Night Train to Mundo Fine

It staggers me that people would put money - however little - into something this awful. Who in their right mind could ever think this garbage even approaches the quality of a B movie? One viewing and you'll see what I'm talking about. There is basically no plot. Three men sort of wander around a little, take a plane to Cuba for whatever reason (maybe money, though that point is not made clear), train for one day, lie around on some cots, and take part in an 8-man invasion of the island where a Castro "look-a-like" in a ridiculous fake beard awaits. The rest of the plot is so absurd I won't bore you with it. Suffice to say it is a colossal mountain of pointless celluloid. But it's fun to watch with the bots. In my opinion this and MANOS are tied for worst film ever.

Come on, folks! Coleman deserves a break. If the film's credits said DIRECTED BY JEAN LUC GODARD critics would praise it as revolutionary "new wave" cinema.

Coleman challenges our conventional notions of narrative & structure. Coleman challenges our suspension of disbelief by DELIBERATELY making things fake & unconvincing, by distorting time, place & sequence in true "cinema verite" fashion. Remember, there are people out there who think Marcus Welby & Obi Wan Kenobi are REAL - so, rather than exploit the viewer, Coleman DEMANDS that we face our concepts of "reality."

Try an experiment: take just about ANY Godard film (but especially NUMERO DEUX) and pretend it's a COLEMAN FRANCIS film; you'll see what I mean. ANYONE can make a horrid self indulgent incompetent "movie" & be successful if the film has a European (preferably French) director's name on the credits... [note that Numero Deux is French for "#2" - translation: caca] ...Ok... RED ZONE CUBA really did hurt; it was abysmal; it was obvious that many script pages blew away while shooting & Coleman never noticed. It deserves a special place of honor with MONSTER A GO-GO, PLAN 9, ROBOT MONSTER and MANOS as one of the all time worst.

Coleman hurt me; I think I'm suffering the movie watcher's equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome... pardon me while I check out BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS again; I am sure to find relief therein. I will imagine BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is a Jean Luc Godard film...

Look, Folks, a lot of the reviewers here are missing the finer distinctions of artistic expression. There is a difference between being a fine work of art and being an excellent example of a given genre. Red Zone Cuba (by any name) is a stinker of a movie. It is execrable. It is abominable. But it may be a work of genius. Let's look at the facts: everything about this film is wrong. Every scene is inept, every element is unfit. The editing is botched, the sound is miserable, the acting dead and naturalistic, the characters are anti-appealing, the mise en scene is as flat and barren as capitalistic materialism, the direction is directionless, the story isn't one. Whence John Carradine and this great train robbery? What about the blind woman interminably playing that piano? Francis subverts every expectation we have of a movie. It does not entertain, nor does it provide spectacle. He gives us nothing with which to justify watching this Wretched Thing. Only a determined genius tapped into a conduit from Plato's realm of the Forms could have so deconstructed Film. It is ugly, it is dirty, it is mean and it is boring-- sounds like the world we live in. This is a portrait of our empty American existence. It is about the tyranny of a system that doesn't care about anything except its own perpetuation. It's about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was arguably as corrupt, doomed and ridiculous as Francis portrays it. Francis shows us the dark underbelly of American hegemony. It's not surprising that everyone loathes it so much and fails to see its (admittedly sub-textual) merits. If movies are about lies, this film is about Truth. Just as the little boy discovers in Flannery O'Connor's The River, Truth isn't pretty and it isn't what you've been told to expect or what you want to see.

As far as I'm concerned this flick resets the bar for terrible movies.I have never been subjected to so much pain in such a short span of time since my last root canal.in fact, I think I would rather Laurence Olivier give me a root canal than to ever have to watch this piece of celluloid schitzen again.It had no discernible plot,the filming was horrible,and the acting nonexistent.The editing looked like it been done by Leatherface.The director(who was also the leading man)spent way too much time trying to play the tired antihero to really do any directing.If there was any kind of storyline,then it was beyond my grasp.It seemed to me like some sort of psychotic flight-of-ideas tale.The characters just amble on from one disastrous screw-up to another(which could have made a good story if you could have followed it).In the final analysis,it was just a painfully unwatchable waste of time.But,if you like,cinema terrible', then this is the one for you.rp

Where can one even start on this film? It's most certainly one of the Top 5 worst films I've ever seen in my life, and winner of my impromptu "Most Incoherent Film" award, due to incredibly shoddy editing and exceptionally unmemorable performances. If anything, the best way to sum up the film is "Curly look-alike goes to Cuba, returns from Cuba, throws a man down a well, and dies."

The most nightmarish thing about the movie is not the poor acting, poorer writing (where the hell's the plot? WHAT the hell's the plot?), abysmal editing, grainy footage, or Curly in Hell as played by Coleman Francis. Rather, it's the rather paradoxal nature of the film. Individually (and even when put together), all of the aspects of the film are quite forgettable. Yet, once you've watched this film, you can somehow never forget it. Ever. It will haunt you for the rest of your life, taunting you for ever having experienced it. Even with the help of MST3K (where I and most others got a glimpse of this trainwreck), it can give you nightmares. Only recommended for the foolhardy or masochistic. All others should not view this film without a crash course in Coleman Francis' other catastrophes (Beast of Yucca Flats, Skydivers), or the aid of MST3K (thought admittedly, it doesn't help much).