Evil Train

Amok Train ( a far better title) tells the tale of a group of American students on a study trip in Serbia who are first terrorized by an evil village, and then by a runaway train they they attempt to escape on. It's all because one of the students is a "chosen one" of a group of devil worshippers.

The film has so much going on, it's never boring, even if some of the story and acting are a bit hokey, there are always plenty of things to look at and some outrageous gore is showcased, including a face being pulled off, decapitations, impalements galore, and quite a shocking dismemberment of one poor guy caught between moving carriages.

Actually some of the most frightening scenes of the movie are those depicting the actors being filmed on the moving train. We see them running alongside and jumping aboard, clambering over the top of it, hanging off the sides and dangling between the couplings - all while the train is clearly moving at some speed. I don't know how they filmed all of this, it looks completely hair-raising. If these are faked via special effects, then I take my hat off in admiration.

There are some rather shonky miniature models that spoil some of the tension, but the movie is otherwise beautifully photographed, and the music is great too. It's bursting with energy and great visuals, reminiscent of Lamberto Bava's "Demons" , and the more obscure "Spider Labyrinth", so if you have seen and enjoyed either of those, and can suspend your criticisms, you'll have fun with this.

Forget about the unrelated title "Beyond the Door III", as its better represented under "Death Train" or "Amok Train". What starts off as an optimistically ominous Italian supernatural occult feature eventually falls into cheesy and senseless absurdness, but even so it manages to stay reasonably diverting. The premise's opening build up is atmospheric, spooky and alienating, but when the staged action hit's the train it becomes ludicrously brainless. Forget about making any sense of it (yep it's strange and baffling), and just go along for the unpredictable, but farcical train ride of 'doom'. Director Jeff Kwitny uses the creepy, louring, out-cast East European environment to great effect, and ups the tatty, macabre gore effects when it counted. He plasters it with cheap shocks, but the outrageously graphic deaths are amusingly inventive and impulsive. There are some memorable ones too. An inane script and wishy-washy story is made up of frantic ideas, and novelties that never really seem to come together, but at least it stays in character by keeping the story moving like a speeding train. Some sequences involving the run-away train (that's ritually controlled by Satanists) are balefully destructive, but other times you get a good laugh when the miniature train model comes into play. Adolfo Bartou's sweepingly agile and large scale cinematography is very well-implemented, and at times looked to good for such a production. Telegraphing nearly everything is the pounding, dread-induced music score of generically leering and terrible cues. The performances are pretty wretched, but Bo Svenson's little screen time makes an impression.

Let's see what's beyond door number three. Surprise! It's a truckload of Italian-produced 80's horror cheese! The "official" title Beyond the Door III is completely irrelevant and probably just chosen because the film remotely involves some itty-bitty parts of satanic possession and because the infamous Ovidio G. Assonitis – director of the original Beyond the Door (a nitwit "Exorcist" rip-off) pumped extra money into this as an executive producer. Speaking of him, usually you should beware of any horror production that proudly depicts Assonitis' name during the opening credits. Remember "Tentacles", "Ator the Iron Warrior" and "Piranha II"? But "Amok Train", the much more apt title, is actually a vastly entertaining movie as long as you keep your expectations really low. During the first five minutes already, we're treated to eerie images of black-cloaked Satanists performing a weird ritual; a randomly gratuitous boobs shot and someone losing her head in a tragic car accident when a steel bar crushes through the front window. Well then, how bad can an 80's horror movie possibly be? Even after the promising opening minutes, "Amok Train" remains a fast-paced and hugely amusing little flick, albeit one that makes absolutely no sense and contains more crazy twists and absurd situations than you could ever imagine. A group of Californian high school students has the privilege of traveling to Yugoslavia, to study the local history with the eminent Professor Andromolek. The whole trip turns out to be a giant lie, as the Professor is part of a satanic sect and they're exclusively interested in young Beverly because she's the "chosen" virgin to wed Satan himself. Beverly and her classmates manage to escape and jump on an old train hoping to escape. From then on, the movie literally turns into a derailed – in every possible meaning of the term – adventure with nonsensical twists, extreme cheese and spontaneously random death scenes. Dark powers turn the train into an unstoppable instrument of the devil driving through water and over land without rails. The opening scenes in the little Yugoslavian villages are atmospheric and actually evoke a handful of real scares. Nearly two decades prior to Eli Roth, the creators of this little flick already realized that the population in East European countries look uncanny and that it's a terribly dangerous place for American teenagers to travel to. The middle section, however, is just sheer cheesy nonsense with a handful of awesome gore moments, hysterically screaming co-eds and stupid dialogs.

Beyond the Door III (1989) is an Italian horror movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a young virgin American college coed who is tricked into traveling to Yugoslavia to witness a pagan ritual to bring back Satan. She doesn't know the part she has to play in the ritual that includes sacrificing a virgin....

This movie is directed by Jeff Kwitny (Illegal Alien) and stars Mary Kohnert (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Bo Svenson (Inglorious Basterds), Victoria Zinny (The Tunnel) and Alex Vitale (The Bronx Executioner).

This was a fun watch even if it was a fairly average addition to the horror genre. The car crash opening was well executed, much like Beyond the Door. The mother in this was crazy, as was the soup sequences. The makeup and props were uneven with some elements really well done and some not so much. The model train they used to create the crash scene cracked me up. The "kiss me" sequence was the highlight of the movie and very well done too. The plane ending was solid and a perfect way to end the movie. Oh, and there's no Beyond the Door II, the marketing team just wanted to name the movie after the original Beyond the Door and thought this was clever, even if this isn't a sequel.

Overall, this isn't anything special but is still worth a watch. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Alternatively known as Death Train, this horror flick really show amateur qualities, whether script ("write as you go" dialogue is unbelievably bad) directing, whatever. The film does retain a wide intrigued curiosity of story, and the graphic violence has a style, yet plot is muddled (really hard to follow), which is really the film's problem, if done at a rushed effort. Supposedly the story is of a group of lucky American students who go to Europe to witness a ritual, where the virgin girl of the group, unawares she's just lost her mother in a horrific and cruel car accident, is being set up in a sacrifice, where she must lose her virginity quick, as a slightly creepy Russian satanist (veteran Bo Svenson- the best performance I've seen out of the guy) attains her. When all escaping, they board the train, which turns out to be the one from hell, like that death ship, that brought evil and death. As only seeing the film a few times, the last time, only the other day, I didn't realize how gory this film was, most of it, thanks to that notorious killer train. You don't give two hoots about any of the characters except, our virgin a little, and her peers who seem to taunt her and cast her out, doesn't help their likability status. But amidst the sloppiness of the film, this forgettable flick still rises above this and it's other painfully palpable faults, which will warrant some more views in the future, but again Svenson, the show stealer, is fantastic.