Night Train to Terror

Man, is this a fine slice of fetid, aromatic eighties cheese or what? An anthology movie made from three films edited down, with added gore and effects, linked together by segments involving God and the Devil on a train, trading souls while a typical eighties band plays a song about how everyone's got something to do (except you). Great stuff.

The stories themselves are fine too, probably because of all the added blood and gore (and possibly the removal of all the boring bits). The first story involves a man who has been brainwashed into kidnapping people who are then tortured, cut up, and sold onto universities. Sure, it's daft, but way over the top in the gore and nudity stakes, so who's complaining? It's quite nasty, this one. I have no idea what the original film was called.

Your second story here is a diluted version of a film called Death Wish Club, which I've heard of but never seen. This involves two young lovers trying to escape the influence of an evil gangster who doesn't want the girl to be free, and ropes (sometimes literally) the two into joining the Death Wish Club, where folks dice with death (rather graphically). Another winner here, although the ending is a bit abrupt and unresolved. I'd read that the stop motion bug thing was added later.

Last and lengthiest is an edit of 'The nightmare never ends', another one I'd heard of but haven't seen. We have a Catholic surgeon and her husband, who has just written a book called 'God is Dead'. Meanwhile, you've got Cameron Mitchell on the trail of a seemingly immortal guy called Olivier, who seems linked to some gory murders (courtesy of some hilarious new footage). Olivier wants to recruit the surgeon's husband to work for Satan, but it's obvious to everyone within a 300 mile radius that the guy who doesn't believe in God isn't going to believe in Satan either, stupid. I'm guessing that The Nightmare Never Ends was a bit tame in the killings stake, as the new footage involves a stop motion demon stomping on badly animated people. I liked it and found it creepy in places.

The wraparound segment is a hoot too – how can you dislike a film with such a cheesy pop song running through it. This film is daft as hell and a lot of fun. What more do you want from a film? Look – if you're even looking at a review of a film called Night Train to Terror, I'm guessing you're probably not on the lookout for socio-political subtext and meaningful studies of the human condition. What you get here is beheadings, Lycra, sweatbands, boobs, faces exploding, demons, people melting. It's the kind of film where all is good in the world.

Night Train to Terror is a crazy mess of a movie. The framing story for this anthology involves God and Satan sitting on a train together discussing various cases, each of which form the different segments of the movie. As far as set ups for these kind of anthologies go it's not too bad a premise. Needless to say it is done in an at times jaw-droppingly cheesy manner. It wasn't long into it that I began to suspect the truth about the nature of this anthology. Namely, that the makers had grabbed a bunch of old movies and edited them down to 20-30 minutes and used them as segments of this anthology. The wraparound material is as cheesy as all hell and the three movies, each wacky, sleazy or goofy in their own right become concentrated slices of nonsensical shlock in their truncated forms. There seems to be no logic to their inclusion in the anthology in their current states. The three movies from which they are apparently culled- Scream Your Head Off, Death Wish Club and Shivers (Aka. Cataclysm, Satan's Supper or The Nightmare Never Ends) are connected by writer Philip Yordan, who scripted all three, although Director John Carr was responsible also for the first two segments. Presumably they needed to make a quick buck of their own material (The movie from which the first segment was taken apparently never got a proper release other than a bootleg copy years after) and quickly put together the wraparound material. As it is none of the movies seems particularly well suited to being truncated in the form they are, with far too much going on. As such, none of the segments makes too much sense even with the clumsy narration to smooth over the plot holes and each is dementedly paced and edited. They don't even fit very well with the wraparound material. The supposedly main characters whose deeds are meant to be judged by God and Satan have increasingly little to do in each segment, with more time spent on the other characters in each story. The makers did make sure it seems to include all the gore, violence, sleaze and wacky SFX shots that they could from each movie though in favour of having a movie with any coherence.

In the first segment, the case of Harry Billings, the pacing of the story makes it seem more like an extended trailer than an actual movie. The plot, which is far too much for a short anthology segments whizzes through at a demented, frenetic pace and most scenes don't last for more than about thirty seconds to a minute. There are numerous and repetitive sequences of Harry picking and drugging women, them being strapped down and chopped up at the clinic which last for about 40 seconds each. There are also a whole bunch of subplots that hurdled through at breakneck speed. As it is the movie these parts are taken from seems to be a dodgy exploitive piece mostly centering around the death and dismemberment of young woman.

The second segment, the case of Gretta Connors is probably even goofier involving a young man who falls in love with a porn star getting forced into joining 'death-wish club',a group of decadent types who like to put themselves in outlandish dangerous situations involving elaborate death traps and killer insects. Effectively elaborate games of Russian roulette, whch they get a kick out of. This segment is even more disjointed than the last with even more of the plot being explained by the narrator, who in fact talks over characters at various points in the story. It is probably the most interesting of the segments with the elaborate death traps and the wacky premise.

