Jamie Lee Boards a Terror Train; The Animals Have Their Day

Jamie Lee Curtis.

Terror Train (1980).  When a cruel college prank goes awry, its victim, Kenny, seemingly has a nervous breakdown. Three years later, the prank's perpetrators have become senior pre-med students, one of whom has hired a steam-driven train for a masquerade party. After almost everyone has boarded the train, a student named Ed is secretly murdered. The killer rolls the corpse under the caboose and dons the disguise—a Groucho Marx mask—worn by Ed. Thus, all the party attendees think that “Groucho” is Ed…and not a revenge-minded homicidal psycho.

The killer in disguise.

The Canadian-made Terror Train was one of the first slasher films made in the wake of Halloween’s box office success. Helmed by veteran Roger Spottiswoode, it’s an efficient thriller that generates a reasonable amount of tension. A key plot point has the killer donning the disguise of his latest victim. It also features an effective twist at the climax, which—while not original—nevertheless comes across as a mild surprise.

In her third "slasher film", following Halloween (1978) and Prom Night (1979), Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a surprisingly tough heroine. Her character may regret her role in the ill-fated prank and even feel sympathy towards Kenny, but she's willing to take on the killer at the end. The supporting cast is stronger than usual for this type of film with Ben Johnson as the train conductor, Hart Bochner as a manipulative student, and David Copperfield in his only dramatic role as...a magician. If actress D.D. Winters looks familiar, that's because she became Prince's protégé Vanity.

Terror Train isn't an undiscovered gem. It's an average thriller made on a modest budget, but by people that know how to make this sort of thing.

Christopher George as Steve.

Day of the Animals (1977). When the Earth's ozone layer starts depleting, it has an inexplicable effect on both domestic and wild animals living in high altitudes. It transforms them into bloodthirsty killers!

That's bad news for a group of vacationers participating in a two-week wilderness trek through the mountains led by guides Steve (Christopher George) and Daniel (Michael Ansara). After the group fends off an attack by a single wolf, it begins to splinter. Matters get worse when one of the hikers, a bigoted executive (Leslie Nielsen) with a huge ego, convinces some of the group to follow him instead of Steve. Pretty soon, the humans are fighting for their lives as they face mountain lions, bears, birds, snakes, wild dogs--and each other.

Leslie Nielsen.

Made two years after Jaws (1975), Day of the Animals is often mentioned with other ecologically-themed films where Mother Nature rebels against humans (e.g., Grizzly, Frogs, Food of the Gods, The Pack, etc.). That's a shame, because it's better than those drive-in efforts; indeed, for most of its running time, Day of the Animals is a tidy suspense film with solid acting. 

Unfortunately, it starts to unravel when Leslie Nielsen's bizarre executive strips off his shirt and starts acting like a mad man. Sure, Nielsen has a field day overacting and spouts some memorable dialogue (to a young boy: "You little cockroach! You gonna tell me about survival?"). However, his performance ruins the second half of the movie (for a more serious take on a similar character, see Sands of the Kalahari).

Lynda Day George and hair.

The rest of the cast acquit themselves satisfactorily and it's fun to see: Lynda Day George (Chris's wife) as a reporter whose blonde hair always looks perfectly coiffed; Ruth Roman as an overbearing mother; Richard Jaeckel as a well-meaning professor; Paul Mantee (Robinson Crusoe on Mars) as a former football player; and a young Andrew Stevens.

The animals prove to be adequate thespians, too, especially the bear and a pack of wild dogs that attack near the climax. The latter scene does leave one with a lingering question: Why are all the wild dogs in the pack German Shepherds?

The 5 Best “Mission: Impossible” Episodes

This post is part of Me-TV's Summer of Classic TV Blogathon, hosted by the Classic TV Blog Association. Go to http://classic-tv-blog-assoc.blogspot.com to view more posts in this blogathon. You can also go to www.metvnetwork.com to learn more about Me-TV and its summer line-up of classic TV shows.


My wife and I compiled this list of favorite episodes of Mission: Impossible, the TV series created by Bruce Geller and which ran for seven seasons. For those unfamiliar with the series, it details the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), a secret agency enlisted for more sensitive assignments, both domestic and foreign. The following selections do not include any episodes from either season of the 1988-90 series update.

1. “The Seal” (Season 2, Episode 9/Written by William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter; Directed by Alexander Singer) The team is tasked to recover a jade seal from a tycoon (Darren McGavin). Cinnamon (Barbara Bain) as a TV reporter and Rollin (Martin Landau) as a psychic provide a distraction as Barney (Greg Morris) and Jim (Peter Graves), the latter in a rare position of handling grunt work, pilfer the seal. The real star, however, is Rusty the cat, who is coaxed by Barney to walk across a makeshift plank and carry the item back to the IMF agents. The always reliable Barney must bypass a sonar alarm and pressure-sensitive floor, a seemingly impossible burglary that’s reminiscent of Brian De Palma’s 1996 feature film. (For dog lovers, Season 4 offers “Chico”, in which the four-legged titular hero has to squeeze himself into a small air duct to recover an item and has to return it. Interestingly, the bad guys are after a list revealing agents’ names, which is legible only when two separate lists are placed together, another plot device taken for the ‘96 movie -- though they’re the names of IMF agents in the film, not in the episode.)

