Beyond the Door III

Forget about the unrelated title "Beyond the Door III", as its better represented under "Death Train" or "Amok Train". What starts off as an optimistically ominous Italian supernatural occult feature eventually falls into cheesy and senseless absurdness, but even so it manages to stay reasonably diverting. The premise's opening build up is atmospheric, spooky and alienating, but when the staged action hit's the train it becomes ludicrously brainless. Forget about making any sense of it (yep it's strange and baffling), and just go along for the unpredictable, but farcical train ride of 'doom'. Director Jeff Kwitny uses the creepy, louring, out-cast East European environment to great effect, and ups the tatty, macabre gore effects when it counted. He plasters it with cheap shocks, but the outrageously graphic deaths are amusingly inventive and impulsive. There are some memorable ones too. An inane script and wishy-washy story is made up of frantic ideas, and novelties that never really seem to come together, but at least it stays in character by keeping the story moving like a speeding train. Some sequences involving the run-away train (that's ritually controlled by Satanists) are balefully destructive, but other times you get a good laugh when the miniature train model comes into play. Adolfo Bartou's sweepingly agile and large scale cinematography is very well-implemented, and at times looked to good for such a production. Telegraphing nearly everything is the pounding, dread-induced music score of generically leering and terrible cues. The performances are pretty wretched, but Bo Svenson's little screen time makes an impression.

Everyone who gave this movie a bad review is fired from EVER reviewing a b-horror movie again. There are two kinds of horror movies...There are the ones such as THE EXORCIST and HALLOWEEN which, for whatever reason, have mass appeal. And then there're the ones like BEYOND THE DOOR 3, obscure low budget oddities which suddenly appear on video store new release walls with a no-name cast and crew and really nothing to recommend them other than a really neat cover box. They're usually made on a shoestring budget with plots recycled from other movies. But they have only one goal and that is to entertain. And BEYOND THE DOOR 3 certainly succeeds in that area. I've seen this little gem of a flick more than a dozen times and I'm thoroughly entertained each time. To hell with characterizations and plodding plot devices, this little flick wants to entertain and scare you, and it does! When you rent a movie like BEYOND THE DOOR 3 you should have some idea of what's in store for you. Especially since it's a part 3 so you're renting it having probably seen the first two installments. So you shouldn't be disappointed because it's too cheesy or flatly directed, etc. That's what fans of these types of movies want. So shame on everyone who watched this movie and was disappointed. Go watch MATLOCK with Grandma, you sissies.

A group of students gets this supposedly great opportunity to witness ancient rituals in Europe, only to learn that they've been targeted for death. They head for the hills, and hop a train that starts barreling through the countryside once the crew has been decimated.

Re-christened "Beyond the Door III" to capitalize on the otherwise unrelated Italian horror films, "Death Train", or "Amok Train", is a generally good time. The viewer WILL have to put up with the expected cheesy acting and goofy plotting, but director Jeff Kwitny does manage to make up for this with a respectable amount of menace & atmosphere. The setting is the most unusual aspect, making this a sort of genre spin on the earlier critical favorite "Runaway Train".

People looking for great European horror nonsense will find a fair bit to enjoy here, as there is some absolutely great gore coupled with some memorable murder set pieces. The film does get off to a rough start, but improves once the assorted expendable victims get on the train; the final half hour is the best part.

The acting may not be quality acting, but most of it is sincere enough. Mary Kohnert ('Star Trek: The Next Generation', "Big Man on Campus") is appealing in the lead, and token name actor Bo Svenson ("Special Delivery", "The Delta Force") does an amusing job of hamming it up a bit as a dubious professor.

Overall, decent entertainment for fans of this kind of thing.

Six out of 10.

Sometimes you stumble over those kind of movies where the main and haunting question is - what the heck did the writer(s) smoke!? Beyond the Door III aka Amok Train aka Death Train is such a movie. What we get is some ancient satanic ritual in a rural community of Yugoslavia mixed with a good part of what is some kind of early and low budget Unstoppable (Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, 2010) - in one scene the runaway (demon-possessed!?) train even drives thru a small lake without any railway tracks just to kill some of the poor Americans! But on the other side we get a fine sniff of gore here and there and some well composed dark and weird mood including some satanic ritual (just too delicious the scene where the old witch screams: she's not a ******!) and some fine visuals (for a B-movie).

My rate would be a straight 5 but for the smoking question I add 1 more - so my overall rate is a well-deserved 6.

Alternatively known as Death Train, this horror flick really show amateur qualities, whether script ("write as you go" dialogue is unbelievably bad) directing, whatever. The film does retain a wide intrigued curiosity of story, and the graphic violence has a style, yet plot is muddled (really hard to follow), which is really the film's problem, if done at a rushed effort. Supposedly the story is of a group of lucky American students who go to Europe to witness a ritual, where the virgin girl of the group, unawares she's just lost her mother in a horrific and cruel car accident, is being set up in a sacrifice, where she must lose her virginity quick, as a slightly creepy Russian satanist (veteran Bo Svenson- the best performance I've seen out of the guy) attains her. When all escaping, they board the train, which turns out to be the one from hell, like that death ship, that brought evil and death. As only seeing the film a few times, the last time, only the other day, I didn't realize how gory this film was, most of it, thanks to that notorious killer train. You don't give two hoots about any of the characters except, our virgin a little, and her peers who seem to taunt her and cast her out, doesn't help their likability status. But amidst the sloppiness of the film, this forgettable flick still rises above this and it's other painfully palpable faults, which will warrant some more views in the future, but again Svenson, the show stealer, is fantastic.