Night Train to Terror

1985 anthology movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: God and the devil debate the fate of a trio of souls while riding on a train.

Thanks to the success of The Twilight Zone Movie and Creepshow, the world was treated to Night Train to Terror and its triad of totally incomprehensible tales of horror. God, played by "God" according to the credits because Ferdy Mayne was apparently too embarrassed to have his name associated with this, says at one point that he could "laugh and cry at the same time." That's exactly how I felt. On the one hand, this is frustrating because it doesn't make any sense. The individual stories don't make any sense, probably because they were low-budget feature films that were edited down to 25-30 minutes of highlights--you know, the parts with carnage and/or nipples--with little regard for storytelling. And the frame story with God and Satan (played suavely by Lu Sifer because that's hilarious--actually Tony Giorgio) would make some sense, especially if you've read through the book of Job, except it's hard to figure out why they're on a train. And the poorly-dressed rock band snippets? Those almost seem like they were inserted accidentally, like somebody accidentally spilled rock videos on the movie and they just stuck. More than likely, somebody said, "You know what's just as popular as Creepshow? Those music videos the kids are watching on the MTV! Let's put a rock band on the night train to terror!"

The first story, "The Case of Harry Billings," has to do with a kidnapping, hypnosis, and organ thievery. There's blood, there's glorious 1980's gratuitous nudity, and there's Richard Moll. I'd have no interest in seeing the original to see if it makes any sense at all. This was so heavily-edited, like somebody wanted to cut it to its barest bones but accidentally took the bones out as well, that it's incoherent. Mixed in with the rest of this mess, it's just adds to the weirdness of this entire thing.

The second story involves a cult where people find ingenious ways to play Russian Roulette. It's probably the most interesting, but only if you watch it as a person interested in surrealism. There's a great scene with a stop-motion Tanzanian beetle that lands on a fake hand and another with this electric robot where a guy gets electrocuted after an "Excuse me while I smoke" pun. The latter might be the wildest thing I see all year.

The third story is about the devil wanting to destroy humanity. So it's got a second devil in it. Oh, and Richard Moll is in this one, too. It would be completely boring except for some claymation sequences that are just awesome. This third story is the least interesting, and it's also unfortunately the lengthiest.

Some explosion stock footage, slow motion breakdancing, a toy train, and (spoiler alert) a bunch of dead 80's rockers later, and the movie ends, the sort of movie that you watch and wonder what just happened to you. I'd recommend it to folks who like their bad movies a little on the weird and/or incomprehensible side.