DRIVEN-IN SATURDAY

Mom Amtraks It

Edouard Dauphin

When you live in Manhattan and ride the New York City subway system daily, if s not easy to get worked up about Terror Train, a Canadian-made horror flick that isn't as scary as a routine trip on the IRT 7th Avenue Express.

Leave it to those north of the border numbnuts. This time our Canadian film-making , brethren have taken an innocent-looking excursion train, peopled it with nymphomaniacs, dopeheads and drunkards, then left it at the mercy of a psychopathic slasher. There hasn't been this much potential for depravity and violence since Johnny Lydon was introduced to Brooke Shields.

The flick opens with a cruel fraternity hazing stunt at the expense of Kenny, a goofy-grinning, four-eyed nerd. Still a virgin at 18, he is cautiously hopeful when his pre-med buddies set him up with a blind date reputed to be a sure thing. She turns out to be a cadaver, natch, but with her pallid face, sunken cheeks and caved-in chest, Kenny almost mistakes her for Patti Smith.

Three years later Kenny is a basket case and his former classmates are getting ready to graduate. He slips out of the boobyhatch and hits town just in time to board the rented train the students have designated the party special. Before the train has even left the station, Kenny has taken a spear and turned one obnoxious senior into something that resembles LambKabob Deluxe. Argh, pass the mintsauce.

x 1 Since the train'passengers are wearingparty costumes, Kenny has no trouble donning a disguise and fitting right into the festivities. Dressed as a repulsive reptile, he climbs into an upper berth, seduces a comely coed, then slits her throat from ear to ear. Her last words are: 'Oh, shit, why didn't I go Greyhound?'

Switching rapidly from one costume to another, Kenny takes bloody revehge on each of the frat stunt perpetrators, saving the cool and waspy Alana for last. She's played by —you guessed it—Jamie Lee Curtis, an actress who is fast becoming Q ueen Of Sfrlock. After dodging > maniacs in Halloween, The Fog, and Prom Night, Jamie is ready for anything a homocidal wimp like Kenny has to offer. To prove it, she sticks a spike in his eye—and she doesn't offer him any Murine for relief.

Skip Terror Train—it's only a local.

☆ ☆ ☆

'Punk sucks!'

'Disco's stupid!'

The above dialogue is spoken by a pair of ' moronic hayseed brothers as they blithely brush their teeth with Budweiser after spending the night torturing a trio of young campers abducted from the nearby woods. The film is Mother's Day, a cruel and hilarious little shocker shot for nothing in New Jersey and every bit as wholesome as mom, apple pie and the Manson Family.

The sibling mongoloids, named Ike and Adley (political history buffs in the Times Square audience chortled at this), wreak their vicious havoc on unsuspecting girls in order to endear themselves to Mother, the cackling, decrepit crone who reigns supreme in the backwoods hovel they call home. Mother cares not for punk or disco and would just as soon see Elvis Costello disemboweled as Chic drawn and quartered.

The largest trio of potential victims are high school classmate^ who meet annually for a vacation reunion. In previous years they've rendez-voused in the Rockies apd at Big Sur, so what could be more logical than a vyeek trudging around the swamps of Springsteen country? It was either that or a seven-day campout in the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

Once they're captured by the rustic roustabouts, the girls are plenty annoyed. Hanging by your fingers from a medieval torture device can absolutely ruin your nails. And being dragged by the hair through pig slime is just murder on your custom-blended perm. So when the girls get to retaliate, they make short work of their captors by quick and excessive use of sharp instruments, not to mention that tried and true method known as Drano Down The Throat.

Let's hear it for chug-a-lugging!

It adds up to good family fun, so see Mother's Day and don't forget to bring along a box of candy.

☆ ☆ ☆

Had enough Shakespeare? Sure you havel Your English teacher has been ramming him down your gullet for years, right? Help is here in the form of The Tempest, a spaced-out film version of the Bard's last play. Featuring a magician as Prospero, a cross between Bo Derek and Gidget as Miranda, and a black blues singer warbling 'Stormy Weather' in the finale, it's hardly typical Shake sphere yet strangely faithful to his work. At the screening, The Dauphin didn't doze off once and that's pretty good since I've nodded out twice writing this paragraph. See The Tempest before your 'Little life is rounded with a sleep.'