Don’t judge a movie by its cover. In the case of Express to Terror, the reason is because it’s actually the feature-length pilot of NBC’s legendarily colossal failure of a television series, Supertrain, which lasted all of nine episodes. (Okay, now you can judge it.)
Possessing a boner for rail travel, the CEO of TransAllied Corporation (Keenan Wynn, The Crowded Sky) accepts the U.S. Department of Transportation’s request to construct an atomic-powered choo-choo train with unlabeled gumdrop-button controls to make it go coast to coast in 36 hours. The end result, aka Supertrain, is so luxurious, it has everything: a bar, a gym, a sauna, a swimming pool, a discotheque, red carpet, an elevator, Nina Talbot and a flaming hairstylist with two electric dryers!
Well, almost everything — as we learn, it lacks ashtrays, Maalox and suspense.
Add “competent security” to the list, considering Supertrain’s maiden voyage is fraught with repeated attempts on the life of Mike (crooner Steve Lawrence), a gambling-addicted passenger in debt to the mob. Meanwhile, Mike falls for the ditzy, abused wife (Char Fontane, The Night the Bridge Fell Down) of his would-be assassin (Don Stroud, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off). Mike’s dandy, Peaky Blinders-capped pal (Don Meredith, Mayday at 40,000 Feet!) condemns the romance, because she looks like she “reads Corn Flakes boxes.” (To be fair, he’s not wrong.)
Also aboard Supertrain are Stella Stevens, George Hamilton, Robert Alda, Vicki Lawrence and Fred Williamson. None sticks out because all play second fiddle — if not relegated to last chair — to Steve Lawrence’s pickle of a primary storyline. He brings all the intensity and nuance he would to his finest performance: as himself, hosting TV’s Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders. Only if director Dan Curtis (Burnt Offerings) were helming a game show could his leading man fit snugly in the role’s demands.
By comparison, The Love Boat looks like James A. Michener. Strangely, this disaster-adjacent pilot is written by two people who should have known — or typed — better: soon-to-be Oscar-winning scribe Earl W. Wallace (Witness) and crime-fiction icon Donald E. Westlake. Whether they were just taking a check or network interference gummed up the works, Express to Terror is, ending aside, slow enough to qualify as a sedative. All a-snore! —Rod Lott