28 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Night Train Murders (1975)

If it hasn't become apparent in the last few reviews, I've got a weird obsession with Italian Horror.  The Italians seemed to figure out that everything had been done already and made a great point to blatantly capitalize off of then current films overseas with shoestring budgets and looser aesthetic morals.  The directors in the film studios were often very prolific, if they weren't directing multiple films per year, they were producing other directors, writing, and sometimes acting.  In 1975, Aldo Lado endeavored to put the Italian stamp on Wes Craven's wildly successful Grindhouse classic, The Last House On The Left (which is also a remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring) with the equally disturbing and squirm inducing Night Train Murders.

The basic plot of Night Train Murders is very identical to Last House On The Left but the details are subtly different.  Lisa (Laura D'Angelo) and Margaret (Irene Miracle) are taking a night train from Germany to Italy to spend Christmas with Lisa's family.  On the train ride they encounter a trio of sadistic people (Flavio Bucci, Gianfranco De Grassi, Macha Méril) who toy with, violate, and ultimately murder the two girls and in a twist of fate they wind up in the hands of Lisa's parents.

What I found incredibly effective about the film is how the first half is spent examining the mundane goings of life and the clueless naivety of the wealthy.  It's almost 40 minutes or longer into the film before the psychotic trio sets themselves upon the two girls.  Lado treats it a little differently here too.  Unlike most films of the genre, he doesn't fetishize the violence at all.  It's horrific, jarring, and completely disturbing (as it well should be) and feels more like an endurance test.  His stylistic flair is all in lighting as the violent violation of the girls takes place under the cold blue light of night.  Unlike Craven, Lado's villains are simpletons.  They're disgusting, but murder is never a present thought on their minds until the act occurs in the heat of the moment.  It is precisely at this moment when the harsh light of day exposes the scene in the train car and reality comes crashing upon our villains like a ton of bricks.

The writing is a little clunky, but there are a number of interesting moments where discussions of morality take place.  The villains only fall into the hands of Lisa's parents because the parents believe themselves to be upstanding people of generous morals and when the discovery of the children's death makes it's play all those moral quandaries are forgotten.  The question becomes simple:  If given the chance, would a parent be able to forgive their transgressor or would they take vengeance?  While clearly a retelling of the same moral story, Night Train Murders succeeds in it's subtle differences and it's unflinching portrayal to be a truly disturbing piece of shock horror.

Humanoids from the Deep: 14 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

Roger Corman is somewhat of a legend in Hollywood.  His company New World Pictures helped create careers for the some of the greatest American directors in film history.  James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Bogdanovich (to name a few) all cut their teeth on Corman productions, in some form or another.  One such director, who didn't quite make it to the spotlight was Humanoids from the Deep director Barbara Peeters.

Peeters was one of two woman who worked consistently in the director's chair with Corman.  She got her chance at directing with 1970's The Dark Side of Tomorrow and followed it in 1972's biker film Bury Me an Angel.  She bounced around various different production gigs at New World, sometimes as a production manager, art director, and second unit director as well before ultimately getting to Humanoids from the Deep after Joe Dante declined.  The film is about a small rural fishing town somewhere up the west coast, they even reference Humboldt County at one point, where there is a tension among the local fisherman regarding a bid to build a cannery in the town.  A native american, Johnny Eagle (yeah, I know), opposes the cannery, while most of town appears to be for it, including a couple of not so subtle racist white dudes.  All of these petty differences are compounded by some dog mutilations, accidents, and disappearances which ultimately leads us to the titular monsters of the story and all hell breaks loose.

The creatures, aren't too cheesy, but are obviously inspired by The Creature of the Black Lagoon, and are still clunky looking buggers who seem to be hell bent on killing men and raping women.  From start to finish the film is a pure exploitation piece, the problem with it is that it's not fun in any way.  Part of what makes these schlocky films live on in the annals of film history is precisely their humor.  This film, has none.  No intentional jokes, no tongue in cheek commentary, and no real point except to "deliver the goods."  I got the sense that Peeters was more interested in the complexity of Native Rights vs White Oppression, but whatever she was trying to say didn't come across. It tried too hard to be a serious horror movie while still being filled to the brim with violence, gore, and rape.

This is what makes it hard for me to watch certain pre-90s horror films and even the modern rape/revenge films make me cringe somewhat.  It starts to become so fetishized that whatever intended statement against said violence is completely lost and we're left with a sick feeling in our stomach and no real revelation, but I'm digressing.  As I said, this is a Corman production from 1980 and this is what you get.  Upon some simple wikipedia research, I found that Peeters originally shot the rape scenes in dark lighting and shadow, which Corman was unhappy about.  He ultimately took the picture from her in post and hired a second unit director to film more explicit Humanoid rape scenes.  Corman also changed the title from Beneath the Darkness to Humanoids from the Deep.  Add these two together without telling any of the rest of the key crew and you get a bit of outrage.  Peeters and actress Ann Turkel asked for their names to be removed from the credits after seeing the changes and Turkel even spoke out against Corman in television interviews.

The film received mostly scathing critical reviews the film still did modestly well at the box office considering it's low budget and it does still have a bit of a cult following.  It includes a great early score by James Horner, and some of the sequences are actually quite good, but none of that really saves it from being anything more than it is: a cheap, Jaws meets Creature of the Black Lagoon gore and rape filled horror flick.

2 out of 5 skulls.