(1980) ***1/2
"Do you believe in magic? I'll have to convince you" - David Copperfield trying to be all sexy.
A fraternity prank involving a borrowed corpse sends a student with an already fragile mind to an insane asylum. Four years later, while the graduating class celebrates on a costume party train, the disturbed student crashes the festivities and seeks revenge on the partygoers. Cleverly, he dresses up in the costume of his most recent victim.
Jamie Lee Curtis maintains her status as her generation's scream queen and ensures a certain amount of quality in a film that could have gone either way. Also along for the ride is a younger, but still obnoxious David Copperfield sporting an embarrassing haircut. He gets to perform a magic show for the gang and a good 10 minutes of movie time is devoted to his tired antics. Every time the audience cheered I thought "please stop clapping, you'll only encourage him".
Great setup, enjoyable, recommended popcorn movie, though most of your time will indeed be spent hoping for Crapperfield to get what's coming to him. But it made me wonder how many other fun movies along these lines are out there that I have yet to discover.
4 comments:
Jeez, did Jamie Lee clean up in the wake of Halloween. I've never even heard of this movie.
The big H is my favorite of hers, natch, but I think she looks her best in The Fog.
Random trivia: according to IMDB, Jamie Lee Curtis was in Halloween III (voice) (uncredited) .... Curfew Announcer/Telephone Operator
Another film that made her the scream queen is Prom Night.
Oh man, Prom Night is awful. I watched it last year. The sequel is exponentially worse.
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