Sunday, February 28, 2010

Night Train to Terror (1985)





If I had to describe Night Train to Terror in one word it would be confusing. If I had to describe it in three words it would be awesome and confusing. Night Train to Terror starts off with a great '80s song, with singing and dancing and trains.

Man the '80s sucked


Anyway after their done singing their awful yet catchy song you get to meet God and Satan who apparently travel by train. From what I gather they meet up occasionally to divvy up random souls, and with each soul you get to watch a story of how these people died. Starts off well enough, I mean all except for that godawful '80s song... but when you start to watch the three stories that's when it all goes to hell.

The three stories of the people's death? They make absolutely no sense. With a little bit of research you'll find out why. You see, most movies would film their own stories if they were going to put them in a movie... but not Night Train to Terror, it's different. You see the three stories you're seeing are actually just other movies edited down to around 20 minutes to make these stories.

The Case of Harry Billings? Actually a movie called Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars. The Case of Gretta Connors? Carnival of Fools. The Case of Claire Hansen? Cataclysm. If you add up the length of all these movies they're about 270 minutes long. Night Train to Terror is 93 minutes long. Think something might get lost in translation?

You bet ya! Night Train to Terror is like giving someone a 350 page book... except 179 pages are ripped out... and what is left isn't necessarily in order... also every 60 pages there's a bad '80s music video.

That's right, they even managed to screw up editing these movies correctly. Occasionally it's very noticeable that the scene you just watched happened after the scene you're watching now. In the second story the couple goes from hating each other and the girl having short hair to the couple being madly in love and the girl having long hair. I'm pretty sure you can't miss something like that so it tells me they just didn't care.

So here you have three 90 or so minute movies that you have to edit down to about 20 or so minutes each and try to make it at least somewhat coherent. If you were going to do that do you think you would pick two movies that didn't have THE SAME ACTOR IN THEM? Night Train to Terror didn't.

Richard "Bull" Moll


That's right, the first and third story both star Richard Moll. Seriously though of all the confusing things int his movie I don't think that even ranks in the top ten. There are so many things in this movie that confused me that I think I spent about 85 of the 90 minutes laughing and saying out lout "What the hell just happened!?"

This movie is bad. Really, really bad. So bad it's good. Hilariously good. You can't watch this movie without laughing. Confusing as hell, but so bad it's good.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5


Squid.

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