An irate railway engineer on a speeding train tries to get his young guard back on watch, but the lad is more interested in getting into the pants of a well-endowed young woman (Sandra Margot aka future pornstar Tiffany Million). As a result, the locomotive crashes into another train. The engineer, who survives by leaping clear before impact, cops the blame, most people believing that he was drunk on duty. The man goes off the rails (pun intended) and his wife kicks him out; he sets up home in a converted sleeping car in the back yard, and proceeds to bring back a series of young women.
Ten years later, and divorced journalist Jason McCree (David Naughton) rents the sleeping car while he goes back to college, unaware that the now-deceased engineer's ghost haunts the carriage and kills those who dare enter. Can Jason, his young girlfriend Kim (Judie Aronson) and white witch Vincent Tuttle (Kevin McCarthy) find a way to defeat the angry spook?
In 1981, David Naughton starred in the greatest werewolf movie ever made (I'm sure you know the one I mean); a mere 9 years later, he was slumming it in pure garbage like The Sleeping Car, one of the worst horror movies of the '90s. To be fair, the fault doesn't lie with Naughton, who was no doubt hired to reprise his happy-go-lucky persona from An American Werewolf in London, but rather with writer Greg Collins O'Neill, whose screenplay is truly terrible, and director Douglas Curtis, who seems oblivious to the script's major drawbacks: zero scares, lame kills, and atrocious dialogue and non-stop wise-cracks that make the characters hugely irritating. One longs for the ghost to kill them all in the most gruesome way imaginable, just to shut them up. People do die, of course (I was so pleased when journalism teacher Bud Sorenson died), but not in gory enough fashion for my liking. Sadly, Jason, Kim and Vincent escape unscathed, free to continue with their annoying jokes.
2/10 for the two pairs of breasts (Margot's in the opening scene, and Aronson's in her obligatory sex scene with Naughton), minus one point for shamelessly ripping off the dream-within-a-dream scare from An American Werewolf In London.
Ten years later, and divorced journalist Jason McCree (David Naughton) rents the sleeping car while he goes back to college, unaware that the now-deceased engineer's ghost haunts the carriage and kills those who dare enter. Can Jason, his young girlfriend Kim (Judie Aronson) and white witch Vincent Tuttle (Kevin McCarthy) find a way to defeat the angry spook?
In 1981, David Naughton starred in the greatest werewolf movie ever made (I'm sure you know the one I mean); a mere 9 years later, he was slumming it in pure garbage like The Sleeping Car, one of the worst horror movies of the '90s. To be fair, the fault doesn't lie with Naughton, who was no doubt hired to reprise his happy-go-lucky persona from An American Werewolf in London, but rather with writer Greg Collins O'Neill, whose screenplay is truly terrible, and director Douglas Curtis, who seems oblivious to the script's major drawbacks: zero scares, lame kills, and atrocious dialogue and non-stop wise-cracks that make the characters hugely irritating. One longs for the ghost to kill them all in the most gruesome way imaginable, just to shut them up. People do die, of course (I was so pleased when journalism teacher Bud Sorenson died), but not in gory enough fashion for my liking. Sadly, Jason, Kim and Vincent escape unscathed, free to continue with their annoying jokes.
2/10 for the two pairs of breasts (Margot's in the opening scene, and Aronson's in her obligatory sex scene with Naughton), minus one point for shamelessly ripping off the dream-within-a-dream scare from An American Werewolf In London.