All Aboard, If You Have Nothing Better to Do

Some nights, you just really want to sit back, drink some wine, and watch what I predict will be a lousy Dead Pretty Teenagers Who Might Deserve Some of Their Fates direct-to-whatever-was-not-theaters at the time of its early 2000s release horror movie.

Unfortunately, this was one of those nights. 

Quick Plot: An American college wrestling team is touring eastern Europe. Four of the students and their assistant coach decide to party their last night in Russia, leading to them missing their morning train to Odessa and pissing off their pretty awful coach. A helpful English-speaking blond directs them to a Ukraine-bound train she's boarding, and before my cat can cough up a hairball that looks like Eli Roth, it's organ reaping time.

Remember those early post-Saw years in horror? Though I genuinely enjoy and often defend that franchise, I'm also the first to admit that its success bred some terribly ill-spirited, uninspired movies that hated humanity...especially the female kind.

Train apparently began life as a remake of Terror Train, but decided along the way that it would rather be Hostel with a spoonful of Turistas.

But also, with more would-be rapists urinating on a man about to be castrated.

Did I mention the POV is from the soon-to-be castrated dude, which means yes, writer/director Gideon Raff gives us a piss shot.

I added Train to my Amazon Prime queue after seeing the description as "horror on a train from Russia to Ukraine". As someone who's made that train trip twice and knows the terror of those cramped corners and floor toilets, I welcomed a change of setting. I wasn't expecting Shakespeare or, I don't know, something perfectly average, but I don't know that it's ever fun to watch something as outright ugly as Train.

Thora Birch makes a decent final girl, but also one devoid of any sense of fun before the slaying starts. As you'd expect, every victim is an ugly American without any charm and in some cases, with plenty of obnoxious attitude. There are a lot of chains. Not, like, Chain Letter-levels of chain quantities, but still: lots of chains. The gore is gooey and admittedly well executed, but of course, it's all done under that typical 2000s style of literal and figurative darkness. 

This movie hates the world. 

High Points
I was getting incredibly frustrated with the whole idea of a movie making its cast wrestlers only to have them so easily picked off by some very unhealthy looking organ harvesters, but at least the film remembered in its final fight

Low Points
Oh I don't know, probably the fact that after I groaned about a fairly graphic attempted rape, we go a few minutes before another young female character is carried off screaming by a group of lusty soldiers and that's the last we see of her

Lessons Learned
The trick to blending in when in Ukraine? A babushka

Chekhov's Law of Nipple Rings In Torture Porn tells us that if you introduce nipple rings in the first act, you must use use them as tools of extreme pain in the fifth

Eye transplants take less than 24 hours for the subject to be fully active sighted

I didn't realize anybody needed to hear this, much less a premed college student, but don't like, just GIVE your passport to anyone who asks, especially if said anyone has been making rape eyes at you all day

Rent/Bury/Buy
Blargh. I knew what I was getting into from the opening credits, wherein we just got a lot of closeups of oozing body parts, but still: Train is mean, the perfect representation of how unpleasant early 2000s horror was. If you're seeking that reminder, head to Amazon Prime. 

Bad Lieutenant 's Naughty Monkey

In queuing up 1994’s Monkey Trouble, I was really looking for two things:

-The monkey to wear a variety of hats

-Harvey Keitel to dress like a pirate and run through the beaches of Florida shouting “That’s my monkey!” with a vaguely European accent.

I received both.

Quick Plot: Young Eva (pronounced “Eh-va,” which is just annoying) longs to own a dog, but her square of a mom (Mimi Rogers) refuses due to Eh-va’s irresponsibleness, her stepfather’s allergies, and baby brother’s existence. Devastated not to have anything noteworthy to present at next month’s Show & Tell, Eh-va wanders the sidewalk in sadness only to befriend Sticky Fingers (pre-Mallrats, this just meant thieving), a runaway carpaccio monkey trying to escape the life of crime he’s thus far lived with Harvey Keitel’s pickpocket street performer.

Really, that’s all one needs. Monkey Trouble, much like Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, suffers a little from too polished a final product. The young Thora Birch is perfectly apt at playing a bratty but vaguely sympathetic tween, and while the idea of a kleptomaniac monkey seems fraught with wonders, it never really leads to any truly wacky shenanigans. 

Although fear not, Ed fans: we get monkey piss and farts 21 and 23 minutes in, respectively.

Also, we get pirate Harvey Keitel hamming it up like there was a sale on pork rinds. With blackened teeth and a Jack Sparrow wardrobe, the man gives Jon Karate Dog Voight a run for his immediately cashed paycheck and without it, Monkey Trouble would probably be insufferable, even with the occasional white boy rap group and adorable monkey wearing monkey pants. 

High Points

Did I mention that Harvey Keitel plays a petty thief dressed like a pirate with a pet monkey and bad accent?

Low Points

Did I mention that stuff happens in this film that does not include Harvey Keitel plays a petty thief dressed like a pirate with a pet monkey and bad accent?

Lessons Learned

Most pirates in the Caribbean are retired and own restaurants

All monkeys are afraid of snakes 

Even a monkey can appreciate the versatile use of a caboodle

Stray Observations

I understand mom is busy with a toddler, but shouldn’t she make mention of the fact that her 11 year old daughter draws with all the skill of a dyslexic infant with a crayon stuck to its foot?

The Winning Line

“What have you done to my monkey sweetheart?”

Because it’s Harvey Keitel asking this question to a little girl, and it’s fabulous

Standard Animals Doing Human Stuff Trope Checklist

New Kid In Town: X

Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: Check

Montage: Damn you, X

New Friendship: Check

Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult (Human): X. It's more 'inappropriate enemyship between young Thora Birch and pirate Harvey Keitel'

Evil Corporate Enemy: X

Original Song: X

Bully Comeuppance: X

Small Town Values: X

Back To Nature Moral: X. 

Overall Score: 2.5/10 

Disappointment everywhere!

A-Paws Meter

Meh. Harvey Keitel fans will certainly get their money’s worth (though sans typical Harvey Keitel money shot fans have come to expect from the often nude actor) and those who just really dig monkeys wearing tassled vests, Bermuda shorts, diapers, and backwards baseball caps might indeed find lots to love. For me, Monkey Trouble just didn’t have the full flavored cheese I’ve come to love in Animals Doing Human Stuff cinema.