Night Train to Terror (1985)

... aka: Night Train
... aka: Noche en el tren del terror (Night on the Terror Train)
... aka: Train express pour l'enfer (Express Train to Hell)

Directed by:
John Carr
Phillip Marshak
Tom McGowan
Jay Schlossberg-Cohen
Gregg C. Tallas

Here's a horror anthology fans of terrible / weird movies won't want to miss. It's a sloppy, carelessly slapped together and often downright inept trilogy of tales comprised of footage from one unreleased / unfinished (at the time) sleaze-gore flick, two edited-down feature length releases and unbelievable new linking scenes directed by Schlossberg-Cohen. Because much is obviously lost reducing the full features down to a shadow of their former selves, narration is employed to try to make sense of it all. An utterly ridiculous - though somewhat amusing - framing sequence features God (according to the credits playing "Himself" but actually Ferdinand "Ferdy" Mayne of The Fearless Vampire Killers fame) and Satan (who is credited as "Lu Sifer" but is actually character actor / former magician Tony Giorgio, who's a long way from The Godfather) going back-and-forth on a train, viewing "cases" on a large TV screen and then trying to stake claim on the souls of its participants. And that's not even the really weird part! That would be the opening hilariously awful music video-style choreographed intro featuring dancers in spandex, headbands and ripped sweatsuits and an unbelievably stupid and mean-spirited theme song about how we're complete losers for wasting our time watching this. After all, "Everybody's got somethin' to do... everybody but you!" Yeah, yeah. Tell me about it.

First up is "The Case of Harry Billings." Harry (John Phillip Law) is a "hard-working salesman" and a drunk who kills his new bride on their wedding night after running his car over a bridge. He wakes up at a sinister sanitarium strapped down to a bed in a padded room. Before long, Dr. Fargo (Sharon Ratcliff) and Dr. Brewer (Arthur M. Braham) are giving him shock treatments and shooting him up with a “hypnotic injection” to make him do their bidding. They then send him into town to drug and kidnap a succession of young, attractive women who are brought back to the clinic, stripped naked, tied down and then chopped up with a meat cleaver or hacksaw so their body parts can be sold to “medical schools all around the world.” Dr. Fargo falls for Harry and gives Dr. Brewer a lobotomy to get him out of the way, with hopes of running the establishment with her new lover instead. "Charles" / Richard Moll (with hair) has an early role as sadistic manservant Otto, who makes sure to add a little rape and torture to the pre dismemberment ritual and keeps a collection of pickled several heads in jars labeled with the owners' names!

Directed by Carr way back in 1982 under the title Scream Your Head Off, this was never finished or released at the time, so what's shown in Train was the first look anyone ever got of this footage. Based on what's seen here, this looks like something I'd rather enjoy. The plot seems fun (cut from this reduced version is a subplot about a white slavery ring where the better-looking females are sold to Middle Eastern sheiks!) and it's filled with nudity, gore and sleaze gore. There's a bloody decapitation and hacked-up body parts are hung on hooks in a white, blood-spattered meat locker. In the 90s, many were surprised when the “full” version of Scream was finally released on VHS by Simitar. I've not see that cut, but supposedly it was just cobbled together using footage from the first incomplete shoot. Carr also had nothing to do with that release and prepped his own version of the film with new scenes shot on video. He brought Law back to reprise his role, added a subplot involving Marilyn Monroe (!), removed most of the questionable content and then released it as the PG-13 rated MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS.

