El tren infernal

Still no proper release so far for this horror made in a time when horror was a not done and was almost death. Some big names from the genre in it, David Naughton of An American Werewolf In London (1981) and Kevin McCarthy and special effects man John Carl Buechler as The Mister.

It take a while before the horror comes in, Jason (Naughton) is just divorced and is searching for a new place to stay, one he finds in an abandoned train car. But from the start we know something happened with the freight train and let this be a car from that accident. Jason awakes the ghost of the landlady's husband. A thing he better did not.

The first half hour we go a bit into the characters with some comedy elements, especially at school. Jason got befriended with Kim (Judie Aronson) which he falls in love with but he still has nightmares of his ex Joanna (Dani Minnick).

There's a bit of nudity here and there with the typical saxophone music. Judie Aronson shows her breasts while having sex with Jason. There's a bit of red stuff and at the end we do see the real Mister but by then it's all too late. Kevin wasn't convincing at all and even looked ridiculous. This is as I said it a thousand times before a perfect example why horror was on a low base around the time being made.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

"The Sleeping Car" is a pretty insignificant and worthless horror film that is made endurable by a couple of nice special effects and a neat supporting role by Kevin McCarthy. The plot revolves on an over-aged journalism student Jason (David McNaughton from "American Werewolf in London) who rents an old, refurnished train carriage to live in. This carriage – the sleeping car – is possessed by the spirit of "the Mister", the landlady's late husband who was responsible for a huge train crash ten years earlier. The screenplay doesn't make that much sense, but you can hardly consider that an obstacle in early 90's horror movies. There's some nice murdering and the female lead Judie Aronson is yummy. What's really annoying about the "the Sleeping Car" are the constant witty remarks of protagonist Jason McCree. He uses a supposedly funny one-liner every time his character does or says something. Even in the climax, when he's fighting (?) the demon, he interrupts the action for a lousy remark...Very annoying.

This one would be just an average horror B-movie, reasonably well done from what I could judge from a pan&scanned video, but the characters makes up for the ludicrous premise : they are lively and fun. There are illogisms, as usual, but the overall fun atmosphere makes it worth viewing for genre fans. And there is a first : death by couch springs !

''The Sleeping Car' is by no means a good film. It's slow moving, lacks any atmosphere, and gets rather tedious at times, but it still manages to deliver the goods, or at least some of them. The production values are passable, but far from bad, and the script works to a degree, but for some reason the pieces don't fall into place as they should. The body count is only four, making it too tame to be a slasher movie (though it does hint at that, especially during the overlong climax), but too juvenile to be a psychological thriller/horror film.

The acting isn't bad, but it sure isn't all that great. It seems like the actors were booked for three or four days for filming, and just wanted to get it over with, so they didn't seem to put a lot of effort into it. No one in particular stands out, and the characters don't make the movie any more interesting. On top of that, none of the characters are very well developed, with the exception of the professor, so that does little to help the cause.

Still the movie does have several things working for it, not the least of which is some pretty impressive special effects for a movie of this caliber. Another is the creative and very gruesome death scenes, which may be the best part of this 'not quite there, but close' horror flick

6/10

Perhaps I am being generous with this one, considering I just watched Suspiria, but I found this to be a very colourful, interesting looking movie, with a lot of atmospheric blue lighting contrasted against deep reds , bright yellows, and it has a couple of clever moments (including death by fold-up sofa, probably the most memorable) and it has a good look to it, overall, but.....

So much of the dialogue is poorly written, unfunny one-liners, the characters become annoying, and even at a brief 80-minutes, this tale of a man living in a converted train car, haunted by the spirit of John Karl Beuchler, seems padded, with its especially drawn out ending taking up nearly fifteen minutes of the run time.

Still, it isn't *terrible*, and might be worth a single watch, for fans of cheeseball 1980s horror, but anything more than that is asking too much from this one.