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

L'occhio dietro la parete (1977)

... aka: Crystal Man, The
... aka: Entrega, La (The Delivery)
... aka: Eyes Behind the Wall
... aka: Voyeur Pervers (Perverse Voyeur)

Directed by:
Giuliano Petrelli

Ivano (Fernando Rey) is a rich, wheelchair-bound writer in need of some inspiration just as much as his much-younger, sexually-neglected wife Olga (Olga Bisera) is in need of some male companionship. The couple have rented an apartment on their property to self-destructive loner Arturo (John Phillip Law); an eccentric man they hand-picked because of his good looks and the aura of mystery surrounding him. Using some strange electronic periscope device, the two are able to spy on their new tenant and get their vicarious jollies that way, but both want to go even further than mere spying. Ivano would like to discover what makes this "strange animal" tick to get him out of his creative slump and Olga, who initially feels a little guilty about intruding on this stranger's life, finds herself excited by the prospect of stalking Arturo and breaking into his apartment while he's away to gather "evidence." Together, the two question his "avant garde" musical tastes, catalogue all of his books and snoop through his belongings, but aren't able to really come up with anything. At her husband's behest and encouragement, Olga eventually sets out to befriend and then seduce the sexually-confused Arturo. The kinky couple probably wouldn't have bothered had they seen him strangling a woman aboard a train in the pre-credits sequence...

Often lumped together with numerous other Italian horror films and mysteries from this time in the giallo sub-genre, this psycho-drama doesn't really fit the giallo mold at all. There's almost no action, no blood or gore, no suspense thrills, no real mystery element, no police investigation and no pronounced visual style. Hell, it doesn't even really have a killer. Sure, Arturo is seen murdering one girl during the opening sequence but this scene appears to have been grafted on simply to ensure this otherwise hard-to-categorize effort could play as a horror-thriller. The murder ends up having nothing to do with the real plot and actually contradicts the Arturo we see the rest of the time, who is passive, timid and shows no signs of homicidal urges at any later point in the film. The psychology of this character is so screwy and inconsistent it would give Freud pause! That said, Eyes is an entertaining film that I had absolutely no issue sitting through. There's nothing wrong with wanting some good, (un)clean pervy fun and this provides that in spades. It's also often quite surprising at times. Just how surprising? Read on...

There's one sequence of events in particular that's pretty atypical for the time that literally had my jaw on the floor. After Arturo leaves a restaurant, he's trailed by Joe (Jho Jhenkins), a black guy dressed in a one-piece denim jumper who follows him down the street and onto a bus. The film then cuts to a dance club and Joe is cutting it loose to a horrid song called "Disco Boogie" while a frizzy-haired female extra strips off all her clothes in front of the crowd while doing the Saturday Night Fever thing. Arturo and Joe then head back to his pad, where the two start getting a little touchy-feely. Next thing we know Arturo is bent over the couch screaming while getting plowed by the presumably well-endowed new buddy! I've seen some people call this a "gay rape" scene, but everything leading up to it seemed pretty damn consensual to me. Ivano and Olga watch the whole thing play out from home and, strangely enough, it is he who seems most interested in actually watching it and he even has to force his wife to look! Ivano later defends homosexuality while Olga acts appalled by it, though it's later made clear that's not so much because she has an actual problem with gays but because she has begun to desire their tenant herself.

Voyeurism and gay sex not enough to pique your interests? Well then let me discuss Ottavio (José Quaglio), the home's chauffeur / cook / butler. Ottavio is himself a disturbed peeping tom and likes to peak through keyholes while the female half of his employ is taking a bath. He also has a life-sized photo of Olga's head on a life-size paper doll body dressed in black lingerie plastered on the inside of his closet door that he likes to make out with, practice his oral sex skills out on and frustratingly punches in the vagina when he gets upset! Olga later catches the butler retrieving her pubic hair from the bathtub drain and then sniffing it, so she slaps the shit out of him while screaming "You disgusting idiot!" Ottavio also has a strange relationship with a (retarded?!) teenage girl in the neighborhood named Lucilla (Mónica Zanchi). He's first seen chasing her around and forcibly stripping off her panties while she screams and struggles to get free. Next time Lucilla turns up, she's calmly sitting on Ottavio's bed without any pants or underwear on and cheerfully goes down on him after he feeds her what we can presume is a little chocolate ball containing clumps of Olga's pubic hair (!?!) that he keeps hidden in his closet.

After a flashback revealing how Ivano ended up in his wheelchair and his son (Roberto Posse) ended up dead, as well as a not-all-that-shocking incest revelation, things pretty much end on a downbeat whimper in a horribly-photographed final sequence sure to have you muttering "meh" under your breath. I have absolutely no clue what the director was trying to say with this film if anything at all. While I did find the film itself interesting (particularly the relationship between Ivano and Olga), the character of Arturo is severely underdeveloped, the character of Ottavio is simply there to enhance the sexual eccentricities, up the shock value and eat up time (the entire film runs just 75 minutes) and the whole thing seems like little more than an opportunity to showcase every kink, alternate sexuality, sexual deviation and / or perversity known to man without adequately actually exploring these themes. There's a couple of soft sex scenes and a generous amount of equal opportunity nudity throughout (even Law goes full frontal during a hilarious nude workout sequence including close-ups of his penis as he jogs in place and does squats and push-ups).

Not surprisingly, the film went unreleased here in America, though it did achieve distribution in Italy, France (as Voyeur Pervers = "Perverse Voyeur") and in some Spanish-speaking countries (as La entrega = "The Delivery"). A soundtrack album by Giuseppe "Pippo" Caruso was also issued. It was the sole directorial credit for Petrelli, who otherwise only has a handful of small acting roles to his credit. Rumor has it he unsuccessfully tried to get his name removed from the credits before release. It wasn't long after that he permanently disappeared from film 

★★★