Last Stop on the Night Train

MOVIE #1,237 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 11.15.23 Wednesdays are “WATCHLIST WEDNESDAYS.” Did you know about this? Did you hear about this? Well, this is when I hit shuffle on my 2,000+ strong Letterboxd watchlist and I view the first two selections (so long as they’re available). So, needless to say, I didn’t really WANT to watch a movie that was based on Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (which I just reviewed two weeks ago), but who am I to go against the hands of fate? Much like how Jason Takes Manhattan is Friday the 13th on a boat, this film is essentially Last House on a train. And thank god for that train! (I am a sucker for trains, especially old ones.) This was made by a guy named Aldo Lado, which is simply a phenomenal name. I can’t think of any other anagramed first and last name people (please hmu if you know any!). He is apparently an under-the-radar giallo guy, specifically his first two early 70s features, which I’ll have to check out at some point. This, unfortunately, is not a giallo in the slightest.

There’s a lot of psychosexual stuff here and the leadup to the two murders takes much longer. The graphic nature of the actual rapes is probably less extreme but it feels worse because of how prolonged and involved the torture is. Just like in Craven’s original, the parents get revenge in the final fifteen minutes and those characters are equally as undeveloped in this version (although Lado does away with the goofy booby traps). There’s also an undercurrent commenting on violence as some kind of disease that can only be solved by bourgeois intellectuals, and it’s a pretty lame take. In the end, I liked this one slightly better simply because of the European scenery and its depiction of 1970s international train travel, which — as I’ve already mentioned — I have an affinity for.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,235 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,237 ⫸

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Night Train Murders (Italian: L'ultimo treno della notte), also released in English-speaking countries as Last Stop on the Night Train and Late Night Trains, is a 1975 Italian revenge horror film directed by Aldo Lado and starring Flavio Bucci, Macha Méril, and Irene Miracle. It was released on April 8, 1975.