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.

Altman + Stage = Brilliant

There have been plenty of great films based on stage plays.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Dog Day Afternoon, A Thousand Clowns, and Wait Until Dark are all great examples.  Robert Altman, a film director who grew largely out of the DIY, anti-establishment, pictures of the 70s has made numerous films based on the stage, but recently I had the good fortune to watch a restored print of his 1982 film adaptation of Come Back To The 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a film rife with the crucible nature of a one location stage play, utilizing amazing cinematographic tricks to cut together flashback sequences between a 20 year time span.

The film is about a 20 year reunion of a small town James Dean fan club at their meeting place, the local 5 & Dime.  Or so is the premise, but what occurs is an evening of both heartening and tragic revelation sparking a commentary on small town prejudice and close minded obsession.

Sandy Dennis takes up the lead as Mona, a girl who's life long obsession with James Dean has warped her sense of reality, and she plays it was a nervous intensity that both grips and repels the viewer.  Cher, in her comeback performance, is Sissy, a promiscuous girl who seeks validation in all of the wrong places.  Both girls are incredible, but the knockout performance is Karen Black, who, I can't really tell too much about without giving away an important twist in the whole story.  Let me just say that she is the moral compass of the story, the only character who has an absolutely clear motive and desire.

The film sparks questions about morality, truthfulness, and the nature of obsession.  Mona, is so protective of her son and her fantasy that rather than letting him live like a normal child, she keeps him cooped up in the 5 & Dime, projecting her own handicap upon him.  It brought to mind the actual treatment of the mentally disabled, which hasn't improved all that much since the 80s.  I say this, of course, in how we approach those with mental handicaps.  There is a stigma, the same as there is toward other groups that are not part of the homogeneous white bred American of the line following the Mississippi.  A stigma, that one would assume, would be overcome with progress brought by technology, education, and plain 'ol evolution.  

All of this is tied together by the increasingly ambiguous morality, that is not quite shared by all of the protagonists.  Some of these women think of themselves as forward thinkers trapped in an oppressive community, but what do they do to escape this community?  Everyone has an idea of what it means to be happy, but none of these women seem truly happy.  Perhaps happiness can only be derived upon the confrontation of one's own faults and the tearing down of the walls we place around ourselves.  At least, that's what it feels like Altman is telling us.

Altman followed this film with Streamers, easily available on netflix.com instant video and also based on a stage play, about homo-eroticism, racism, and the dreaded 'Section 8', in a Vietnam-Era Bootcamp.  Other stage based films would follow; Secret Honor and Beyond Therapy to name a few, but Come Back To The 5 & Dime was a benchmark for Altman.  He proved that he still had IT, as he would prove again in his late career a few more times.

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