The third and final segment is the case of Claire Hansen. It was watching this segment it was confirmed for me that Night Train to Terror was using condensed versions of existing shlock films as I had actually seen the full version of the film in question before. The plot is too messy and sprawling, with too many threads to go into much detail. I seem to recall that was the case with the full-length version and it is even more choppy and all over the place in its truncated form. Even in its shortened form this last segment drags a bit, despite the wacky nature of the story but there are some good aspects such as the the demonic villain Olivier, the Claymation demons and the over the top finale which involves a bloody open heart surgery.

For some reason the discussions of God and Satan are inter-cut with music clips from a very eighties pop group who are performing in another part of the train. Apparently the train is going to crash at dawn and God and Satan are discussing who will get the souls of the performers when it happens- the segments they watch in-between are apparently just a way for them to kill time. The music clips are incredibly cheesy and involves all that you would expect from bad eighties pop- big hair, leg warmers, halter tops, synthesisers, shoulder pads, mullets, headbands, gratuitous break-dancing and deeply cheesy and nonsensical lyrics.

On the whole, a weird little curiosity.

Night Train to Terror (1985)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

God and Satan are on board a train where a rock band is playing. The two talk about who is respected more and then we see three separate stories. The first story deals with a man who feels guilty over a drunk driving death that he caused. He finds himself involved in a strange experiment. The second story deals with a medical student who falls in love with a beautiful woman and gets drawn into a strange world of monsters. The final story has a detective (Cameron Mitchell) investigating a murder that leads to a Satanic playboy with special powers.

NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is a really, really bizarre little movie with an even more bizarre behind-the-scenes story. The only new footage here are the scenes dealing with the rock band and God and Satan. Everything else is footage taken from three completely different movies. What's so strange is that all three of those movies are available to view in their complete form so it's kind of pointless watching them chopped up to fit 20-30 minute segments.

The biggest problem with this movie is that all three stories are completely confusing and they never make too much sense. THere are so many logical issues with each of the three stories and it's easy to see why because all of them are missing over a hours worth of footage. To say that this film was a complete hack job would be fair and it's also fair to say that the studio was just trying to make some cash out of the previous films that I'm guessing they already owed. Why not cut them down, add a wrap-around story and try to pass it off as something new?

Whatever their reasons were, it's funny to think that NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR has remained easy to find over the years while the three other complete films (MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS, THE DARK SIDE TO LOVE and CATACLYSM) aren't as easy to track down, although THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE was released as a bonus feature for the Blu-ray release of NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR.

As it stands, this is a pretty hard film to judge simply because of the editing process. The end result is quite poor and it's hard to be entertained by NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR simply because the stories are so bad as they are presented here. To really judge them you'd need to see the complete films. As it stands, NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is pretty bad but the backstory is much more interesting.

As stated in other comments, this pandemonious cinematic nose-dive is a careless tangle of three of the director's previously released masterworks in condensed form. The admixture is then kneaded into what was presumably intended to pass off as an anthology film, naturally inclusive of a ridiculous wraparound story filmed specifically to make this fish-out-of-water gel somewhat. Unfortunately, what this slapdash recipe yields is an asymmetrical, crudely doctored Frankenstein monster. Truth is, NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is possibly the most disorienting cinematic achievement since PSYCHED BY THE 4-D WITCH...a feat, to be sure. I've been exposed to two of these stories in their original formats...DEATH WISH CLUB and CATACLYSM, both of which are somewhat interesting B minus trash flicks. The segment featuring 70s superstud John Phillip Law, however, I have yet to track down(something called SCREAM YOUR HEAD OFF/MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS, which looks to be a right inviting little crock-o-schlock).

Some heinous early MTV rock video styled nonsense is mashed up in the "new" portion of this palimpsest, guilty of some of the worst fashion bummers ever committed to film. NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is such an all-wrong royal faux-pa that to be unmoved by gleeful schadenfreude at its expense would seem next to impossible.

4/10

Night Train To Terror is a genuine modern classic. It's a three-part horror anthology edited from three movies, two of which were released separately (Cataclysm and The Death Wish Club) and the third of which was never properly finished. It doesn't make any damn sense, although Richard Moll appears in two segments complete with hair.

The stories are hosted by God (played by "Himself," really Ferdy Mayne) and Mr. Satan (played by "Lu Cipher," ha ha indeed) who sit on a train where a terrible breakdancing '80s band plays the same song over and over again. Highlights include, well pretty much everything. The first segment (the unfinished one) is the most extreme, featuring lots of sadistic violence and gratuitous nudity. The second, The Death Wish Club, is the weakest, although it's still basically a series of cheesy, fun death scenes. The third segment, Cataclysm, has been punched up with new footage of badly-animated stop motion monsters throwing dolls of the characters around.

Not one of the three stories is coherent, but the whole thing is immensely entertaining for fans of strange bad movies. Sit down with some friends and some kind of intoxicating substance (by which I obviously mean beer or other alcohol, I wouldn't advise anyone to take anything illegal, no sir) and you'll have a whale of a time with this one.