10 Horror Movies Where Pranks Brutally Backfired

Another horror film made in the wake of Halloween's success, Terror Train is a slasher with a few twists.

The film starts at a frat party, where medical student bros lead quiet, reserved Kenny to believe he is going to score with Alana, a reluctant accomplice played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Instead, Kenny opens his eyes to find a corpse, taken from the med school, in bed with him. The ensuing and understandable trauma leads to him being institutionalised and vowing revenge.

Three years later, the same med-school friends take a New Year's Eve party trip on the titular train, which is surprisingly roomy, allowing for a lot of slashin'. Conveniently, it is a costume party, letting the inevitable killer easily move from disguise to disguise, taking new costumes as he kills their owner and adding a real element of "Who's the killer?" to the story.

By the end, only Alana, the conductor, and Kenny, our killer, are left. Kenny, who returned to avenge his humiliation and trauma, is very anti-climactically hit with a shovel before simply being thrown from the train.

In an unusual twist, it's revealed that Kenny spent much of the movie dressed as a female magician's assistant (did we mention the magician? It's David Copperfield, instantly dating this movie.) This fact isn't played for laughs or dwelt on; it's just laid out there that Kenny was comfortable in drag, just another example of the transvestite serial killer trope in horror movies.