O Último Trem para Veneza

for some reason this film keeps being put on TV opposite late night infomercials. however, it's not any more entertaining than they are. u can sleep to it though and even listen to CDs while its on and u won't miss a thing. not sure if this could have been safely released theatrically without bomb threats against the projectionist. someone should probably confiscate all copies of this baloney and do atomic testing near them. its possible this film causes cancer.It also begs the question: why there isn't a "zero" rating on this site? I'm wondering if the director really knows how bad this is and whether he was able to be paid for it. Maybe the director's name really is alan smithee.. or maybe it should be.

What a mess. I bought the laserdisc of this years ago, an impulse purchase, because of Hugh Grant. Up to that point I had enjoyed everything I'd seen him in. After suffering through watching the film, all I could think was that the writer(s) and director must have been doing vastly different types of drugs resulting in an incomprehensible train wreck (pun intended) of a film. Neither Grant's charm nor McDowell's depth and style can save this one. The re-titling of the film to "Train to Hell" is probably the best thing the distributors have done. At least they're being honest that this is a train ride to hell in a handbasket. I haven't bothered to watch the film since (just can't bring myself to torture myself that way again).

This is in my top five worst movies of all time. This film caused me to ask myself many questions, the main one being, why would anyone invest time and money in producing such a stupid film. Bizarrely, it featured some fairly reputable actors. I can only guess they were on crack at the time.

I could discern no coherent plot and have no idea why a girl jumps out of the window at the end. Even more bizarrely, after she jumps out of the window and Hugh manages to catch her (quite miraculously) everybody smiles and the triumphant music begins. Wasn't anyone worried about why a young girl should want to jump out of a window??? In case you watched the beginning and switched it off, as I regret not having done, and you are wondering, who was the Malcolm Macdowell character? No explanation is ever given. He pops up every now and then with an intriguing expression on his face.

The only redeeming feature of this film is that you can have a laugh at the clever techniques used to prolong the film making it up to an astonishing 1 hour and twenty minutes. For example: - lots of pointless slow motion shots with gay music -Hugh and the woman make love at least four times and he kisses her breasts on every occasion. (what kind of mother has sex with a stranger in a train while her daughter is asleep presumably in the same carriage)? - Shots of Macdowell's face every few minutes This film is so bad you should probably watch it

If you like experimental films then you might get a modicum of enjoyment out of the non-linear story line, interleaved editing, and Kenneth Anger-style fantasy imagery, but to the rest of us it is a jumbled mess. As the film progresses, many cards are laid on the table, but not a one of them is played. The dialog is embarrassingly bad, and the meager plot meanders in a few different directions, but doesn't develop any of them. It wasn't even bad enough to laugh at. The ending came close to being laughable, but when I realized that this was in fact the end I was furious at having wasted so much time. The ONLY redeeming quality of the film was the images of Venice during Carnival. That was quite haunting and beautiful, but not nearly worth the boredom and frustration one must endure in the vain attempt to make sense out of this cluttered mishmash.

Movies that parallel reality with a surreal, dream-like existence run the risk of alienating any audience not completely in tune with the director's vision; in this case, that alienation turns to unintended comedy when journalist Hugh Grant boards the Orient Express from Munich to Venice, where neo-Nazis have sneaked aboard and threaten to cause chaos. Also on-board this train trip to Hell is Tahnee Welch as a recently-widowed stage actress, her little girl and caretaker, plus an internationally known dancer, some drag queens, and Malcolm McDowell as a tough-talking "Stranger". From what I could decipher, it appears Grant blames the presence of the Nazis on himself (he apparently wrote an unflattering piece about Skinheads), but once the train pulls into Venice (in time for Carnival!) all that business aboard the Express seems to have been forgotten. It would be impossible to credit director Carlo U. Quinterio for his 'unique' vision; the filmmaker blatantly copies the criss-crossing style of Nicolas Roeg's thriller "Don't Look Now" (also set in Venice), creating an indecipherable scenario wherein the editor was allowed to go berserk with the flash-forwards and flashbacks. The movie is so cluttered up with murky minutiae that it allows the straight-faced proceedings some camp value (how else to describe the cobbling together of Nazi atrocities and S&M imagery with sex scenes involving Grant nibbling on Welch's breasts--shown again under the closing credits!). Low-budget mess resembles those Golan-Globus pictures from the 1980s, and poor Grant seems at a complete loss for words. NO STARS from ****