Forget about the unrelated title "Beyond the Door III", as its better represented under "Death Train" or "Amok Train". What starts off as an optimistically ominous Italian supernatural occult feature eventually falls into cheesy and senseless absurdness, but even so it manages to stay reasonably diverting. The premise's opening build up is atmospheric, spooky and alienating, but when the staged action hit's the train it becomes ludicrously brainless. Forget about making any sense of it (yep it's strange and baffling), and just go along for the unpredictable, but farcical train ride of 'doom'. Director Jeff Kwitny uses the creepy, louring, out-cast East European environment to great effect, and ups the tatty, macabre gore effects when it counted. He plasters it with cheap shocks, but the outrageously graphic deaths are amusingly inventive and impulsive. There are some memorable ones too. An inane script and wishy-washy story is made up of frantic ideas, and novelties that never really seem to come together, but at least it stays in character by keeping the story moving like a speeding train. Some sequences involving the run-away train (that's ritually controlled by Satanists) are balefully destructive, but other times you get a good laugh when the miniature train model comes into play. Adolfo Bartou's sweepingly agile and large scale cinematography is very well-implemented, and at times looked to good for such a production. Telegraphing nearly everything is the pounding, dread-induced music score of generically leering and terrible cues. The performances are pretty wretched, but Bo Svenson's little screen time makes an impression.
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lost-in-limbo12 April 2008
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BandSAboutMovies23 January 2020Much 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. -
Alternatively known as Death Train, this horror flick really show amateur qualities, whether script ("write as you go" dialogue is unbelievably bad) directing, whatever. The film does retain a wide intrigued curiosity of story, and the graphic violence has a style, yet plot is muddled (really hard to follow), which is really the film's problem, if done at a rushed effort. Supposedly the story is of a group of lucky American students who go to Europe to witness a ritual, where the virgin girl of the group, unawares she's just lost her mother in a horrific and cruel car accident, is being set up in a sacrifice, where she must lose her virginity quick, as a slightly creepy Russian satanist (veteran Bo Svenson- the best performance I've seen out of the guy) attains her. When all escaping, they board the train, which turns out to be the one from hell, like that death ship, that brought evil and death. As only seeing the film a few times, the last time, only the other day, I didn't realize how gory this film was, most of it, thanks to that notorious killer train. You don't give two hoots about any of the characters except, our virgin a little, and her peers who seem to taunt her and cast her out, doesn't help their likability status. But amidst the sloppiness of the film, this forgettable flick still rises above this and it's other painfully palpable faults, which will warrant some more views in the future, but again Svenson, the show stealer, is fantastic.
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Cujo10826 July 2010Third entry in the series of films that have nothing to do with each other. The original title for this one is Amok Train, though it's better known as Beyond the Door III. It involves a group of college students heading to Yugoslavia. Once there, it is revealed that the virgin of the group, Beverly, is intended to be the bride of the devil.
This is a really bad movie with some truly lousy gore scenes. The deaths themselves are creative enough, but the effects are terrible, several of them using blatantly obvious dummy heads. The characters are also an unlikable bunch who treat Beverly poorly for no good reason. They also never seem to much care when something otherworldly happens. One guy kisses his possessed girlfriend and gets a mouth full of maggots in the process. The girl then proceeds to rip her face off right in front of him, but the guy never mentions it and acts as if it didn't happen. We also get some hilarious scenes of the titular train going off the rails, all done with very bad miniature work.
This one's for those who like to laugh at bad movies. Anyone else should avoid. Funnily enough, it's still the most watchable film in this series of unrelated Euro flicks. -
Scarecrow-8824 April 2008Los Angeles teens, on a retreat through Eastern Europe, fall prey to creepy Serbian Devil cult who wish to mate virgin Beverly(Mary Kohnert)with their Master Lucifer, making her Princess of Darkness with evil being unleashed on the world. Narrowly escaping(..well, all of them but one who seems to freeze in a cataleptic state)an attempt at burning them alive in nailed huts, the teens, with Beverly in tow, make it for a train. Two of the group, Melanie(Renee Rancourt)& Larry(Ron Williams)are left behind, attempting, on foot, to follow in the hopes of reaching them somehow..but, Larry breaks his ankle, slowing them both down as they travel through some ominous territory alien to them. Meanwhile, demonic forces murder the train conducting crew, commandeering it as the remaining teens on board die one by one..using Beverly as a tool of destruction, Satanic supernatural forces operate through her with the classmates paying the price. As the railroad company attempt to stop the train by any means necessary, the forces of evil thwart them at every turn. In an attempt to stop the train themselves, the teens will enlist the aide of a thief on board, Sava(Savina Gersak)who speaks in third person with a cigarillo in her mouth, who likes to remove items from tourists' belongings. Also on board is a mysterious flute-playing stowaway, cloaked with only the viewer seeing his lighted eyes every now and then..he could very well play a hand in whether Lucifer and his cult are successful in their diabolical plan.
