A pair of psychotic hoodlums (Flavio Bucci and Gianfranco De Grassi) and an equally demented nymphomaniac woman (Macha Meril) end up terrorizing two young girls on a train trip from Germany to Italy. After a perfunctory set up involving the girls getting on the train, the thugs shown being…well thugs and beating up a Santa(!)- just to establish their dirt bag reputations. The film moves to the titular train and the film kicks off. There is a harmonica sting that gets played whenever the thugs arrive on-screen, weirder still is that it is played in real time by one the thugs themselves, which adds a icky creep factor The weirdness really starts when Blackie (Bucci) eye humps, then properly humps, a wealth, older lady (Meril) who ends being a total freak and decides to hang with the thugs. The girls are duly caught and then held captive by the thugs and the older woman, when things really do get strange, as the woman invites a random old man, who was perving on the goings on in the cabin and is urged to rape one of the girls, which he does…no I’m not kidding – it’s a train full of freaks and sexual predators, or so it seems.
There is a real and palpable underlying sexual simmering to the film before anything sexual happens, from the glossy way the two teens are shot to the dinner party scene in which one of the parents of the girls, giving the film, a very uneasy and sleazy feel to it.
Aldo Lado directs the film quite well, if not a little heavy handed, for instance – a bathroom sex scene, which is shot with flair but then includes a cut away shot of a train going into a tunnel, just to make sure you realise that, you know – these two are having sex, the only things missing were fireworks and waves crashing on a beach!
The script is clunky, poorly written and like the directing is heavy handed. All through the film, there are cut shots of a dinner party in between the girls being abused and all the talk is about a violent society and how even the rich contribute to it, drawing the clear and about as subtle as a sledgehammer link between the rich, older woman and the poor, young punks that she manipulates into abusing the girls. A case could be made for the woman actually being the Devil, however no supernatural events or even any talk of this is in the film.(So its pure speculation on my part).
This film isn’t as graphic or as brutal as The Last House on the Left, however it still does pack a punch of its own with the ending, where evil is punished but the real villain of the film gets away scot free. Whilst this Italian production wasn’t particularly original and despite its many, many flaws – It has a lot going for it and is a highly watchable piece of exploitation cinema.
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