Before our next story begins, we're treated to some more of that ridiculous song / dance routine plus some soul bargaining. Verdict? A one-way ticket to hell for both of the doctors and Otto, but Harry gets a little leniency with 100 years in purgatory. “The Case of Gretta Connors” (also by Carr) is an abridged version of THE DEATH WISH CLUB (1984), which I just viewed here a few days ago so I can tell you exactly what was added and what was taken away. In this cut, the narrator makes Gretta (Meridith Haze) out to be an innocent small town aspiring musician (a far cry from the full movie!) who's corrupted by wealthy, older "Svengali" George Youngmeyer (J. Martin Sellers) but then leaves him for college student Glenn (Rick Barnes). “Burning with revenge,” George decides to get back at the two young lovers by introducing them to a “Death Club” where rich sadists get their thrills putting themselves into life-threatening situations. This drops a lot of what made the original film so interesting and special and instead concentrates almost entirely on the club (just a subplot in the full feature) in scenes that involve a killer bug, electric chairs and a construction ball.

Newly-added scenes / shots include: 1. A girl seen only from behind (who's supposed to be Gretta) looking at a magazine. 2. A shot of a fog-enshrouded model castle to represent the Death Club. 3. Close shots of the “Tanzanian winged beetle” in a jar. 4. Numerous shots of the beetle, brought to life with very crude stop-motion animation, replacing all of the shots of the plastic one. 5. A brand new scene of the beetle flying around outside and attacking a couple about to have sex. It stings the guy in the face and causes his head to explode, which spews blood all over his screaming girlfriend. 6. The control panel used to activate the electric chairs has been replaced by a talking robotic one. 7. An awful-looking dummy head representing the African Prince shakes, vibrates and smokes while he's electrocuted with a few additional shots of his melted hand and smoking corpse afterward. Also, a new country music song has been added and the Italian character has been ridiculously re-dubbed.

Back on the train, Satan claims he wants Gretta's soul but God says he'll have to settle for George and the other death club members instead. The argument gets heated, God threatens to open the gates of hell (?!) and then we go visit the passengers and hear the three most horrifying words in this film: “From the top!” Yes, it's that song again. This time we also get slow-motion break-dancing and some “worm” action from Byron Yordan, who's been lip-synching the main theme this entire time. Byron is the son of the film's writer, Philip Yordan, which explains why he's getting so much screen time. That also explains why Yordan's fourth and final wife, Faith Yordan aka Faith Clift, has the lead role in the final story despite the fact this woman cannot act to save her life.

The train porter then introduces story #3; “The Case of Claire Hansen,” a reduced version of 1980's Cataclysm aka The Nightmare Never Ends aka Satan's Supper, directed by Marshak, McGowan and Tallas. Claire (Clift), a highly-respected surgeon, devout Catholic and wife of Nobel Prize winning writer James (Moll again, this time wearing an oily, gray-streaked hairpiece) is having nightmares about demon faces and a young SS Officer (Robert Bristol) gunning down an all-female Jewish string quartet (!) Meanwhile, elderly Nazi hunter Abraham Weiss (Marc Lawrence) sees the same Nazi general who killed his family (and the same guy from Claire's dreams) on TV... only he hasn't aged a day in thirty-five years. Abraham is unable to convince a cynical police lieutenant (Cameron Mitchell) about any of this, so he grabs a gun and decides to pay the former Nazi, who's actually the "devil's emissary" and goes by the name Mr. Olivier, a visit. After he's killed, his corpse ends up at the hospital where Claire works and she notices he not only has a concentration camp tattoo but also a “666” burned into his stomach. All of this strangeness coincides with James' controversial new book “God Is Dead,” which he thinks will be the most important work of his career, while his wife (later revealed to be “the chosen one” to battle Satan) and others in the know plead with him not to publish it.

I won't really go into too much detail about this one as I still have to eventually write a full review for it on here, but I will say this segment doesn't make a lick of sense. The fact they used nearly twice as much footage from Cataclysm as they did for the other two shorts and the first two still make more sense should clue us in to just how kooky Cataclysm is in its uncut form. Just like with the “Greta Connors” segment, new effects shots have been sprinkled throughout to try to spruce things up. One of these is a simple, passable rubber witch face with fangs and glowing eyes, which is included in several scenes. Another bit involves a tall, skinny, silver-colored stop-motion monster with red, glowing eyes. It's hysterically funny and random, especially as it squashes a shaggy-haired brunette actor who suddenly becomes a claymation doll with short blonde hair during his death. Other newly-added stop motion bits involve a giant spider crawling out of the Earth and pulling a guy down into a hole and a demon that makes a doll-man fall onto a cross and burn up. Now I'm a huge fan of stop-motion, so I liked these new additions despite how poorly-executed and improperly integrated into the story they were.

