Un tren para Hollywood

This is not an overly serious movie. If you're in the mood for something silly a la a poor-man's Mel Brooks flick, this is one that is done by a tight soul group called Bloodstone. I gave it a 7.

In addition to some original music, the group does good covers of a striking variety of song genres, and I think this is a particularly good quality of the film and music. Examples from the 40s-50s-60s: As Time Goes By (very good version!), Yackety-Yack, Money (yeah the one that the Beatles covered).

These guys looked to me like they had a very good time making this movie, and that makes the movie better.

This movie is not meant to be the experience of a century. It's just a deliberately ridiculous musical romp with some terrific music, some ok choreography and a villain or two and that's that. I liked it because of the music, the performances of individual group members, the soundtrack ages quite well in my collection and in the end it's an B-movie plot. On this last point, I'd say that, if you're in the mood for a silly musical, the plot-story is weak but ok, with a lot of referential characters (impersonated characters such as of Bogart, A Legosi-ish Vampire, Nelson Eddy+Jeanette MacDonald, I think maybe a James Dean-type, etc.)

The group members are sufficiently ok in acting that one can like them.

The DVD does not stand in well as a good-audiophile soundtrack (unless there's something I don't quite get about how to use a video DVD to play back sound). Since the music is what I wanted to re-listen to many times, I had to get the CD. But there's nothing wrong with the film. I'd have to give it higher than a 5, the average at the time of this writing, if only because an enjoyable musical is so hard to find.

I had to wait about 20 years for them to come out with both the movie and the CD. Something has always been wrong with Bloodstone's music and film distribution. I saw this film in the 70's and here it is 2002 and finally it's available on VHS or DVD? What about the soundtrack? Why wasn't that available with other Bloodstone albums, until now? What the heck is up with that? This isn't the first time I've run into that trouble finding Bloodstone's work. There was also a problem with getting all the songs from the vinyl of Natural High on to the CD. To my knowledge, that hasn't been fixed.

This is a fun, silly movie which takes very bizarre and unexpected turns. But I've watched the "Train Ride" musical number over and over again. It's worth the rental. As they say, "Get your ticket get your ticket you gotta have a ticket for this train ride..."

Members of the 70's pop/soul group Bloodstone ("Natural High") enter a dream sequence in which they disguise themselves as porters to get to Hollywood for an audition. Also on the train are cheap impersonators of Bogie, W.C. Fields, Rhett and Scarlet, Jeanette and Nelson, Bela Lugosi, plus a sheik and his harem. Some fine musical numbers liven up a rather hackneyed self-referential movie. Still an interesting trip for cinema fans, and more economical than the later star-laden failure "Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood."

This really is pathetic. Nothing to recommend it other than 2 good oldies. Bad acting, bad direction, bad script, bad music. How did this movie ever get made...and released by a major studio! You can buy the movie Letter-boxed, but why anyone would want to is beyond me (unless of course they're in it, but I'd be too embarrassed to admit to that).

WARNING! This movie could HURT. Imagine a film musical FAR WORSE than "At Long Last Love", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" or "Lost Horizon" then multiply it by TEN, then you almost can conceptualize how heinous this thing is. A very, VERY small amount of the music and dance is vaguely enjoyable. The song in the railway station which ends up in laughable faux Busby Berkley-style kaleidescope formations is about the only thing that can be sat through without throwing an anvil at the TV set. Most of the rest is so painful it should be run on a continuous loop in high school detention halls. The "lookalikes" in this turkey are so way off that you have to strain to imagine who most of them are! Gable's voice is okay and WC Fields is so-so. The Bogart guy isn't too horrible, but ALL of the rest are incredibly lame. (The one playing Brando in "The Wild One" deserves some minor credit.) And anyway......the whole thing is so senseless and impossibly stupid that it doesn't even matter! Here's the kicker... The DVD comes with a little mini card of the original release poster. It boldly features the REAL faces of all the stars that the lame imposters are trying to impersonate! Imagine people's horror when they thought they might see something resembling these celebrities, but instead found Dan Tanna's casino hostess from "Vegas" flopping around with the most inappropriate Scarlett O'Hara accent imaginable and two perfectly ordinary-looking people acting like they're Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald. The man playing Clark Gable is a particular insult when confronted with Gable's real face (as briefly shown in this turkey). The impersonator looks like Gable if Gable were an overweight used car salesman from Peoria. A MESS!!!!