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Night Train Murders
DVD/APPROX. 90 MINS/1975/ITALY R18+
DVD/APPROX. 90 MINS/1975/ITALY R18+
8
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I sometimes think the kids of today are missing out you know. I’m talking about the thrill of the old days when you’d have to hunt down that
elusive copy of a film you’ve just read about or heard about in some grubby little zine and when you finally got a copy, third generation dubbed,
grainy, subtitled, maybe uncut, maybe not you’d crack that first beer, turn the lights down, run the head cleaner through the player, gingerly push
play and hope the film at least lived up to half of what you’d heard. Of course, Shameless don’t care about such frivolity and instead seem to
delight in supplying us with pristine copies of old movies, as uncut as they can possibly find it, packaged up and easily available. It does take some
of the fun out of it but hell, I ain’t complaining – not this time anyway.
Night Train Murders was one of those legendary ‘video nasties’ that I hunted down and watched years ago late at night, lights down waiting to
be shocked and stunned. Presented as a nasty, misogynistic rip off/cash in of Last House On The Left, this movie is however much, much more
than just that. Starting off with the masses Christmas shopping in the city as we listen to Demis Roussos singing away we witness a couple of
low life punks mug a street corner Santa and grab his cash (just so we know how low they’ll go) while meanwhile two sweet young students
prepare for their trip to the country to see family and share Christmas day. The girls are going by train and so are our punks, though they didn’t
plan it that way, they were just escaping the cops. There are the usual odd characters on the train (it’s like Italian directors hate their kin folk –
there’s never anyone normal in their movies). We have some old nazis, a few off kilter priests, school kids, a family, a soldier but everyone just
seems a little odd… then there’s a blonde older woman talking philosophy and fascism to some weird professor in some minor attempt I think to
justify what happens later on but really who cares? Despite what some will say to try and justify watching films like these, to try and justify the
fact they’re watching this movie, it’s the sex, violence and revenge motifs that we’re here for not the talkie talkie. Keep your philosophy to yourself
jack, my beer’s getting warm here.
Anyway, the nice girls are on the train, as are the two punks and what do you know? One of the boys gets on with the blonde philosopher in the
train toilets – turns out she likes a bit of rough and soon becomes a willing participant in their games, though we never quite know why. When the
train stops because of a bomb threat (huh?) the girls decide to swap onto an express that’s sitting at the station. Now, I ask you if there was an
express train sitting there, why didn’t everyone swap over? And why is the express an old rattler and nearly empty? But enough of the questions,
this is when the movie shines and when Lado’s direction really makes the film stand alone. Beautifully filmed in shades of blue and black, the girls
find themselves trapped and subjected to sexual humiliation by the punks and their new found ally with the lighting and the soundtrack adding
sublime tension to the scenes. Ennio Morricone supplied the soundtrack and he was on his game, the subtle sound of harmonica drawing you in
and helping with the whole claustrophobic feel of the moment. In one scene Lado cuts back to the family dinner where dad and his mates idly
discuss violence in society while his daughter is being forced to masturbate one of the boys on the train, while a voyeur watches from the corridor
– it sounds seedier than it actually is though, his direction, his editing, the lighting, you don’t see a lot you just think you have. In fact, there really
is only the one brutal moment (even now let alone 1974) and there could be an argument that it doesn’t even need to be there, the movie having
worked so well already on just what you think you’ve seen. That said it is a kick in the guts that stays with you.
At the station, the family awaits the arrival of their now dead daughter and her also dead friend but instead end up unknowingly giving their killers
a lift! Dad, who is a brilliant surgeon by the way and who hates violence, cracks when he hears his daughter’s name on the radio (because
apparently you wouldn’t contact the family first, no you would announce the crime and the victims on radio – especially on Christmas day) and
having pieced two and two together by then, grabs his gun and before you can say “Bye Baby Bunting Daddy’s Gone A Hunting” he’s shooting to
kill. So I guess the message is that violence begats violence, an eye for an eye and all that. But I’m not sure, since the blonde accomplice (who’s
name we never discover) survives and the final moment is the sound of sirens approaching while the doc stands over a body and the blonde
adjusts her hat, dropping a black veil over her face. So what do we make of that? Is Lado trying to tell us something? Are women the root of all
evil? Does revenge justify murder? Or was it a political statement about his countries troubles, it’s past and it’s (then) present.
That’s too much thinking for me, I’ll leave that to the philosophers. And anyway, I need another beer.