Ridiculous, jaw-droppingly absurd premise throws a lot of different ideas at the viewer. The acting is anything but convincing and the words from their mouths is rather painful to listen to. We get some bizarre violence such as one female victim, Christie(Sarah Conway Ciminera)whose afflicted with maggots when Beverly slaps her across the face causing grisly results(..filling his mouth with maggots during a kiss, boyfriend watches as his girlfriend's forehead cracks open, as she peels her face off revealing creepy crawlies spilling from her revealed skull). One victim's body is separated with his stomach exploding. Another decides to hang off the window as he giggles like a loon with railway barrier(..guided by a supernatural force)stabbing through him. Oh, and deaths to the train crew include one's being pulled into the coal furnace, one squashed underneath the train with his head pulled loose, and another being splattered between two cars. There's a goofy revelation of who the cloaked flute-player is. The blasted train drives right off the rails purposely to kill two victims in a lake, leading to a memorable beheading. Lots of wacky gory hi-jinx on display for fans of bad cinema. Bo Svenson has a small, but crucial, role as a professor assigned to the kids, who works for Satan. The ending is a bizarre ritual with the cult dressed in their garb as Lucifer rises from wherever in a block of ice! The one certain aspect that is not inept in this film is the fantastic cinematography..the camera-work and lighting is superb, which actually gives this tripe an attractive, polished look despite the abundance of problems plaguing the film. The models used for the train, and later airplane, are unconvincing and laughable. Still, this was a ton of fun..I can not say I was ever bored. There's so much lunacy on screen, you'll spend your time bewildered at what is transpiring. -
Let's see what's beyond door number three. Surprise! It's a truckload of Italian-produced 80's horror cheese! The "official" title Beyond the Door III is completely irrelevant and probably just chosen because the film remotely involves some itty-bitty parts of satanic possession and because the infamous Ovidio G. Assonitis director of the original Beyond the Door (a nitwit "Exorcist" rip-off) pumped extra money into this as an executive producer. Speaking of him, usually you should beware of any horror production that proudly depicts Assonitis' name during the opening credits. Remember "Tentacles", "Ator the Iron Warrior" and "Piranha II"? But "Amok Train", the much more apt title, is actually a vastly entertaining movie as long as you keep your expectations really low. During the first five minutes already, we're treated to eerie images of black-cloaked Satanists performing a weird ritual; a randomly gratuitous boobs shot and someone losing her head in a tragic car accident when a steel bar crushes through the front window. Well then, how bad can an 80's horror movie possibly be? Even after the promising opening minutes, "Amok Train" remains a fast-paced and hugely amusing little flick, albeit one that makes absolutely no sense and contains more crazy twists and absurd situations than you could ever imagine. A group of Californian high school students has the privilege of traveling to Yugoslavia, to study the local history with the eminent Professor Andromolek. The whole trip turns out to be a giant lie, as the Professor is part of a satanic sect and they're exclusively interested in young Beverly because she's the "chosen" virgin to wed Satan himself. Beverly and her classmates manage to escape and jump on an old train hoping to escape. From then on, the movie literally turns into a derailed in every possible meaning of the term adventure with nonsensical twists, extreme cheese and spontaneously random death scenes. Dark powers turn the train into an unstoppable instrument of the devil driving through water and over land without rails. The opening scenes in the little Yugoslavian villages are atmospheric and actually evoke a handful of real scares. Nearly two decades prior to Eli Roth, the creators of this little flick already realized that the population in East European countries look uncanny and that it's a terribly dangerous place for American teenagers to travel to. The middle section, however, is just sheer cheesy nonsense with a handful of awesome gore moments, hysterically screaming co-eds and stupid dialogs.