After “Claire” concludes, we're back on the train. Satan can't have Claire's soul, but God leaves it up to her to decide if she wants to deal with James or not for all eternity. The train, which is usually shown roaring down the tracks courtesy of obvious stock footage, is scheduled to crash and kill all of the musicians and dancers on board (praise Jesus!), which leads up to a hilarious final shot of the train ascending into heaven! And then we hear it (that damn song) yet again over the end credits. What is that now? Four times? Five times? I've lost count. While all of this is undoubtedly horribly edited, acted and written, incompetent, corny as hell and pretty much just plain terrible from start to finish, there's so much going on at all times and such an overload of 80s cheese that I pretty much loved every second of it.

Unlike the three films this pilfered most of its footage from, Train amazingly did play in theaters and was given a release by Yordan's short-lived company Visto International Inc. in 1985. That was followed by a 1986 VHS release from Prism, a horrible EP mode tape from Simitar in the later 90s, numerous cheap public domain DVDs (Alpha, Mill Creek, etc.) and, finally, a remastered DVD / Blu-ray combo from Vinegar Syndrome, who've thrown in the feature-length Death Wish Club (which they've re-titled Gretta) as a bonus feature. IMDb incorrectly lists Shiver as an alternate title but it's actually the fourth (!) American VHS release title for Cataclysm. Oh well. Dance with me, dance with me! Come on and dance with me, dance with me! Damn it! Get out of my head!

SBIG

Death Wish Club, The (1984)

... aka: Carnival of Fools
... aka: Case of Gretta Connors, The
... aka: Dark Side to Love, The
... aka: Erskine Caldwell's Gretta
... aka: Gretta

Directed by:
John Carr

One cannot really discuss Death Wish Club in much detail without talking about three other films it will forever be associated with: Cataclysm (1980), Scream Your Head Off (1982 / 1992) and Night Train to Terror (1985). The uneven and sometimes amateurish but very interesting Satanism tale Cataclysm was first announced in 1977 and began filming later that same year according to an article in The San Diego Union. There are numerous stories floating around about what happened from there, but production was closed down for awhile and then picked back up again in the spring of 1979. By that point, they were filming in Utah. After another round of shoots occurred about a year later, it was finally complete. No less than three directors; former documentary filmmaker Tom McGowan, Greek-born Grigorios Thalassinos aka Gregg C. Tallas (who started out as an editor) and former theater actor turned hardcore porn director Phillip Marshak (of Dracula Sucks fame), are credited with the finished product and I'm not sure who filmed what, where and when. I can find no evidence that Cataclysm ever played theatrically, but the first example of a VHS release I could find here in the U.S. was a 1986 tape from Academy, who've re-titled it Satan's Supper. Because it featured known actors like Cameron Mitchell, Marc Lawrence and “Charles” (Richard) Moll in the cast, the film would go on to become a real workhorse on the early home video market; garnering releases from countless labels which all utilized different artwork and one of three different titles (the other common one was The Nightmare Never Ends).

Director John Carr's Scream Your Head Off, a sleazy tale of suicide, hypnosis, bodily dismemberment and a psychiatric clinic fronting for a white slavery ring, was primarily filmed in 1982 but the director never quite finished it. Unbeknownst to him, well over a decade later someone else cobbled what he had shot together and the film was finally released to video under its original title in the mid 90s. Carr himself later shot additional scenes to add to it, removed most of the gore and all of the nudity from the original shoot and prepared yet another PG-13 release called MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS, which popped up on DVD in 2006. While the still-unfinished / unreleased SYHO was still languishing in limbo, Carr made another film based very loosely on the 1955 Erskine Caldwell novel Gretta, which was first announced in 1980 (with a different director and producer attached), was filmed in 1982, bears a 1983 copyright date and was the subject of trade screenings in 1984 under the title The Dark Side to Love. A year later it made its way to home video on the Regal label under the new title Death Wish Club. Two years later AIR Video would re-release the movie under yet another title, Carnival of Fools; an apt name considering many people were potentially being tricked into sitting through a film they'd already seen.

