What do you do if your a director sitting on three unfinished films that have the potential to make it big, but not the budget or time to get them over the line? Well! if your Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, the answer is, you do some ADR work to smooth over the gaps in the narrative, make some VERY questionable cuts to try and jump around in the narrative, film about 15 minutes of new footage as a framing device and get a relative to boogie down 'Monster Club' style turning 3 unfinished features into an Anthology that'll have you wondering 'WE CHOSE TO WATCH *THIS* ON HALLOWEEN!?'

That, is 'Night Train to Terror' a cobbled together mid 80s anothology feature that had a limited release at first, and found revived interest on the home video market (particularly with Vinegar syndromes Bluray release). And…well, I dont think its particularly 'good'! but its definitely a vibe!

As mentioned the film comprises of three unfinished films: One revolving around a hospital that appears to be kidnapping people for unknown reasons (a proto 'Hostel' if you will…), the second revolving around a young female musician who falls in with a rich old man who promises her fame and fortune…which turns out to be regular work in 'Adult' films, when a young college grad catches one of her features at a stag party, he hunts the woman down and steals her from the rich old man…leading them both into the arms of a strange 'Saw' like cult dedicated to death by increasingly bizarre methods…

And a finale revolving around a coven of (what I assume are) either Nazi vampires or Nazi demons who've been running a shadowey operation for hundreds of years…and who are about to be discovered by a woman with horrifying recurring nightmares…All of this? is framed as stories told by 'God' and 'The Devil' while they take a long train ride, destination: 'Unknown'…Oh..and for some reason, this train has a jumping rocky pop band that bop their way from station to station with the kind of 'filler' pop that really sells you on the idea this wasnt envisioned as it stands.

To judge these stories by their scripting and plot feels almost like a moot point honestly. They were unfinished films, and as 'A Night to Dismember' has taught us, seeing a re-cobbled together 'reimagining' of an end product that never actually got finished. usually winds up in a totally incomprehensible mess.

The tales told here are a *bit* more coherent, but are heavily reliant on the additional ADR narration, and their original intentions have had to be MASSIVELY paired back to fit the timings of the anthology entries…as such, I cant really comment on what could have been. But what I can say of what is here is…its messy. the plotting barely holds together for the most part, the footage pin pongs around something chronic, meaning I felt like I was constantly trying to play catch up on what exactly was going on.

The characters are largely fleshed out by the ADR narration, and the narrator for this is fine enough…nothing special, but not awful…its just that a lot of the narration is doing a LOT of heavy lifting to condense a lot of the missing footage down to a digestable and understandable format. in places, it works fine, in others I had NO idea what was actually going on.

the pacings all over the place, we'll crash through 30 minutes worth of plot in 5 minutes, and then spend 10 minutes focussing REALLY hard on a single plot point, because that was one of the few scenes that WAS filmed to completion. the tones a weird mixture of hyperactive gory horror, and campier comedy elements…but the campier elements are distinctly seperated from the stories themselves. They're only really present in the 'train' segments which, in and of themselves are filmed very nicely and are about the most sensical thing in this production.

The direction for all three films is mixed, but solid enough. I personally didnt see anything I disliked, theres some really decent stop motion effects work here that I enjoyed, some nice choices in lighting, gore effects, colour work. its nothing that I can point at and say 'THIS. is worth the price of admission!' But it is well enough handled that I would consider it a big selling point of the film, because the base plots themselves arnt really up to all that much.

Visually the film pops with colours, is very invested in early visual effects, and compositions look solid enough and feel good. sequences are incredibly messy however, scene structurings are poor and I really dont feel like we got to see the best presentation of these films…regardless of how little there was to use.

The train sequences, as mentioned are probably my favourite bits, they feel very professionally handled and, given they were more of a last minute addition to tie the films together, they actually look more expensive than the 3 full films featured.

As for the performances? Well…a lot of the film footage used is talked over by narration, there minimal dialogue here in the films themselves. And our cast are fine enough…but lets be honest, we're all here for Cameron Mitchell in the 3rd story as the Lieutenant. and…while he's not full on 'Terror in Beverley hills' here…He still gives a fun enough performance.

Throw in the scoring which mixed synthy horror beats with light pop…and this thing ultimately gave me real 'Monster Club' vibes…but without the halloween'y warmth or the charm of Vincent Price that 'The Monster Club' offers in spades.

All in all? this is a fine 'once in a blue moon' watch, its fairly nuts in places, which will make cult and low budget movie fans happy to catch it, im not entirely convinced of the 'rewatch' value though…I could see this pairing up as a later in the evening B-picture to 'The Monster Club'…But then, my brain automatically asks the question 'Well…if this is an offering that feels like a poor mans 'Monster Club' why not just watch 'The Monster Club'?!' …

Me personally? I may revisit this one again in future. and it may sit better with me in time. But as of today, it was just kind of a quirky, fun, but ultimately kind of unremarkable watch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/night-train-to-terror/