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jet6622 October 2012If you enjoy hilariously awful occult movies, then this might be entertainment for you. Magnificently incompetent on every level, this film features some truly absurd special effects, awkward and amateur acting, clumsy dialogue, and a very disjointed narrative. You know that common sense was left by the wayside in the first 5 minutes, when a loose construction beam on a forward-moving truck flies backward at a sudden stop. Given the theft from better movies (Terror Train, Horror Express, etc.), the mumbo jumbo here could have at least relied on a suspenseful story. But we know well in advance the final stop for this steaming cinematic movement, with the ending telegraphed at least an hour before.
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adriangr5 June 2020Amok Train ( a far better title) tells the tale of a group of American students on a study trip in Serbia who are first terrorized by an evil village, and then by a runaway train they they attempt to escape on. It's all because one of the students is a "chosen one" of a group of devil worshippers.
The film has so much going on, it's never boring, even if some of the story and acting are a bit hokey, there are always plenty of things to look at and some outrageous gore is showcased, including a face being pulled off, decapitations, impalements galore, and quite a shocking dismemberment of one poor guy caught between moving carriages.
Actually some of the most frightening scenes of the movie are those depicting the actors being filmed on the moving train. We see them running alongside and jumping aboard, clambering over the top of it, hanging off the sides and dangling between the couplings - all while the train is clearly moving at some speed. I don't know how they filmed all of this, it looks completely hair-raising. If these are faked via special effects, then I take my hat off in admiration.
There are some rather shonky miniature models that spoil some of the tension, but the movie is otherwise beautifully photographed, and the music is great too. It's bursting with energy and great visuals, reminiscent of Lamberto Bava's "Demons" , and the more obscure "Spider Labyrinth", so if you have seen and enjoyed either of those, and can suspend your criticisms, you'll have fun with this. -
BA_Harrison9 June 2008A group of American students travel to a remote part of Serbia to witness an ancient pre-Christian ritual. However, on their arrival, they discover that they have actually been lured into a trap: the freaky locals intend to offer virginal loner Beverly Putnic (Mary Kohnert) to the Devil as a bride; the rest of the students are expendable.
Fleeing the village, the group board a passing steam train, but soon learn that the locomotive is being controlled by gypsy black magic, and that their next stop will be an unscheduled rendezvous with the Satanic Serbians, who are keen to get their wedding ceremony under way.
With its ridiculous plot, a fair amount of cheesy gore, and loads of really shonky model effects, Amok Train (AKA Beyond the Door III) sounds like a bad-movie fan's idea of heaven; the first few scenes certainly had my hopes fairly high, for they feature a completely gratuitous shower scene and a dwarftwo of my 'essential ingredients' for a fun, trashy movie. Alas, despite plenty of daft moments, the film still proves to be extremely tedious, thanks to a script that, like the movie's train, goes nowhere fast.
Once the main characters have boarded the Eastern European express, the film comprises of an endless array of badly directed and monotonous action set-pieces (in which an unconvincing Hornby model frequently leaves its tracks to plough through fake plastic trees), dull scenes in which the authorities attempt to devise a plan for stopping the train (eventually coming up with the great idea of trying to derail it!!), and boring-as-hell conversation between the students, a conductor, and a spunky female thief, who makes her living stealing from the passengers.
The monotony is occasionally punctuated by some welcome scenes of outrageous gore (including a splattery 'face-peel', a body messily torn in half by a chain, an impressive impalement, and a totally crazy-bonkers-insane decapitation by the train as it thunders through a swamp!!!), but no amount of blood-letting could make up for the film's complete lack of atmosphere, awful acting, and nonsensical narrative.
The film finishes with a 'surprise' ending, in which Beverly defeats the Devil and his coven mid-ceremony by revealing that she is no longer a virgin, having been deflowered on the train by the ghost of a 16th century mute flute-playing monk (that old chestnut!). -
Tweetienator18 May 2020Sometimes you stumble over those kind of movies where the main and haunting question is - what the heck did the writer(s) smoke!? Beyond the Door III aka Amok Train aka Death Train is such a movie. What we get is some ancient satanic ritual in a rural community of Yugoslavia mixed with a good part of what is some kind of early and low budget Unstoppable (Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, 2010) - in one scene the runaway (demon-possessed!?) train even drives thru a small lake without any railway tracks just to kill some of the poor Americans! But on the other side we get a fine sniff of gore here and there and some well composed dark and weird mood including some satanic ritual (just too delicious the scene where the old witch screams: she's not a ******!) and some fine visuals (for a B-movie).
