Smorgasbor
of Crappola
MOVIES
NIGHT
TRAIN TO TERROR
(1984)
Starring
Richard Moll

After recently viewing
and reviewing such disappointing features as "Frozen
Alive", "The Screaming
Skull", and "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's
Daughter", this bad
movie was just what I needed. The story makes no sense,
but it's super cheesy,
has blood and boobs, and has quick cuts that almost
force you to pay attention
(not that you're rewarded for it).
I really am having trouble
digesting all I saw in this movie. Where else
can you find breakdancing,
Nazis, God and Satan, and claymation all in the
same movie?? They're
all here, though! The movie starts with what is
essentially a music
video, and boy does it scream "80s"!! The flashdance
style, the hair, the
musicians not really playing their instruments, oh, and
of course, the fog machine!
These singing and dancing teens bookend a bunch
of stories with their
not-so-enjoyable caterwauling of "Everybody's got
something to do...
everybody but you!" They must have known their
audience, because anyone
with anything to do would not be watching this
movie.
So, I guess this band
is playing on a train, and the entities who embody
good and evil are discussing
the fates of those on board the train - I guess
the train is to crash
at dawn (A deserving fate for the Menudo wannabes).
And then we're told
of people's stories, and then judge their worthiness.
The first guy is a salesman
who crashes on his wedding night, and his wife
dies. He ends
up in a sanitarium where they hyponize him and give him
roofies that he uses
to seduce women and bring them back so that Richard
Moll ("Bull" from Night
Court!) can molest them and chop them up, so that
they can sell the body
parts on the black market. Does that make any sense?
The cuts between scenes
are laughable as almost all continuity is lost. It
truly is bizarre to
watch.
The next story (after
an interlude with the "Go-Gos") features a popcorn
vendor who is given
hundreds of dollars by a wealthy man to come home with
him, and she does.
He turns her into a porn star. Then, some college kid
(who looks about 35)
who stopped off at a frat house for a beer, and was
subjected to one of
her pornos, falls in love with her, and becomes
determined to find her.
He does and they fall in love (how hollywood!). By
the way, a narrator
(who is not any of the characters from any of the
stories) occassionally
has to fill us in on details since the action cuts
away so swiftly.
One gets the feeling that they've heavily editted 3 films
and tossed them together
to make this movie. Actually, that makes a lot of
sense - that may be
exactly what they did.
Well, the third and final
story involves a minion of Satan who hasn't aged a
day in a hundred years,
and a religious woman who must confront him.
There's some claymation
monsters, and a shot of goat leg, and "666"
tattoes... I don't
know, it was just weird.
Many bizarre things in
this one. A "death club", where the first rule of
death club is...
someone's gonna die. Whether it's by a deadly winged
beetle, or an electrocution
computer (!), or by a wrecking ball. Is it me
or were all the character's
lines in these scenes overdubbed? The movie
also has a good amount
of gore (a head chopping scene, an exploding face
scene, and a shocking
head scene all come to mind) and a healthy amount of
boobage (mostly in the
first part). That, and the quick jumps from shot to
shot kept me interested
in this one, even if I didn't know what the hell was
going on. I'd
definitely recommend this for a bad movie night - relax with
a couple friends and
a keg of beer, and try to figure this one out!
Quality: 2.0 Visuals:
2.5 Intensity: 2.5 Laughability: 5.5 Gore: 5.0
T&A: 3.5
OVERALL RATING: 3.5
reviewed
2004
|