Joe Bob's Halloween Hoedown - Terror Train
I admit that I'm a bit exhausted after four hours+ of Joe Bob's Last Drive-In, though I've had a good time. I really liked the interviews (extensive and very valuable in terms of content!) with Jason Blum and David Gordon Green, too. You get the filmmaking process, back story, and even plenty of talk on their three Halloween films. I especially liked how David Gordon Green's response to a fan's question about why they chose to do away with the brother/sister Michael/Laurie link...it allows for Michael to just go after anyone, as well as, it takes away the idea that if you just avoid Laurie and his line of sight, you will more than likely be okay. If I'm honest, while I think Terror Train is far better a film for a seasonal Joe Bob show, since I had already recently watched it -- and it was just on Shudder's "Slashics" channel Friday afternoon, currently in the monthly rotation -- I'm a bit burned out on it. While I really liked it the first time I watched it because of Alcott's cinematography on it and the main fight between the dweeby killer and Jamie Lee Curtis, costumed as a pirate...and Direct TV finally let us have Fox Movie Channel as part of our package of channels. So during a 24 hour on-rotation marathon of "Terror Train" years ago now, I was quite smitten with the look, time and place, and setting of this slasher film. I had seen "Prom Night" plenty of times even at that point in the mid 2000s, but I only read on the IMDb Horror Message Boards about "Terror Train". So I had a lot of anticipation for it. But that was then and after multiple viewings of the film, I think just a little break would be ideal. Still, if "Terror Train" was the first film in such a long Joe Bob special, instead of "Angel", I do believe I would have felt differently than now. Also, as I mentioned above, if I hadn't just watched this recently, I might have also not been as tired. I will always watch it every now and then, though. It is such an attractive film and I love Jamie Lee Curtis, so those two reasons are enough to never totally stay away from it.
As far as Joe Bob's commentary on the film, he doesn't seem to be that big of an enthusiast of the film. He felt Roger Spottiswood just wasn't that big on the horror genre so the lack of onscreen kills and a poor prosthetic severed head of Doc were probably because of that...the director just wasn't inspired to throw a lot of gore into his film or devote a lot of himself to the slasher genre. Still, as a time capsule -- as I often bring up -- "Terror Train" will pull me back to it. I'm not sure this was the ideal film on a special with Blum and Gordon Green, though. Neither ever talk about this film, and they seem to wait idly by as Joe Bob monologues his trivia about aspects of the behind-the-scenes making of "Terror Train". They were along to give us an idea of what they are like and obviously promote their new film. Joe Bob cosplaying as a Taco certainly was fun.
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