Railroad Jack

You know you're in for a cinematic marvel when the intro scene displaying the production company literally has a man crapping on the floor. That's how you know you're in for a treat! This movie is a mess of clichés and foreshadowing, all leading up to a twist ending that anyone could see coming from a mile away. We see all these bland characters introduce themselves and allude to their personal lives (which ultimately leads to nothing, so having these scenes is completely worthless) before getting on a bus and going to a railroad station. The bus crashes, and the students find themselves just outside of a carnival--how convenient.

For a long while after the cast finds themselves in this abandoned carnival, nothing happens except dickheads being dickheads. The only thing remotely suspenseful was the first "death" that literally happens off screen, and it's only at around the 50 minute mark when the killer finally shows up, and it turns into a murder spree that leaves very little time between deaths to even build suspense. Either that, or you just don't care much at that point.

I won't even bother spoiling the twist, as it can be inferred as soon as you piece what little you can together, and the ending leaves much to be desired and many questions that need to be answered.

The only thing I can praise is Tony Todd, the same guy who played Candyman and the mortician from the Final Destination franchise. He delivers a decent performance, but he only has about 5 minutes of screen time, so you may as well flip to another movie as soon as his scene ends.

This movie is absolutely horrible. It is so unrealistic it's not even funny. The acting in this is absolutely horrible. I don't know how this is rated R when a 8 year could tell how fake it is. I do not know how you can film this and tell yourself this is a some what decent movie. I saw the camera mans foot in one of the scenes which shows you how poorly produced this film was. Don't waste the valuable hours of your life watching this trash.

After getting involved in a bus crash on the way home from a field trip, a group of teens find themselves stuck at a haunted amusement park with a deranged, mystical killer killing them off one-by-one and forcing them to find an obscure method of survival.

This turned out to be quite a fun and enjoyable slasher that features a lot of really exciting features. One of the better elements here is the fact that this one manages to get a lot of mileage out of the creepy amusement park setting with the nightmarish scenario of only being exposed to a few select parts of the park and no matter what continually returning to the same area over and over again, all of which just makes this seem more like a dream than anything but frankly adds to a chilling vibe that washes over this section of the film. That this is where the film pretty much starts offing the characters one-by-one in rather gruesome detail is where it starts getting really good, with a lot of rather fun and exciting elements coming into play due to that with a lot of pretty chilling stalking scenes, some decent escape attempts and a series of pretty violent deaths all brought upon due to the killer's use of a pick-axe as the weapon of choice here. It adds up, along with the rather demented killer and innate sense of hopelessness to turn into a rather fine slasher more often than not. While those are the good elements, it still suffers from some pretty big flaws, including the fact that this one tends to employ the exact same gimmick as several other films do right down to the very same mode of killing done here, which is a major plot-point but is nonetheless taken from another film series entirely and rather the back-story of the killer's identity is changed around. That tends to make it feel like a rip-off more so than as an original feature, which wouldn't be as bad if the low-budget origins weren't at play. Being so cheap means that the look of this is very cramped and confined, there's not a lot of big, extended sequences and the make-up effects don't always come off as good as they should. All-in-all, though, this one seems to have more going for it than not.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and hints of child abuse.

Don't waste your time or money on this completely unremarkable, unoriginal, utterly dreary, relatively bloodless mess of a film. Granted the latter wasn't an issue for me as I saw it streaming on Netflix, but I digress. This rancid half-baked little horror tale of stereotypical clichéd 'teenagers' running afoul of a serial killer in a deserted carnival is somehow even worse than that description would seemingly entail. Furthermore, while technically not even reaching an hour and a half of running time, it felt much longer due to its sheer awfulness. Poor Tony Todd deserves better. And don't even get me started on the ending.

It's interesting that this movie has such generally low numerical ratings here, but also several rave reviews. OK, given what a little-seen, low-budget effort it is, the rave reviews COULD have come from friends and family of the production itself (which was my initial suspicion), but having seen the movie, this phenomenon makes a little more sense now.

There is indeed nothing particularly new here. I won't give the "surprise" ending away, but it's one horror-movie fans have seen A LOT of, from ever since a certain low-budget film was made in Kansas in the early 1960's. The story involves a group of disparate students who have to go on a bus tour of a railroad town with their teacher after they failed to turn in a paper (OK. . .). The students are the usual types--the obnoxious jock, the black best friend, the outcast, the slutty girl, the homely girl, the overweight kid--but right away there are some off-beat elements. The fat kid has a hilariously profane grandmother (a cameo by Sally Kirkland, who also produced the film), who tells him to take no sh*t from the popular kids as she drops him off. The homely girls seems to have a strange, perhaps incestuous, relationship with her father. The girlfriend of one of the jocks tells him she's pregnant right before he leaves. The slutty girl rather than being the stereotypical "high-school slut" is actually kind of a sweet, troubled girl who has been taken advantage of by the jocks at her school (maybe some shades of reality there). There are also TWO black guys, and, rounding out their numbers, a deaf girl.

They stop at a visitor's center and meet curator Tony Todd who does his usual thing in an extended cameo and warns them of the legend of "Railroad Jack". Soon after they're involved in a bus crash and their teacher disappears. They take refuge in this this strange deserted carnival sideshow that is out in the middle of the desert for some reason where they are stalked by the creepy, eyeless "Railroad Jack". This is the other strength of the movie (besides the more interesting than usual teen characters),the deserted carnival is genuinely creepy. This is the rare modern-day horror film that actually relies on ATMOSPHERE as opposed to CGI gore and silicone breasts. True, some of the acting is awful (the performance of the actor playing the overweight kid is especially egregious). I never miss CGI effects, but a lack of female nudity can't really be considered an asset to a horror film either. But given there is only one particularly attractive girl here (Hope Jaymes, who plays the vulnerable slut) and she obviously has real breasts (only women with silicone breasts ever seem to do nude scenes in modern-day horror movies) the movie at least doesn't tease you with the promise there will be any.

There is some ill-conceived narration at the beginning and the end, and the end doesn't entirely work. Still, I found this to be refreshingly old-fashioned and off-beat and interesting in places. It's much better than the numerical reviews would suggest if not quite deserving perhaps of some of the more hyperbolic raves. It's worth seeing anyway.