Night Train to Terror

This is a grab bag of a movie, with all sorts of things to offer as long as you don't expect to see a conventional film in any way, shape, or form. It has gore, nudity, bondage, humor, stupid stuff, smart stuff, and everything in between, AND MORE! I had to cut loose with this one, it's so much weird fun. I have to wonder what it would be like to watch this one on any kind of drugs. What we have is a train carrying a kitschy 1980s new wave band doing some hilariously dated vintage-MTV-style routines. Also on board are God and "Mr. Satan", who are engaged in competition for souls of some other people supposedly on the same train. (Of note also is the small role of the conductor, who has some cool, darkly humorous dialogue.) We get to see the cases of the people whose souls for which God and Satan are vying for, which, in actuality, are three different movies (the unfinished movie "Scream Your Head Off", "Death Wish Club", and "Cataclysm") cut down to size for your warped, brain-numbing enjoyment. Two of these entries feature Charles (a.k.a. Richard, or "Bull" from "Night Court") Moll! My favorite of all the stories is definitely the one that was culled from "Scream Your Head Off", which would've been a cool movie if they would have been able to complete it. What a shame! I swear Richard Moll makes for one memorable psycho in that one. Another thing I love is what God has to say about rock n' roll music! I tell you, if God were this cool, I'd be in church everyday! I dig this whole paste-up movie, as you can tell. It's this wild overload of stimuli, like they were just taking everything weird and off-the-wall they could think of and tossing it into one big, freaky mixing bowl. I admit the "Cataclysm" entry is more sluggish, but it's interesting in a lot of its own ways. (I love the on-air speech Moll gives: "What I'm about to say will cause you pain...") I am glad I was able to find this forgotten extravaganza of stylishly bad cinema for only two dollars, because it is loads of wacky fun.

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 (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.

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.

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