My rate would be a straight 5 but for the smoking question I add 1 more - so my overall rate is a well-deserved 6. -
HumanoidOfFlesh28 October 2000"Beyond the Door 3" is a pathetic trash.The acting is horrendous,the script is putrid and the music is awful.Absolutely no suspense,no atmosphere,just boring,meaningless c*** OK,there are some good gore bits for example one guy is cut in half by a chain,but the film isn't very bloody,so gore-hounds will be disappointed.The ending is one of the worst ever.The special effects rank from acceptable to totally fake.I'm a big horror fan and I really couldn't appreciate this one.To sum up,"Beyond the Door 3" is okay to laugh at with friends,but good luck sitting through this twice.Don't waste your precious time unless you like really bad horror movies.Not recommended.
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kannibalcorpsegrinder23 November 2019Traveling to Yugoslavia for their studies, classmates learn about a pagan ritual and are taken to a performance but when they discover foul play, they manage to escape onto a train where they realize the train is to deliver one of the students back to a congregation of devil worshipers and race to get off the train to safety.
This is a wonderfully fun and entertaining film. A lot of the film's positives are due to how cheesy the film is. That is mostly from the overall setup of how they're lured over to the village and seeing the preparations of the ceremony that takes place which allows for this one to let it be known early on that they're shifty and shady. The resulting trap in the fire-filled huts the next morning is no surprise and features some thrilling moments as they escape their trapped rooms. Their eventual escape from the village has some fun moments as well so even though the film is about the preparations of a demonic cult to get at them, most of the film is set on a train. That makes for some really cheesy action to be had. That itself is the best feature of the film with a huge slew of action scenes that really get the film going along. From the numerous scenes of the train jumping the tracks but still going to the carnage inside the train and the various supernatural antics depicting the influence over the train, these are all great and have a nice atmosphere to the film. The continuous amount of time that it jumps the tracks are quite fun and cheesy as there's a sense of joy to be had when watching a train jumping the tracks and going through a wooded area or a soggy marshland and keeps going. These are just good cheesy fun, and the film is packed with them. This even gets better with all the different attempts to stop it come up with different action moments here. From the military blockade that fails spectacularly to the attempts at blowing it up and all the outside forces' attempts, this really racks up those moments and does it well. The finale, where the cult gets a hold of the patient and it all goes up in smoke, does have some really good action moments as the clacking rocks and visuals during the abrupt ceremony are creepy and chilling that which has a lot to like. Aside from that, there's also the high amount of kills around the train which is great and are also really bloody ones to be had. These here really make up the film as this one had very little wrong with it. The main flaw is that the cult has very little screen-time. After the opening, they aren't brought up again, and that is slightly strange due to the film taking up so much time on the train, which takes away from the cult. They have the possibility to be creepy, but there's no time spent with them to get that way. The film's cheesiness is also something to deal with, especially when it's so obvious that models are used for the scenes where a stunt-train is needed. Those really keep the film down.
Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity. -
Milo-Jeeder17 March 2015I can't say that I'm surprised by the unpopularity of this film, but I think "Amok Train" is lots of fun and though a lot of people may disagree, I actually think it has a few genuinely eerie moments and it is worth watching. It should be mentioned, though, that the story has absolutely nothing to do with "Beyond the Door" (1974).
In "Amok Train", a group of American "teenagers" go on a school trip to a rural town in Serbia called Ufir, to witness an ancient ritual. Our main character in this story is one of these high-schoolers, a mousy girl named Beverly Putnic, who is of Serbian ancestry. One would expect her to be happy about visiting her ancestors' lands, but, in reality, she's not. You see, Beverly doesn't get along with her class mates, who constantly pick on her for being shy and because of the fact that she's still a virgin. Unbeknownst to all the young students, including Beverly herself, this trip to Serbia is actually all about her, because many years ago, a cult of Serbian satanists chose her to become the Devil's wife and now that she has a grown into a young woman, she is ready to meet her future husband. Though it is never explicitly revealed how this trip was organized, judging by the sinister look on the teacher's face, one could easily assume that she is in cahoots with the group of Serbian satanists, but I digress...
