My review was written in May 1985 after a Times Square screening.
"Night Train to Terror" is a hodge-podge of at least three separate horror films, crudely edited together as an omnibus picture.
Wraparound footage has God (Ferdy Mayne sporting an arresting white beard) and the Devil (Lu Sickler) quarreling on a train over which human souls they will get, giving rise to three case histories. (An inept rock group is also on the train with its souls up for grabs, and irritating musical numbers interrupt the action at random.)
First two cases were filmed circa 1982 by director John Carr and play like excerpts from unfinished features, both presented here with the entire story carried by voiceover narration. John Phillip Law toplines in "Harry", sent to a sanitarium after his car crashes, where mad doctors and a crazed orderly (Charles Moll, of tv's "Night Court" series) use him to pick up pretty girls who are then killed, their organs sold to medical schools. Segment includes lots of nudity, gore and many shots filmed out-of-focus. Next, Meridith Haze portrays "Gretta", an aspiring pianist, duped into joining The Death Club, where jaded folks play fatal, sadistic games.
Finale, apparently shot in 1979 as a feature title "Cataclysm" (which received an R rating in 1981 from the MPAA on its own), is a religious tract in which veteran screenwriter Philip Yordan gets on a soapbox. James Hansen (Charles Moll, again) is a Nobel prize winner who has written a book "God Is Dead" and goes on tv preaching his anti-religion party line. He gets his comeuppance from an ageless Nazi named Olivier who in fact is the devil's emissary. Cameron Mitchell appears as a cop hunting Olivier.
Mishmash features stock footage, including widescreen shots hilariously "squeezed" in an attempt to match the other scenes, plus several stop motion animation monsters that comically battle tiny puppet versions of the cast members.
