Night Train to Mundo Fine

Where can one even start on this film? It's most certainly one of the Top 5 worst films I've ever seen in my life, and winner of my impromptu "Most Incoherent Film" award, due to incredibly shoddy editing and exceptionally unmemorable performances. If anything, the best way to sum up the film is "Curly look-alike goes to Cuba, returns from Cuba, throws a man down a well, and dies."

The most nightmarish thing about the movie is not the poor acting, poorer writing (where the hell's the plot? WHAT the hell's the plot?), abysmal editing, grainy footage, or Curly in Hell as played by Coleman Francis. Rather, it's the rather paradoxal nature of the film. Individually (and even when put together), all of the aspects of the film are quite forgettable. Yet, once you've watched this film, you can somehow never forget it. Ever. It will haunt you for the rest of your life, taunting you for ever having experienced it. Even with the help of MST3K (where I and most others got a glimpse of this trainwreck), it can give you nightmares. Only recommended for the foolhardy or masochistic. All others should not view this film without a crash course in Coleman Francis' other catastrophes (Beast of Yucca Flats, Skydivers), or the aid of MST3K (thought admittedly, it doesn't help much).

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.

This is a truly awful movie. Keeping your attention on the dialogue is harder than holding a bar of wet soap. Sitting through that endless scene in the bunkhouse is like having a fifteen-minute continuous blackout; the moment it's over, you immediately forget what just happened. It is physically impossible to stay focused on this movie for more than about three words-- it's that painful.

That's not the only reason why this movie is impossible to comprehend. No scene in this movie seems to follow from anything else. Many scenes end with a shot of the main characters (who seem to appear in one shot, then vanish in the next, then reappear again as if nothing had happened) in a stationary plane; however, since the plane is never shown flying, it's impossible to tell if they have actually left or arrived. It doesn't help that every shot in the movie (including those supposedly in Cuba) was taken in the same small American town.

The movie begins with what is apparently a runaway convict, played by the flabby Mr. Francis himself. He gets together with about seven other people and they decide to invade Cuba (???), which actually doesn't seem like such a bad idea since as far as the movie's concerned the total population of Cuba is three soldiers and a man with a really fake beard (Castro.) This somehow gets around to a tungsten mine (back in America? who knows or cares?) and a man thrown into a well for no apparent reason.

This movie hurts. After you see this movie, you'll want to hurt it too. It's actually worth seeing just to experience the sheer awfulness of it; if you like bad movies, you'll get a laugh out of watching the line flubs, scene goofs, continuity jumps and gaping plot holes. But this movie is not funny so much as just pathetic.

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.

Come on, folks! Coleman deserves a break. If the film's credits said DIRECTED BY JEAN LUC GODARD critics would praise it as revolutionary "new wave" cinema.

Coleman challenges our conventional notions of narrative & structure. Coleman challenges our suspension of disbelief by DELIBERATELY making things fake & unconvincing, by distorting time, place & sequence in true "cinema verite" fashion. Remember, there are people out there who think Marcus Welby & Obi Wan Kenobi are REAL - so, rather than exploit the viewer, Coleman DEMANDS that we face our concepts of "reality."

Try an experiment: take just about ANY Godard film (but especially NUMERO DEUX) and pretend it's a COLEMAN FRANCIS film; you'll see what I mean. ANYONE can make a horrid self indulgent incompetent "movie" & be successful if the film has a European (preferably French) director's name on the credits... [note that Numero Deux is French for "#2" - translation: caca] ...Ok... RED ZONE CUBA really did hurt; it was abysmal; it was obvious that many script pages blew away while shooting & Coleman never noticed. It deserves a special place of honor with MONSTER A GO-GO, PLAN 9, ROBOT MONSTER and MANOS as one of the all time worst.

Coleman hurt me; I think I'm suffering the movie watcher's equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome... pardon me while I check out BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS again; I am sure to find relief therein. I will imagine BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is a Jean Luc Godard film...