When the class mates arrive to Ufir, they are welcomed by a local man, known as Professor Andromolek, who is also the cult leader (which is evident, since he uses a silver cane, a black cape, and he has a Satan-like goatee). On the first night, when the class mates go to sleep to some cabins located in the middle of the woods, two locals (and cult members) set the cabins on fire, which results in the death of one of the students. The remaining ones manage to escape and ask the locals for help, only to receive hostile looks and indifference from them (no surprise, since they are all cult members). Sensing that there's something very wrong in Ufir, the youngsters escape the rural town, by jumping into a moving train, where all hell breaks loose.
I may be a part of a really, really small crowd here, but I actually like this film and not in a patronizing way. Sure, there are a lot of ridiculous parts, but I actually think director Jeff Kwitny builds up a very eerie atmosphere, by taking advantage of the Serbian landscapes, making them look frightening and intimidating (though also darkly appealing). The elderly actors who play the cult members look very threatening with their zombie-like attitude, their black clothes, the sinister look in their eyes and the fact that they always appear out of nowhere from the trees, giving the impression that they're all together up to something horrible. The death scenes are very creative; some of them look ridiculous due the lack of budget or maybe the lack of common sense, but overall, I found the deaths to be very original and enjoyable.
The characters are rather generic and one dimensional, but most of us who watch these types of b-horror productions don't even care about that, anyway. We have the shy and innocent girl, the handsome athlete, the nice guy, the dumb one, the beautiful, popular girl and the list goes on. Slovenian actress Savina Gersak appears to have fun playing one of the most enjoyable characters, a young thug named Sava, who joins the generic high-schoolers in their ill-fated train ride. Sava is not only a tough girl, she is also a thief and she refers to herself in the third person too! ("Don't mess with Sava", "Sava is a thief, not a murderer!"). Aside from Gersak, the acting is mostly plain, except, of course, for Swedish actor Bo Svenson and Argentinian actress Victoria Zinny, who only appears for a few minutes, anyway. It is obvious that the rest of the actors didn't have a lot of acting experience and that's forgivable, because they get the job done, anyway.
The film reaches its peak during the well awaited ritual, in which Beverly is offered to the Devil as his bride. By this point, it seems like poor Beverly is somehow willing to accept her destiny, and she even looks eager to finally meet her future hubby... or is she? I don't want to spoil the whole scene but I will say only one thing: we actually get to see the Devil for a brief moment and it's not bad at all! I have seen my decent share of b-horror movies from the 80s to say that the Devil's appearance actually looks surprisingly decent. I think it would have been better to keep him off-screen to make him more mysterious and intimidating, but apparently, director Jeff Kwitny didn't feel the same way and he took the risk of showing him. The whole ritual scene is over the top and bizarre, so there's no disappointment there, since it provides a combination of shock and unintended hilarity (seriously, what more can we ask for at this point?)
"Amok Train" deals with the premise of being stranded in a foreign land, where nobody can understand or help the characters, which is a trope that I tend to enjoy. There are several scenes where we only see the Serbian actors talking to each other and there are no subtitles, which alienates the audience too. I think the whole idea of being lost and helpless in a foreign country is terrifying, especially if the place is half as scary like the fictional town of Ufir that we see in this film.
"Amok Train" is definitely a fun ride and anyone who can appreciate b-horror movies from the 80s should be able to enjoy this film. I know I was pleasantly surprised myself. -
Bunuel197618 October 2011Having now watched all three BEYOND THE DOOR films, I can say that not only are they entirely unrelated one to the other but they are all of equally mediocre quality (this does, however, retain Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli from the first entry among its credentials). Coming so long after the others, one can see how much the "Euro-Cult" style had been degraded by this point: here, we only have Bo Svenson and Victoria Zinny (from Luis Bunuel's VIRIDAIANA {1961}!) for mildly familiar presences and both do not figure in it all that much!
Anyway, we have a mix of typical scenarios here: stranded teenagers as splatter-fodder (which can be pretty inventive at times but also demonstrates a baffling penchant for decapitation and gut-busting!), a virgin destined to be mated with Satan (her mother appears to her after death as a head-shaven disciple who unleashes a baby dragon from between her legs!), and even the driverless train (being an Italian-Yugoslavian-U.S. co-production, both the Italian title – which translates to THE TRAIN! – and the alternate monikers, AMOK, AMOK TRAIN and DEATH TRAIN, relate to the latter plot strand which, in fact, occupies much of the running-time). Oddly enough, a fair share of the dialogue, describing the progress of the runaway train along its various checkpoints along the tracks, comes in untranslated Serbian (and I wonder now how it was presented in the Italian-language version which I also have a copy of somewhere – but I opted to go with the English print in view of the fact that the director is not Italian: I'm not sure about scriptwriter Sheila Goldberg, though, since she has worked on a number of other latter-day "Euro-Cult" efforts).