So what do all of these films have in common? For starters, each was written by Philip Yordan, an Oscar-winning former producer, writer and major Hollywood player whose entire career is shrouded in controversy and mystery. Yordan is best known for fronting for numerous blacklisted writers during the 50s and 60s and taking screen credit for their screenplays, but there's a lot more to his fascinating story than meets the eye. (For a very worthwhile read about his career, let me now direct you to a well-written article from Alan K. Rode that can be read RIGHT HERE). Aside from Yordan, what really ties these movie together forever is that each of these feature-length films were cut down to about 20 minutes, re-edited, re-titled and had new gore and stop motion special effects added so they could be included in the haphazard horror anthology Night Train to Terror (1985). Ironically, far more people have seen Night Train than any of the full features it ineptly truncated into rubbish. That's unfortunate in the case of Death Wish Club, which is actually a fascinating little movie in its full, 91-minute form.

Filthy rich eccentric George Youngmeyer (J. Martin Sellers) doesn't care much about traditional love or sex but still fancies himself “the last of the great lovers” and considers “one-sided love” to be “the only true emotion.” In other words, he's something of a cynical masochist who wants to meet someone he can lavish with money, gifts and his love; a person who doesn't necessarily have to give a shit about him. Tellingly, in real life, Yordan had once had an affair with, and been jilted by, actress Simone Simon of Cat People (1942) fame. A series of other failed relationships and marriages later, he was quoted (as per the article linked above) as saying “I married them [his first three wives] and supported them in a life style none of them experienced before they met me. That's all I had to offer.” 

George meets his perfect match selling popcorn at a carnival. She – Gretta Connors (Meridith Haze) – is young, pretty and has no issue quitting her menial job and moving in with him after he shoves hundred dollar bills down the front of her shirt. Gretta soon proves to be rude, weird, foul-mouthed, obnoxious, slutty, mentally-imbalanced and uncultured (“I hate Chopin... I'm glad Chopin's dead!”). She wants George to make her a star, so he puts her in porn movies instead. It's in one of these movies that twenty-something college med student / army vet Glenn Marshall (Rick Barnes) sees her and becomes instantly infatuated. He manages to track her down to a smoky nightclub called Club Manhattan where she performs piano in a jazz ensemble wearing just a jacket and a leotard (!) George immediately warns him to stay away because she “lives in the fourth dimension.” Glenn's little fantasy of meeting a beguiling young beauty is quickly extinguished upon meeting Gretta, who proves to be a little too sexually aggressive and outlandish for his tastes.

Philip Yordan putting in a cameo as a "Dirty Old Moviegoer."

Glenn returns to school and work, but a few weeks later George sends his flamboyant male chauffeur Mary Contrary ("Paul" / Norm Keefer) to fetch him because Gretta won't leave a steaming-hot bathtub and stop pretending she's a fish (!!) unless he does. Glenn ends up sleeping with her (in front of George), the two then start dating and she moves into his apartment, proving to be quite the handful in the process. She eats corn flakes and parades around in front of Glenn's uptight mom while topless and refuses to put on clothes when he asks her to get dressed or have friends over. She sells his TV, moves in a huge piano and wants sex all the time. As far as Gretta is concerned, “as long as you can get it up,” everything's OK. When she's not having sex, she's off in her own little world. I guess that's “the fourth dimension.”

