between the rails dug out. Next problem, the warehouse sounded like it was accomodating several steel foundries. The solution ? To shoot offhours, roughly 6 p.m. to 4 a.m., when noise was reduced. Even then many sound takes were found unusable. So, on one rail car a completely soundproofed recording studio was installed, where noiseruined lines can be immediately _rerecorded while the actors “... still have the mood and intonation in mind.” The train was leased for $100,000 from Steamtown, Vermont, and brought to Montreal with much fanfare — and many Customs problems — by its 80-yearold engineer. The interiors, found to be too shabby, called for a complete re-decoration in what's billed as 1930’s “Art Deco,” complete with Wurlitzer, DC-3 standing ashtrays, walls painted muted Bauhaus blues and maroons, and a parquet floor. Cost: $100,000. “We’re giving it back to them in better shape than we got it,” says Card. (The sleeping car has been fondly dubbed “The Zoo,” where, we’re told, sex will only “be alluded to.” Perhaps in the guise of a bunch of furry little animals ?). Limotny Webber and Joy Boushel in a ticklish scene from Train to Terror Shooting inside the train is cramped, calling for small, well-disciplined crews and few visitors. Lighting posed a major problem, so, under the f-stop sharp eyes of John Alcott, the train was completely re-wired. All lights are rheostat controlled to achieve the right kind of shadowy, expressionistic images needed for a suspense-horror flick, which this purportedly will be: “... in the tradition of Hitchcock,” claims unit PR girl, Holly Levine, whose eyes could easily rate her a spot in the cast, which includes many young rising stars. Besides veteran Johnson, who got his 1947 start with John Ford, the cast most notably includes Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night), Hart Bochner (Islands in the Stream, Breaking Away) and David Copperfield, who has had three TV specials. From a script by Canadian Tom Drake, Train To Terror is the tale of a group of contemporary pre-med students who book an excursion train for a New Year’s Eve masquerade outing. One of the group, who has become deranged following an initiation joke several years before, Cinema Canada/3