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.

10 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Bound to Vengeance (2015)

Exploitation films are somewhat of a conundrum for me.  On one hand, I adore them for their daring visual techniques, bold storytelling, and usually killer soundtracks.  On the other hand, I abhor their obvious exploitative treatment of "the other," which is a way of saying "just about anything that isn't white, hetero-normative, and male."  Usually I just try to ignore the obvious, since I am watching an exploitation film after all, and occasionally I get surprised by those little needles hiding in the haystack.  I'm constantly fascinated by the new generation of exploitation films which focus more on the tertiary things like sex, violence and gore, but have started becoming more inclusive (though they still have a long way to go) of "the other."  J.M. Cravioto's Bound to Vengeance falls somewhere in the transitory stage of almost brilliant and doesn't quite hit the mark I hoped it would.

When Eve (Tina Ivlev), a kidnapped girl, frees herself from bondage and discovers that she's part of a much bigger kidnapping sex slavery ring.  Arming herself a gun, a home-made choker pole (like animal control officers use to catch stray dogs), and a number of pictures of bound women with names, she takes control of her captor (Richard Tyson) and forces him to take her to each of the girls in the picture, in the hopes of liberating them.  Things do not quite go as she hopes and the plot, indeed, thickens.

This film falls into the "rape/revenge" category of exploitation films, but unlike most of it's genre it does not go into graphic detail of the rape, choosing to imply it with flashback cutting, and sticks to the revenge.  Bondage, as a theme, is present everywhere, from the title, to how the women are found, to a more metaphysical emotional bondage that Eve has with her captor.  She can't escape him until she has met out her vengeance because he has the addresses that she needs in order to do so.  I would say that her character is probably one of the most nuanced women in the genre, except for the fact that she is still beholden to the male fantasy of the "badass woman who takes revenge into her own hands."  In that, while the offer a few moments of humanity, she is mostly portrayed as a revenge driven killing machine bordering on psychotically obsessed.

Considering that it was shot on, likely, a low budget, it has a very consistent look, feel, and style to it.  It also boasts a great score by Simon Boswell, but the film fails out quite in dialogue.  Nevermind that it has a few plot holes (why does no one ever call the police when they hear gunshots?), all exploitation films have those, but Ivlev's performance is consistently hampered by unbelievable dialogue situations.  While Tyson's sociopathic predatory performance is yields well, it's just damn hard to buy into Eve falling for a number of the little traps he sets her up for.  To put it bluntly, if we refer to this film by the three act structure, upon which most films are based, the second act falters in a number of places.  The first and third act, luckily, make up for that, but still, this film is clearly only going to be accepted by a niche audience that knows what they're getting into and perhaps that's the ultimate downfall of the film.  It tries to be the best of both exploitative and art worlds when the filmmakers probably should have picked one or the other and went with it.