Eventually, Glenn is dragged to a party by George and Gretta where he meets a handful of other weirdos who indulge in deadly games. The small secret society, which includes Contessa Pacelli ("Anne Fairchild" / Toni Covington), Federico Libuse ("William Charles" aka associate producer William C. Moore) and Prince Flubutu (Mark Ridley), have each had a near death experience in their past and now get together occasionally to get their jollies putting themselves in potentially fatal Russian Roulette-like scenarios so they can relive “the exquisite ecstasy of death.” After barely surviving getting a fatal sting from a “Tanzanian winged beetle,” Glenn decides he's had enough. He attempts to move on with his life yet again but is rejected by his former girlfriend (Theresa Jenson) when he tries to rekindle things and she (rightfully) suspects he's still in love with Gretta. Next thing he knows, George is showing up at his apartment informing him that Gretta has killed herself.

Right after Gretta's funeral, Glenn goes to Club Manhattan and discovers a now short-haired and very much alive Gretta is still performing there, only decked out in male drag and going by the name of Charlie White. Her suicide attempt, preexisting schizo tendencies and trauma have all caused her to revert to this all-new male personality. Problem is, “he” is straight and Glenn wants the old Gretta back. A shrink buddy recommends our hero go ahead and rape her to shock her back into reality (!) but things don't go quite as smoothly as planned. Glenn finds himself back at the death club several times against his wishes; once strapped to an electric chair and another time held at gunpoint and forced to get inside a sleeping bag while a 1250 pound construction ball swings overhead! There's also a strange comic subplot involving an elderly next door neighbor couple who get their kicks keeping tabs on Glen's sex life and even stranger scenes where Glenn crashes a drag queen wedding ceremony (!) and then uses karate on kidnappers.

Genuinely bizarre, perplexing, tongue-in-cheek, erratic, uneven, frequently hilarious, sometimes eerie, noir-ish and intense and thoroughly one of a kind and entertaining, this refuses to tie itself down to the conventions of just one genre and truly deserves some kind of cult following it has yet to receive. It's also one of those cases where rough production values and some amateurish acting actually improve the end product by enhancing its charm and quirkiness. Not to imply that all the acting here is bad. Quite the contrary actually. Sellers is excellent in his role as a decadent older gentleman / Yordan stand-in and also narrates the proceedings and Barnes does a fine job as the straight-laced, understandably dumbfounded central figure who takes a plunge into a pit of kooky, dangerous oddballs hoping to pull the woman he's grown to love out with him. Lead actress Haze gives an extremely memorable, animated and colorful performance which is, at times, wildly amateurish, but never uninteresting. Only a couple of the supporting players, most notably Keefer, are able to really bring their small roles to life, but every little bit helps. At points, audio problems are an issue and certain lines from certain actors clearly had to be dubbed in later by others.

The biggest surprise of all is that this is a more serious-minded, personal and intelligently-written film than one might expect. Perhaps the true key to unlocking its intentions is keeping in mind its original title, The Dark Side to Love. Chip away all the eccentricities and underneath you have an atypical love story and an insightful documentation about the rocky, sometimes scary road one travels down in virtually any romantic relationship. We follow the Glenn character throughout the whole process, from his initial feelings of lust that first draw him to someone he doesn't even really know, to the distrust and the jealousy once the two begin actually dating and his feelings intensify on unstable ground, to all of the strange and scary revelations that threaten to drive the two apart... After awhile, Glenn finds himself unable to move forward and puts everything at risk (even his own life) for Gretta. Brains, dignity, self-respect and common sense right out the window? Yeah, that's true love for ya. Things conclude with a final scene that's both poignant and perfect.

After numerous VHS releases throughout the 80s and 90s, this received a bare bones DVD release (which appears to be a decent tape transfer) from Trinity in 2007. In 2013, Vinegar Syndrome released it again under yet another new title (Gretta) and included it as an extra on their Night Train to Terror DVD / Blu-ray release. As happy as I am to see this finally available to the masses in good, remastered condition, in another way it's sad that its final epitaph is being an extra "bonus feature" to a notoriously awful headliner that it is far superior to.

★★★