Night Train to Terror

So Byron Yordan says to his uncle Philip one day "uncle Philip, me and some friends would like to do an MTV video but we have no talent and no idea, how can we make an MTV video uncle Philip?" Or groveling to that effect. To which Oscar winning script writer uncle Philip Yordan replies "why I know just the antidote to cure your ails, we'll grab three movies on which I recently worked ("Cataclysm", "Death Wish Club" and "Scream Your Head Off" which we never finished) and get old mate John Carr to graft them together like an elephant trunk onto a mouse. Then we'll edit you and your friends into the story as musicians travelling aboard the "Night Train To Terror".

And now you're up to date. Tony Giorgio and Ferdy Mayne play Satan and God respectively riding aboard the night train, on which said rock band mince about in Flashdance garb singing their signature tune ("Everybody's Got Something to Do, Everybody But You") while Giorgio and Mayne review a series of vignettes debating whether the characters should be acquitted to heaven or hell for their deeds. Essentially previews the three aforementioned movies, conjoining them for the absolute mothership of all horror anthologies. Lashings of sadism, nudity, an abattoir-sized load of body parts (no exaggeration) and nonsensical editing that you absolutely have to see before you depart this mortal coil.

John Philip Law is the mind programmed maniac who lures women to an asylum where Richard Moll lies in wait, hacksaw at the ready in the unfinished "Scream Your Head Off" while in "Death Wish Club" a misguided porn star is born and then inducted along with her smitten boyfriend into death defying games that test the mettle of brave participants - this one is pretty surreal with head-crushing, brain-frying gore galore. The final vignette is extracted from "The Omen" inspired "Cataclysm" starring Cameron Mitchell, Marc Lawrence and Faith Clift as God's desperate rearguard against Satan and his claymation army. It's well photographed but comes off the worst of the trio due to the clumsy truncation. Overall this anthology's construction is as ghastly as the special effects it previews and needs to be witnessed to be fully appreciated.

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.

NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is what happens when 3 full-length movies are stripped down to 20 minutes each, then used as "segments" of a so-called "anthology" film. The result is a catastrophic sack of cinematic sludge.

We're supposed to believe that the newer "wrap-around" story, featuring God and Satan on a train -complete with disco dancers!- is somehow related to the butchered remains of these three disparate movies. None of it makes one iota of sense! However, there are some laughs to be had.

The demonic bug, rattling head, stop-motion monsters, and Richard Moll gone berserk, are all highlights! Stare goggle-eyed as a flurry of nudity, blood, torture, mad science, Nazis, and a secret "death club" sail past!

HOW TO VIEW THIS "MOVIE" SOBER: #1- Perform the self-brain-removal-technique. #2- Place brain in a suitable container. #3- Crush container under an extremely heavy object. #4- Enjoy!...

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

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.