Jamie Lee Curtis, Scream Queen

[kybearfuzz]

Last night, the softball games got rained out, so I stayed in to watch a movie. I have more movies than I could ever watch, so I went digging for one to entertain me and came up with "Terror Train", a slasher flick from 1980 starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Six college friends play a prank on an awkward frat pledge, he goes crazy and gets put away. Three years later, the friends and apparently all their ancillary cohorts take a costume party train on New Year's Eve, unaware that a killer has joined them on the journey. Jamie has cut her longish hair since "Halloween" which is why she had to wear that hideously bad wig in "Halloween II." The movie even stars David Copperfield as a stage magician.

While my love of horror movies is well-known, these early horror flicks are favorites and Jamie Lee starred in many of them before she turned to other roles. I own all of the following and can watch these over and over...

• "Halloween" (1978) -- Arguably one of the best horror movies ever made and Jamie's movie debut. She outmanuevers Michael Myers on his first killing spree, learning that babysitting can be a dangerous occupation.
  
  
• "The Fog" (1980) -- One of my personal favorites where she plays a hitchhiking artist who finds herself in the middle of a property dispute over leperous sea ghosts who live in a phantom fog and the descendants of the townfolk who killed them for their gold. She shares billing with Adrienne Barbeau and her breasts, the former playing the town's local lighthouse radio station owner.
  
  
• "Prom Night" (1980) -- When a young girl is accidentally killed while playing a game in an abandoned school, the kids playing with her have grown up and now find themselves receiving creepy phone calls, finding ominous notes, and eventually being stalked at the high school prom. Jamie plays the dead girl's older sister and puts on some seriously embarrassing dance moves on the disco floor during the prom. Jamie admitted in interviews that she did not know how to dance at the time.
  
  
• "Terror Train" (1980)... see above.
  
  
• "Halloween II" (1981) -- Jamie signed on to the sequel to "Halloween," which takes place literally after the events of the same night have occurred and her character Laurie Strode is taken to the hospital. The wig she wears is awful. Michael Myers comes stalking her again in the hosptial corridors where apparently very few health professionals work the night shift, a commentary on the healthcare system perhaps. Judging on the quality of the wig, I'd say budgetary cuts were made. Of course, this movie reveals that Michael Myers and Laurie Strode are siblings.

Comments

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

I don't mind those sort of horror movies. It's the ones with gratuitous blood and guts that I can't be doing with.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

I can handle gore, but I really REALLY prefer a good plot and atmosphere to it. These are those movies that seem to entertain more. For example, in "The Fog" there is a few gross scenes, but no big blood spurt shots. The eerieness of the fog is what makes the movie scary :)

[dendren.livejournal.com]

I guess all those near death experiences is why she now has tummy troubles and needs Activia.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Well, being chased by a killer will likely cause things to seize up... :)