Terror Express
Italy
1979. Director: Ferdinando Baldi
Cast: Carlo De Mejo, Werner Pochath, Sylvia Dionisio, Zora Kerova
Aka: La Ragassa del Vagone Letto
Yep, it's a re-run of Wes Craven's Last
House on the Left, this time from Italian veteran Ferdinando Baldi
and writer George Eastman. Here the baddies got a whole train full of
unlucky passengers to abuse (among them Cannibal Ferox-veterans
Venatino Venantini and Zora Kerova). It begins ith the three bad boys
molesting Juliette, a dissillusioned train hooker (well played by Sylvia
Dionisio). The thugs then jumps on a train where they again meet Juliette.
And when she again refuses to give them anything things start to get
ugly for our passengers. The thugs rapes one girl (Kerova, who else),
beats her husband up and takes the whole train as hostage while entertaining
themselves by "checking out the virgins". Now the film gets
weird. It turns out that the passengers are not too good people either.
There's a family in which the father is more than interested in his
sexy teenager daughter ("Why don't you take off your nightie, sweatheart?"),
an elder gentleman also with a taste for little girls and a police detective
with a prisoner. Anyway, Juliette is finally forced to give the thugs
what they want (i.e her nude body) in a weak attempt at stopping the
nightmare. But the killers (yes, they're killers by now) still hold
the train as hostage just for the fun of it and it's up to our hero
the prisoner (Gian Luigi Chrizzi who you may remember from Night
of Terror) and Juliette to give the thugs what they deserve,
i.e. a horrible death.
Ferdinando Baldi is a good and experienced director (Texas Adios, Viva Django etc). He manages to make the film a lot more entertaining than it has any right in the world to be. It has an awfully predictable script and endless scenes of boring soft sex which seem to have been stuffed in just to fill the running time. One good touch, though, is that the only sympathetic character in the film, the police detective, is helplessy tied up the whole film through, unable to do nothing. Werner Pochath (a familiar face in several films by Enzo G. Castellari) is also, as always, great as the ugliest of the baddies, even if he doesn't for a minute look like the teenager he's supposed to look as. The film is also a bit tame by the standards set by earlier and later efforts in this sub-genre. Instead it scores high points on the sleaz-o-meter. No complaints but Sylvia Dionisio seem to spend the entire film naked. No match for Craven's original or even House on the Edge of the Park, but nevertheless quite fun in some weird sort of way. Worth a try, I guess.
© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.