This is a well crafted, beautiful looking, well directed, violent, vicious, misogynistic, cash in on Last House On The Left and we wouldn’t have it any
other way. So much more than you deserve kids.
elusive copy of a film you’ve just read about or heard about in some grubby little zine and when you finally got a copy, third generation dubbed,
grainy, subtitled, maybe uncut, maybe not you’d crack that first beer, turn the lights down, run the head cleaner through the player, gingerly push
play and hope the film at least lived up to half of what you’d heard. Of course, Shameless don’t care about such frivolity and instead seem to
delight in supplying us with pristine copies of old movies, as uncut as they can possibly find it, packaged up and easily available. It does take some
of the fun out of it but hell, I ain’t complaining – not this time anyway.
Night Train Murders was one of those legendary ‘video nasties’ that I hunted down and watched years ago late at night, lights down waiting to
be shocked and stunned. Presented as a nasty, misogynistic rip off/cash in of Last House On The Left, this movie is however much, much more
than just that. Starting off with the masses Christmas shopping in the city as we listen to Demis Roussos singing away we witness a couple of
low life punks mug a street corner Santa and grab his cash (just so we know how low they’ll go) while meanwhile two sweet young students
prepare for their trip to the country to see family and share Christmas day. The girls are going by train and so are our punks, though they didn’t
plan it that way, they were just escaping the cops. There are the usual odd characters on the train (it’s like Italian directors hate their kin folk –
there’s never anyone normal in their movies). We have some old nazis, a few off kilter priests, school kids, a family, a soldier but everyone just
seems a little odd… then there’s a blonde older woman talking philosophy and fascism to some weird professor in some minor attempt I think to
justify what happens later on but really who cares? Despite what some will say to try and justify watching films like these, to try and justify the
fact they’re watching this movie, it’s the sex, violence and revenge motifs that we’re here for not the talkie talkie. Keep your philosophy to yourself
jack, my beer’s getting warm here.
Anyway, the nice girls are on the train, as are the two punks and what do you know? One of the boys gets on with the blonde philosopher in the
train toilets – turns out she likes a bit of rough and soon becomes a willing participant in their games, though we never quite know why. When the
train stops because of a bomb threat (huh?) the girls decide to swap onto an express that’s sitting at the station. Now, I ask you if there was an
express train sitting there, why didn’t everyone swap over? And why is the express an old rattler and nearly empty? But enough of the questions,
this is when the movie shines and when Lado’s direction really makes the film stand alone. Beautifully filmed in shades of blue and black, the girls
find themselves trapped and subjected to sexual humiliation by the punks and their new found ally with the lighting and the soundtrack adding
sublime tension to the scenes. Ennio Morricone supplied the soundtrack and he was on his game, the subtle sound of harmonica drawing you in
and helping with the whole claustrophobic feel of the moment. In one scene Lado cuts back to the family dinner where dad and his mates idly
discuss violence in society while his daughter is being forced to masturbate one of the boys on the train, while a voyeur watches from the corridor
– it sounds seedier than it actually is though, his direction, his editing, the lighting, you don’t see a lot you just think you have. In fact, there really
is only the one brutal moment (even now let alone 1974) and there could be an argument that it doesn’t even need to be there, the movie having
worked so well already on just what you think you’ve seen. That said it is a kick in the guts that stays with you.
At the station, the family awaits the arrival of their now dead daughter and her also dead friend but instead end up unknowingly giving their killers
a lift! Dad, who is a brilliant surgeon by the way and who hates violence, cracks when he hears his daughter’s name on the radio (because
apparently you wouldn’t contact the family first, no you would announce the crime and the victims on radio – especially on Christmas day) and
having pieced two and two together by then, grabs his gun and before you can say “Bye Baby Bunting Daddy’s Gone A Hunting” he’s shooting to
kill. So I guess the message is that violence begats violence, an eye for an eye and all that. But I’m not sure, since the blonde accomplice (who’s
name we never discover) survives and the final moment is the sound of sirens approaching while the doc stands over a body and the blonde
adjusts her hat, dropping a black veil over her face. So what do we make of that? Is Lado trying to tell us something? Are women the root of all
evil? Does revenge justify murder? Or was it a political statement about his countries troubles, it’s past and it’s (then) present.
That’s too much thinking for me, I’ll leave that to the philosophers. And anyway, I need another beer.
This is a well crafted, beautiful looking, well directed, violent, vicious, misogynistic, cash in on Last House On The Left and we wouldn’t have it any
other way. So much more than you deserve kids.
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