With this review, I have now reviewed this movie three times over--and we're not done yet. When I was talking about Gretta and The Nightmare Never Ends, I may have alluded to the fact that the third piece of this anthology was never finished or released. Well, I was wrong. When I made that statement I knew that third movie as Scream Your Head Off, with a 1981 production date. A meager amount of research on my part would have unearthed that Scream Your Head Off was released eleven years after it began production, under the rather odd title of Marilyn: Alive and Behind Bars. But that movie is for another day; we're here to talk about Night Train to Terror, the primary reason why any of the three movies it was slashed out from are remembered.
God, Satan, and a mysterious third party who may be Death, are aboard a train. Also aboard is a REALLY shitty '80s pop band, whose lives are on the line: the train is due to crash at midnight, and God and Satan are here to debate the nature of humanity in order to determine whether the band will go to Heaven or Hell when they die. In order to convince God that humanity isn't worth saving, Satan tells God three stories, each of which supposedly prove humanity's evil. In "The Case of Harry Billings" (aka Scream Your Head Off), the titular Harry Billings kills his wife with drunk driving and ends up in a weird mental institution which chains up naked women for the purposes of rape (I think?) and organ harvesting. The main doctor there turns Harry into his drugged/hypnotic agent to abduct women for this purpose. The head nurse is also banging Harry and plans to have him help her lobotomize the head doctor so she can take over the hospital. It's pretty fucking weird.
Next is "The Case of Gretta Connors," aka Gretta. Things are kept pretty much the same, but they try to make Gretta seem more like a victim and George seem more evil; the primary focus is on the Death Wish Club. The main oddity of this segment is that they never explain why Gretta becomes Charlie White--she just suddenly looks like a guy for some reason. While they prominently feature the beetle scene, they also add on new footage of the beetle (rendered with claymation) escaping the room and killing a random makeout couple in a scene that totally doesn't have different video quality. By kill them, I mean it stings them, and this makes their faces explode.
Finally, we have "The Case of Claire Hansen," cleaved from the meat of The Nightmare Never Ends. I saw very few differences here and it actually told the story much more efficiently than the original film did. However, there are some scenes which appear to be of the same type of tacked-on claymation gore as that which appeared in the Gretta segment. I suspect similar sequences were added to the Scream Your Head Off bits, but we'll find out when I finally get around to Marilyn: Alive and Behind Bars.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to watch Night Train to Terror without context, aside from the obvious fact that it would be a headrush of unparalleled vertigo. Even with context, Night Train is a heady brew of Doris Wishman-esque cuts, unexplained plot threads, and hidden surprises. Every segment is discombobulated, with traces of subplots floating here and there and yet meaning nothing. This includes the new footage shot for the film. They try to make the pop band on the train into actual characters, despite the fact that all they do is sing the same songs over and over and over again; there's a mention of, "Oh, man, it's too bad our van broke down and we had to take this train!"--as if we could possibly care. How does that even make sense? Trains have to go to very specific places, and even if one was going to where I was headed I'd still worry about leaving my van behind to jump one! To me, that's like saying, "Shit, my motorcycle is out of gas. Might as well charter a cruise ship home then." It's ditching one line of vehicle for another. But I'm getting off-track: again, we're supposed to believe that there's an actual story to this frame story besides the God-Satan thing, and one line is supposed to cover the whole depth of that story. That's a perfect synecdoche for the entire movie. That line is patchwork and so is the rest of the film.
Perhaps I'll have more of a chance in the future to delve into this genre of patchwork remakes, which has existed since forever. For now, both Night Train to Terror and The White Gorilla are fine additions to my A-List, and I'll be returning to their uniquely Burroughsian madness time and time again. In regards to Night Train specifically, I will be returning to it in a stranger sense, when at last the time comes to review the third movie from its twisted catalogue.
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