The movie seems to have been inspired in equal measure by Amicus's Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), a trend-setting British horror anthology likewise featuring wraparound scenes set aboard a train; and The Monster Club (1980), one of the last legitimate films of this same type, which has its wraparound scenes set at a kind of monster discotheque.

The bulk of the picture is actually composed of condensed versions of three virtually unreleasable feature films: Scream Your Head Off (c. 1984), apparently shot but never finished or heretofore distributed; The Dark Side of Love (alternately known as Gretta and Death Wish Club, 1984); and Cataclysm (1980). Screenwriter Philip Yordan, once associated with big 1960s epics (several credited to Yordan but actually written by Blacklisted associates) was involved in several incredibly cheap productions during the 1980s.

A Vinegar Syndrome release, the new region-free Blu-ray offers an excellent 2K transfer of Night Train to Terror along with some good extra features.

Aboard a speeding train, unconcerned teenagers dance the night away while New Wave vocalist Joe Turano sings the movie's dumb but catchy theme song, "Everybody But You." The cheap sets are supposed to represent the interior of a train car but instead look like someone's basement. One might make the argument that for these music video-inspired scenes the director wasn't necessarily aiming for total realism, but if it weren't for the stock shot exteriors of the train one would never have guessed the interiors were even supposed to be a train car in motion.

From here the movie cuts to a private compartment where God (billed as "himself" in the credits but actually German-born, British-based character actor Ferdy Mayne) and Satan (credited to "Lu Sifer," actually Tony Giorgio) quietly debate whether man is inherently good or evil, scenes reminiscent of Irwin Allen's notorious The Story of Mankind (1957). The dialogue here is actually a bit better than the Ronald Colman-Vincent Price sparring of that earlier picture, and Mayne and Giorgio are pretty good, considering. But then the film's three main stories commence.

In the first segment, "The Case of Harry Billings" (adapted from the unreleased Scream Your Head Off), its titular character (John Phillip Law) is rushed to a psychiatric hospital after a road accident that killed his wife. As with the other segments, a presumably 80-to-95-minute feature has been condensed into a 25-minute or so segment, obliterating any sense of coherent exposition. The story has something to do with women being kidnapped and murdered at the asylum, where their body parts are sold on the black market. Mad orderly Otto (Richard Moll) gets into a lively fight with Harry, so brutal it looks like actor Law might have been seriously injured. For no clear reason Harry is drugged and seduced by the main villain, middle-aged surgeon Dr. Fargo (Sharon Ratcliff). Mostly though, viewers are left with only a vague sense of what the story is supposed to be about. The sequence climaxes with an explosion of drippy gore, while still-handsome and talented actor John Phillip Law looks like he'd rather be anyplace else. Indeed, in every scene he's in he looks ready to walk at any moment.

In "The Case of Gretta Connors," derived from The Dark Side of Love/Gretta/Death Wish Club, a young man (J. Martin Sellers?) becomes obsessed with a woman, Greta (Merideth Haze), herself so preoccupied with death that the couple join a suicide club. There, members regularly subject themselves to elaborate, Russian roulette contraptions where one always dies with spectacular gruesomeness.

In the final segment, "The Case of Claire Hansen" (from Cataclysm), a devout Catholic (Faith Clift) has strange dreams about Nazi war crimes inflicted by SS Officer Olivier (Robert Bristol). Somehow this connects to a never-named police lieutenant's (Cameron Mitchell) investigation into the death of his elderly, Jewish, Nazi-hunting neighbor (Marc Lawrence). Olivier, it seems, has tapped into a fountain of eternal youth while currently leading a cult of sinful atheists.

Night Train to Terror was produced at the tail end of an era when home video had pretty much killed the market for ultra-cheap but theatrically released horror movies. This had to have been among the last such films made in 35mm before the direct-to-video had many of these no-budget productions shooting on tape.

Parts of the film(s) aren't all that terrible. Cameron Mitchell, who came to specialize in the most unpromising of exploitation films, is in there slugging; some of the horror-makeup effects aren't bad or badly presented (despite one scene marred by a cameraman and his equipment highly visible in a reflection); and William R. Stromberg's stop-motion effects in several segments, while not convincing, are lively and show a lot of effort.

But the picture is unpardonably sloppy and incoherent most of the time. The car crash, for instance, that opens the first segment cuts between stock footage (in un-decompressed CinemaScope format) of a car driving in one direction while cutaways of the actors in the new footage has them traveling in the opposite direction. Similarly when the Night Train crashes at the end, a toy train set was utilized and it's less convincing than the one attacked by The Giant Claw.

"Everybody But You" is repeated so many times as to become a running joke. Its lyrics include the phrase, sung by Turano looking directly into the camera lens, "Everybody's got something to do. Everyone but you." Yes, that's right, because if you did have something to do you wouldn't be watching Night Train to Terror.

Video & Audio

All things considered, Night Train to Terror actually looks pretty great in 1.85:1 widescreen, almost certainly a high-def presentation equal to or superior to any theatrical screenings it might have had. The DTS-HD Master Audio mono is also quite good and the disc is region-free, though no subtitles or optional audio is included.

Extra Features

Supplements include a rather rambling commentary/audio interview with director Jay Schlossberg-Cohen that's interesting but which could have used a bit more direction from its moderator; a second commentary track/podcast by a fannish group called "The Hysteria Continues" that alternately offers bits and pieces of information but little in the way of insight; and a trailer.

A DVD is also included with the package. It offers the complete version of Gretta as well as a much more worthwhile interview with editor Wayne Schmidt, who toiled away on such films back then and who discusses the impossible challenge of trying to make a silk purse out of Night Train to Terror.

Parting Thoughts

Unbelievably bad but rather fascinating in its awfulness, for those with a fondness for entertainingly bad movies, Night Train to Terror is reservedly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, will be released this September.