THE SLEEPING CAR (1990)
This movie is so obscure, I once rented it on VHS and it wouldn't play in my VCR. Okay, it's not that obscure, but I doubt that many cinephiles know that David Naughton had a spell of "train horror." The Sleeping Car is on par with Night Train to Terror. I'd have to rewatch Terror Train to comment on its viability in this category. Let's see...oh, Horror Express! That has to be the top pick. In any case, Naughton stars as a college student pursuing a degree in journalism. He's strapped for cash, so he has to settle for a makeshift apartment that used to be the caboose of a train. On second thought, it may not have been the caboose. It matters none. Eventually, Naughton - er, Jason - realizes that his locomotive domicile is haunted by the restless spirit of his landlady's dead bridegroom. Because the genre was still spinning its wheels trying to parrot the success of a wisecracking Freddy Krueger, our villain has a silly name. The Mister! Unfortunately, he has absolutely no charisma. Hence, no sequels.
The Mister's makeup is abundantly spooky, but he might be the least interesting aspect of The Sleeping Car. Kevin McCarthy shows up as a nextdoor mystic who supplies some of the comedy relief. Overall, the dialogue is obnoxiously clever. Every line sounds as if it's being read from a script. However, I dug Naughton. And I really, really dug his girlfriend, the impossibly sexy Judie Aronson. I recognized her from somewhere, but I was drawing a blank. Turns out, she was one of the camp counselors in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Killer resume, no? We do get a charitable dose of nudity, so yay. The death sequences are peculiar. Each victim dies from being perforated by the coil springs of a sofa. Points for originality, I guess. Honestly, this isn't a bad flick, but I can't say that I was particularly staggered by it. It will do in a pinch. My rating is a tad generous, as I have a thing for films that failed to become franchises. In that respect, The Sleeping Car doesn't quite reach the level of Brainscan or Dr. Giggles.
My copy.
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