Chad

clckworang

Wow. This movie felt so familiar to me. The cheesy song that they kept cutting to. The talk on a train between God and the devil. Even the first two stories felt very familiar, but I really don't think I've seen this before. Have we previously had a subset film with a similar God and devil in conversation setup?

I'm not a huge fan of anthology films, but I thought this one was all right. It kept my attention and had some good moments. Performances were a bit all over the place. There were some decent ones and some that were really poor. But it had a nice charm about it, especially the stop motion effects.

mallratcal

I watched this movie a few years ago and that song still pops into my head.

Undeadcow

I watched the commentary with The Hysteria Continues because I remember finding Night Train to Terror boring. Revisiting NTtT is a bit disjointed but if there’s anything great about it we will find it in the cheesy random oddity of it. The commentary has a lot of banter but more than a few references to finding info on IMDB; commentary helps point out some of background as different unfinished films then reshot and edited into whatever we see here. I think NTtT is a brilliant illustration of shamelessness and perhaps the cheats behind ‘movie magic’ but the dance scenes are infectious and fun. There's about 15 minutes of decent movie in here. Not much of a hook to start with the weakest story; the third story is the best with it’s psychological demonic vibe and cheesy creepy demons but second story is the saved a bit by the exploding sting of the stop motion bug. Par for the course but I’d like to say the framing scene and dances don’t make sense because it clashes with the story segments – but the story segments clash with themselves. The ending with the dancers being redeemed is cute and funny how generic 80s dancers serve the ethos.

clckworang

I'm thinking this might have played a few years ago on TCM Underground. It just feels so familiar.

wishbone

One of the most horror-inducing scenes ever committed to celluoid: mediocre slomo breakdancing!

malazar

I had seen it before and found the stories pretty mediocre but the God and devil part is fun. Most of all I am a sucker for the cheesy singing and dancing, so I enjoyed the rewatch.

Toddarino

I’m glad you guys enjoyed it somewhat. I’m a sucker for movies that had fucked up production history. Since this was essentially three or four movies smashed together, that fits the bill.

jholmes

Toddarino's comment that this is three or four movies smashed together helps make some sense of this. The God-Devil conversation is interesting, but it's sort of deep philosophically. And then we have the 80's dance jam going on. Like wtf? And then, if the train is an afterlife sort of thing, the "heaven or hell express", why was there going to be a crash that would kill the 80's dance party? How did those kids get on the train if they weren't already dead? Were they really on a literal real-life train that was going to crash and kill them all? Deep thoughts.
Some of the stories were a bit hard to follow. There was definitely editing issues. I liked the one about the Nazi-demon guy the best. That was one creepy actor.
Overall, certainly not a gem but a fun enough distraction tonight.

numbercrunch

Deduct one point for that song "Dance with Me". Its burned into my brain now.

WillieMLF

Yep, I had one heck of a time following what was going on for most of the run time. Never really got invested, and then we get a song and dance number. Do bands typically play on trains? It looked more like someones living room.

Bladz

From the opening, undeniably 80's singing and dancing scene on the train, I knew I was going to like this movie. After the next few scenes all I could think was, WTF am I watching?! There was somewhat of a plot in each segment, but it still felt like I was watching one random strange scene after another with the obligatory return to the singing/dancing. The most structured aspect of the movie was the wraparound narrative with God and Satan debating over the fate of these people's souls.

To say this movie was weird is an understatement, but it was weird in a funny and strangely enjoyable way; I had a lot of fun watching it. Between all the randomness, occasional bad acting, and at times, hilarious stop-motion effect usage, there were so many points in this movie where I was either laughing or had a big smile on my face. That in itself makes Night Train to Terror a success for me.