Night Train to Mundo Fine

As far as I can tell, Coleman Francis and two other losers, escape from the cops hook up with "Cherokee" Jack and hightail it to some para military camp that's training for a invasion of Cuba. After their failed attempt to capture Cuba from a very fake Castro, our heroic trio steals a plane, make it back to the states and then throw some old guy down a well while his blind piano playing daughter goes about her music. Then they start searching for tungsten and decide to go legit.(?) This movie makes absolutely no sense. Coleman Francis cuts and cuts and those cuts hurt. There are also scenes of Coleman strangling other characters and sitting in his cell in a very provacative manner. Watch this with Mike, Tom and Crow and try to keep a straight face when John Carradine sings the haunting title track, you'll shake for weeks to come.

I realize this is just yet another post on an overcrowded site, but we all need to vent after seeing this film. I have watched it several times in an attempt to discern what exactly is going on, and it sort of fits together...until that whole "throwing the old guy down a well" thing. I mean, sure, there are plot holes big enough to put Coleman Francis through, but it's still sort of a story until that point. I still don't understand who the group was that invaded Cuba, though. Were they mercenaries, because there was some garbled mention of two one thousand dollar payments made (which enticed the trio to sign up in the first place)? Where did this money come from? The government? If so, you'd think they might have thrown a little more money that way, and maybe had an invading force in double figures. AGH! See, this is what this movie does to you! It laughs in your face with its ineptness, knowing you can't count fast enough to put a number on its flaws! Another Crow quote: "I see the movie has finally thrown up its hands and just said, 'I don't know.'" This film does contain one moment that still makes me laugh, however: when bombs are going off all around their jail cell, we get a super close-up of the repugnant Coleman Francis saying "Bay of Pigs", in a voice I will spend the rest of my life trying to emulate. It's easily one of the stupidest scenes film has ever recorded, and I'm surprised the film didn't spontaneously burst into flames from the shame.

Everyone has already commented about this film, but I'm here for one reason: A plea. Please, someone tell me what exactly was going on? There's obviously some sort of embryo of a plot that isn't mentioned to the audience. Just trying to sort things out makes my head hurt. Only watch this movie in the MST3K version, and even then be careful not to pay too much attention to the movie, just the wise-cracks. Oh yes, and take breaks and get some sugar in you. Treat the movie like a series of unrelated, boring scenes. You've been warned.

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