Much like the second Beyond the Door - which we'd rather call Shock - this movie has nothing to do with the original Beyond the Door. It comes to us from Jeff Kwitny, who also directed Iced. But what makes this movie sing is that the writing comes from Sheila Goldberg, who wrote the screenplay for Body Count, as well as the dialogue for Stage Fright, Zombi 5: Killing Birds, Ghosthouse and Eleven Days, Eleven Nights Part 2. None of these movies are known for their dialogue or coherence, so that means that I'm going to love every single moment of this film.

What takes it into the stratosphere of mania for me is the producer. Yes, Ovidio G. Assonitis, that magical Egyptian-born Greek man who crafted such wonderous objets d'art such as the original Beyond the Door, Tentacles, Madhouse and Piranha II: The Spawning. He also produced movies like Iron Warrior, Who Saw Her Die?, Forever Emmanuelle and the magical treat that is The Visitor. Somehow and someway, Disney hired him to produce their TV movie Sabrina Goes to Rome. What - Joe D'Amoto was busy?

Shy American college coed Beverly Putnic is on her way to a class trip in Yogoslavia to see an ancient cultural rite (you know, kinda like Midsommar but much more interesting). But she doesn't realize that she's due to become a bride of the devil! Blame Professor Andromolek (Bo Svenson!) for that!

This movie is also known as Amok Train, which makes much better sense as a title, because after the students escape the village where they're all nailed shut in their rooms, they board a possessed train that is driven to kill every single one of them. This train is crazy, it can separate itself into single cars, it can jump the tracks and run over people when they hide in a swamp and it can crash into another train and just keep on going.

So where is the train going?

It turns out that Beverly has been selected as Satan's bride since she was a baby. Luckily, she's found an 11th-century monk on the train to take her virginity - I bet he does it in the missionary position - which makes her a non-virgin and unfit for the bride of Satan. Um, wouldn't Satan want a promiscuous woman for a wife?

Anyways, Marius disappears and gives Beverly a book from her mother. She then returns home, looking much older than when she left. There's a Carrie shock ending where the devil tries to kill her on the plane, but that's just a dream.

This is the kind of movie that I love, where little to nothing makes sense, where moms drop you off at the airport and are soon beheaded, where everyone dies horrible and trains have personalities and are given to killing college students. It also looks gorgeous with actual thought and art behind each frame, something lost in the glut of direct to streaming films of today.

A group of obnoxious American students witness a sacred Pagan ritual in a remote rural area of Yugoslavia. They attempt to flee the cultists by hopping a train. However, said train turns out to be possessed by an evil force. Director Jeff Kwitny, working from a blithely absurd script by Sheila Goldberg, treats the enjoyably asinine premise with jaw-dropping seriousness, does a solid job of crafting a spooky sinister atmosphere, delivers a handy helping of gloriously excessive over-the-top gore, and keeps the pace hurtling along at a reasonably rapid clip. The chintzy (not so) special effects (it's pretty obvious that the runaway train is a miniature in several lingering shots!),tacky splatter, and clumsy use of strenuous slow motion provide a wealth of unintentional belly laughs. Token faded name Bo Svenson portrays an eccentric professor with pleasingly hammy panache. Mary Kohnert as snippy virgin Beverly makes for a decidedly whiny and unappealing heroine, but at least she bares she exquisitely generous breasts in a tasty gratuitous shower scene. Savina Gersak brings plenty of fiery pluck to her colorful role as tough and resourceful gypsy thief Sava. Adolfo Bartoli's glossy widescreen cinematography puts a gliding Steadicam to impressively fluid use. Carlo Maria Cordio's ominous score hits the shivery spot. A real schlocky hoot and a half.

The story goes that in 1974 Ovidio G. Assonitis released his Italian EXORCIST shocker BEYOND THE DOOR, starring Juliet Mills and Richard Johnson. In 1977 he successfully manages to rename Mario Bava's final horror film SHOCK to BEYOND THE DOOR II for its release Stateside. The same thing happened in the third and final film of this unofficial trilogy, with the US/Italian/Yugoslavian horror film DEATH TRAIN being released as BEYOND THE DOOR III in America. Unlike Bava's film, this does have a few references to the first in the series but is generally a stand-alone entry and boy, is it one hell of a film. A largely unwatchable mess that alternates between crazy special effects, graphic gore, and unrelenting tedium, resulting in one mind-altering combination that only the darned Italians could have dreamed up.

I'll make it plain: this is only worth watching for cheese value. As a horror film, it seems predictable and unrealistic, and as a thriller it's a bore. As for the plot synopsis, well, I know there are films with killer lawnmowers, cars, even a killer bulldozer, but a KILLER TRAIN? It's a big gamble that doesn't quite pay off. The general plot line goes that a bunch of overage teenagers (played by incredibly wooden, no-name actors and actresses who are simply terrible) go on a field trip to Yugoslavia and become involved with a devil cult.

DEATH TRAIN offers gratuitous nudity in a needless shower scene, a weird witch and a Satanic ritual, a woman being killed in a freak death a la THE OMEN when a steel girder hits her car and a boy being inexplicably burnt in his bunk by supernatural fire after he becomes paralysed. This is just the warm-up! Once the action shifts to the train, the film loses focus and lots of inexplicable events happen like the train getting cut in half, people getting possessed all the time for no reason and a weird flute-playing hermit sitting around. Wandering amongst the talentless cast is B-movie veteran Bo Svenson, dressed like Dracula and playing Satan; this wouldn't be his worst film appearance as he still had to make PRIMAL RAGE in the following year. Watch out for the oh-god-it's-incredibly-funny slow-motion interlude which plays to classical music and features an obvious miniature train crashing through a swamp. Later in the film the train derails and flies through the countryside, then always goes back on the tracks perfectly. How or why is anybody's guess.

The film has infrequent scenes of graphic gore which are surprisingly efficient for such a cheapo film. One man is burnt alive in the engine, another has his head torn off after being run over by the train. The conductor is impaled, a man suffers leech attack and a girl rips the skin right off her face in the film's goriest moment. Later, a severed head goes flying artistically in slow-motion (worth the admission price alone) and a cheesy dummy is cut in half by a flying chain and falls to pieces. Did I mention the impossible-to-achieve impaling between a teen and a stop barrier? The film eventually (and thankfully) culminates with a lame Satanic ritual which is so poorly done it makes you wonder why they bothered. But no, there's still more in a really bad CARRIE rip-off twist set aboard an aeroplane! DEATH TRAIN is a dud whichever way you look at it and can be of interest only to those who like their films talentless and derivative. I kind of got a kick out of it.