2. “The Heir Apparent” (Season 3, Episode 1/Written by Robert E. Thompson; Directed by Alexander Singer) To stop a villain from taking power, Cinnamon poses as a long-lost blind princess. To prove that she is who she claims, she must solve a complicated puzzle box. Barney and Willy (Peter Lupus) dig and crawl through walls to reach the puzzle box, which Barney has to solve and mark for Cinnamon mere moments before the woman is asked to open the box. Equally impressive is Rollin, who alters his disguise and changes identities while sitting in a crowd of onlookers.

3. “Old Man Out: Parts 1-2” (Season 1, Episodes 4-5/Written by Ellis Marcus; Directed by Charles R. Rondeau) Acrobat Crystal Walker (Mary Ann Mobley), who has history with team leader Dan (Steven Hill), is recruited for a mission to extract an 80-year-old priest from a high security prison. The team poses as circus performers who set up just outside the prison walls, while Rollin gets himself arrested and subsequently imprisoned. Though Landau was still only credited as “guest star” in Season 1, this two-parter is a showcase for Rollin, who not only skillfully escapes his cell, but, due to the priest being moved without anyone’s knowledge, must sneak back into the cell and execute the jailbreak again.

4. “Hunted” (Season 5, Episode 10/Written by Helen Hoblock Thompson; Directed by Terry Becker) While freeing a man from captivity in Africa, Barney is critically injured and left behind. After ensuring that the hostage is safe, the team returns to save Barney, who has been taken in by a deaf-mute seamtress (Ta-Tanisha). The scenes shared by Barney and his savior, Gabby, including one in which Gabby digs a bullet out of Barney’s leg, are wholly engaging and sweetly romantic. Suspense is heightened when Paris (Leonard Nimoy), acting as a decoy (to mislead authorities on the search) and feigning an injury similar to one which Barney sustained, is genuinely wounded in the process. The episode is an expression of both Barney’s versatility and the team’s loyalty. Other members, such as Cinnamon and Paris, have been captured or hurt during assignments, but, despite the knowledge that they will be disavowed if caught or killed, there’s never a debate as to whether or not a team member will be forgotten. It quite simply becomes another mission.

5. “Encore” (Season 6, Episode 2/Written by Harold Livingston; Directed by Paul Krasny) The team makes an aging gangster, Thomas Kroll (William Shatner), believe that he’s 30 years younger and in 1937, all to obtain any evidence linking him directly to an unsolved murder. Each member portrays a figure in Kroll’s life, including Casey (Lynda Day George) as the murdered man’s sister and Doug (Sam Elliott) as the murdered man, with the hopes that the gangster will lead them to the body. One of the team’s more elaborate missions, it thrives on the atmosphere and surroundings (there’s a great moment when Jim removes an extra’s too-modern sunglasses), and the episode has an appropriately apocalyptic ending.

Honorable Mentions: “A Spool There Was” (S1, E9) -- Cinnamon and Rollin work an assignment with just the two of them, searching for a wire of recorded audio well hidden by a murdered agent. A solid pairing of the couple, made all the more watchable knowing that actors Landau and Bain were husband and wife. “Charity” (S2, E10) and “The Mercenaries” (S3, E4) -- Both of these episodes feature an immensely entertaining and memorable method of theft, as well as ingenious ways to deceive the villains who have just been robbed.

Chris George and The Rat Patrol

One of the most iconic images on television in the late 1960s was of a jeep flying over the top of a sand dune and--thump!--landing on the ground. Why was that so memorable? Well, there was a guy standing on the back of the jeep holding onto a machine gun! This eye-catching opening let viewers know that The Rat Patrol was going to be anything but boring. At a scant 30 minutes per episode, this World War II action drama never lets up.

The premise wasn't exactly believable. It followed a squad of four Allied soldiers (two per jeep) who conducted raids aimed at disrupting Rommel and the Germans during their operations in the Sahara. The four leads could be identified easily because they all wore different hats: Sergeant Sam Troy (Chris George) donned an Australian bush hat; Sergeant Jack Moffitt (Gary Raymond), the British member of the squad, wore a beret; Private Mark Hitchcock (Lawrence Casey) favored a Civil War cap; and Private Tully Pettigrew (Justin Tarr) usually wore a helmet.

My favorite was Chris George...and it wasn't just because he was incredibly handsome. The first year of the show was filmed in Spain and, during one of the stunts, a jeep fell over on Chris. I read about the incident in the newspaper, which mentioned the name of the hospital. I tracked down the address and wrote my first fan letter. He sent a great photo, signed in blue ballpoint (no stamped signature for Chris) and it hangs on a wall in my home to this day.

My favorite episode is from Season One and is called "The B Negative Raid." Moffitt is seriously wounded and has a rare blood type. Troy needs to find a donor. The only one he can find with the rare blood type is in bad guy Hauptmann Dietrich's desert headquarters and the guy just happens to be an American deserter. (The deserter dies in the end protecting Troy and Moffitt, so he redeems himself...just so you know what happened.)

When The Rat Patrol was over, I still followed Chris George’s career, whether he was low-budget flicks like The Day of the Animals or featured in a supporting role in a John Wayne film like El Dorado (he and the Duke were friends). Chris and his wife, Lynda Day George, also appeared regularly in made-for-TV films. Sadly, Chris George died of a heart attack in 1983 at the age of 52.

The other members of The Rat Patrol had modest careers after the show ended its two-year run in 1968. However, Hans Gudegast, who played the show's heavy, changed his name to Eric Braeden and became of one daytime television's highest-paid actors on The Young and the Restless.