Night Train Murders (1975)

December 10, 2009 by Morbid  

I wanted to spend this December populating our review database with Christmas horror, and in the process make sure that we focused on some of the lesser known titles to go along with the recognized. Since we already had Aldo Lado‘s “Who Saw Her Die?” (our review) I figured why not take a look at his “Last House on the Left” rip-off,  “Night Train Murders”.

Two best friends, Lisa (Laura D’Angelo) and Margaret (Irene Miracle “Inferno“) are traveling to Italy by train to spend Christmas break with Lisa’s family. The plan is for them to take the train, enjoy the ride and arrive at Lisa’s parent’s home just in time for dinner. While overcrowded, Lisa and Margaret are having a good time on the train smoking cigarettes and talking about boys until they run into a pair of stowaway hooligans. Blackie (Flavio Bucci “Suspiria“) and the harmonica playing Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi, “The Church”) are a couple of thugs we witnessed robbing a street Santa during at the beginning of the film. Luckily a bomb scare forces the train to stop at the next station and the girls are able to transfer onto another train.

Everything seems to be working in the girl’s favor with the added bonus of their new train being practically deserted and allowing them to have a compartment all to themselves.  But their time alone is short lived when they find that Blackie and Curly have boarded the train as well. They have also brought an upper-class woman (Macha Méril, “Deep Red“) along with them, a woman using the two men as pawns to act out her own sordid games. The trio force their way into the girl’s compartment, making themselves at home and before long they are subjecting the girl’s to torture, humiliation and rape to help past the time.

Cast with a handful of actors most Eurocult and Dario Argento fans will recognize, “Train Murders” uses the same blueprint as Wes Craven‘s exploitation classic; the creators admitting that this film was born from the success of “Last House On The Left”. However, “Train Murders” is much more than just a blatant copy, so don’t let that turn you off as they didn’t just use the same story and place it in a different location. With a much more talented director, writer and cast, “Train Murders” easily stands on its own even if it did need the assistance of Craven’s film to get upright. The “comedic” scenes of bumbling cops have been replaced with deeper social commentary that not only touches on what makes people behave violently, Lado’s skewering of the bourgeois is present as well as observations on class structure.

Lado and team also change up the roles of the protagonists.  Unlike “Last House”, the true bad guy in “Train Murders” isn’t the males. Rather it is the high society woman who joined the two criminals. She uses them to do her bidding like someone using a very long stick to poke at a hornets nest at a picnic, enjoying the havoc they have created. Before she joins them, Blackie and Curly were nothing more than petty criminals. But with her goading and encouragement making the leap from petty crime to rape and murder is done so easily. I found the underlying symbolism of the rich exploiting the poor quite apparent during these scenes and par for the course with Lado. But I can also see where some viewers may see the film in a more misogynistic light when viewing this Unnamed Lady at work. But no matter how you look at her or what she represents, the woman is definitely the most vile character in the film and a shame her character is not mentioned in discussions concerning some of cinema’s worst villains.

Lado takes his time getting to the atrocities, but once the candle’s flame is snuffed and the screen takes on an ominous blue hue, “Train Murders” earns its exploitative stripes. While not extremely graphic, the violence towards the two girls is as equally effective as what the two friends suffered in “Last House”. One death scene inter-cut with a family dinner is particularly troublesome as is a scene of the Lady putting on makeup and Blackie cleaning his fingernails while one of the girls is being raped right in front of them. The infamous scene of one of the girls losing her virginity by a knife blade reads worse than it actually is. After they are finished with the pair, “Train Murders” follows along the rails left by “Last House” when the villains find themselves as guests in the home of the parents of one of their victims. The suspense is a bit higher here than in “Last House” as it takes the parents a bit longer to figure out exactly what is going on. But once Lisa’s father figures out what has happened to his daughter and her friend, “Train Murders” echoes the same revenge style violence as Blackie and Curly are confronted by one pissed off Dad.

I highly recommend “Train Murders” to anyone looking for some exploitation, especially if you want to see an example of a film that rises above its own genre. With a layered story, great directing by Lado and great performances, I’m giving “Night Train Murders” 3.5 harmonicas out of 5 .

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