Anyway, by contriving to do away with almost the entire principal cast before the finale (including a local self-reliant female thief the group encounters on the train and who plans to blow it all up), the film offers little surprises throughout. While Svenson is obviously evil since he sports a Captain Beefheart-type goatee and immediately takes a more than casual interest in the heroine (who has several ties to the foreign land she is visiting, not least a birthmark on her chest which is the tell-tale sign of her being the chosen one for the ultimate dubious honor of breeding the Devil's spawn), we also get a blind fortune-telling witch who shows up to cackle maniacally from time to time. On the other hand, there is a shady, silent and flute-playing hooded figure on the train who may or may not be an envoy of Evil – at the very end, we are told he is a real-life monk who was burned alive for practicing witchcraft but then had his accusations retracted and eventually sanctified as a most pious man(!), and what he does here is spoil the Satanic party by...er...despoiling the heroine (talk of perverting the Church's dogma for the common good!) so that the talon-sporting and monstrous-looking Devil (propped all the while SPINAL TAP-like inside a glass cage eagerly awaiting to get in on the action) cannot touch her and instantly blows (or, more precisely, fizzes) up upon learning the truth, though not before venting his wrath upon the understandably baffled Svenson.
The last scene takes care to provide one final frisson as the girl receives an unexpected visit from her 'intended' on the flight back to the States but, of course, it turns out to be just a dream and all is really rosy for her (and, it goes without saying, safe for the rest of us as well). The end result, then, is not quite as bad as I had been expecting – but, in the long run, it does little more than reaffirm the sad state to which Horror (and "Euro-Cult" in particular) has faltered, and from which there is little sensible hope of recuperating... -
xtrospawn9 April 2001Everyone who gave this movie a bad review is fired from EVER reviewing a b-horror movie again. There are two kinds of horror movies...There are the ones such as THE EXORCIST and HALLOWEEN which, for whatever reason, have mass appeal. And then there're the ones like BEYOND THE DOOR 3, obscure low budget oddities which suddenly appear on video store new release walls with a no-name cast and crew and really nothing to recommend them other than a really neat cover box. They're usually made on a shoestring budget with plots recycled from other movies. But they have only one goal and that is to entertain. And BEYOND THE DOOR 3 certainly succeeds in that area. I've seen this little gem of a flick more than a dozen times and I'm thoroughly entertained each time. To hell with characterizations and plodding plot devices, this little flick wants to entertain and scare you, and it does! When you rent a movie like BEYOND THE DOOR 3 you should have some idea of what's in store for you. Especially since it's a part 3 so you're renting it having probably seen the first two installments. So you shouldn't be disappointed because it's too cheesy or flatly directed, etc. That's what fans of these types of movies want. So shame on everyone who watched this movie and was disappointed. Go watch MATLOCK with Grandma, you sissies.
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Leofwine_draca11 June 2016The 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. -
Justin-Fog25 March 2006Set in Eastern Europe, this movie about a group of young people trapped in a demonic, bloodthirsty train is an utter disappointment. The effects are very bad, even though there is some gore, and the story is stupid. The train runs amok and relentlessly takes on any obstacles there are - it runs on and off the tracks, plows through fields and woods (without derailing!), runs through lakes and swamps (without sinking!!) and crashes through trucks parked across the tracks (without exploding !!!). One by one the innocent youngsters aboard the train die a horrible death, from being decapitated, speared by splintered signal poles, or torn in halves by iron chains connecting the railway cars. At the end the seemingly unstoppable train is being stopped by a bomb made of black powder from two dozen shotgun shells! I mean...come on, folks! How stupid can a horror movie get? Well, if you want to find out, watch this one. Or I'd rather you don't. Cause it's not worth your while. It's a waste of time. There are better things to do with your time - and if you must, then watch any other Horror movie but this one... Jasper P. Morgan
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willandcharlenebrown23 June 2021Starting out. A truck comes to a complete stop and the rails of steel shoot not forward from the stop of force but jets out backward!!!! No lie.... The director evidently knows nothing about elementary laws physics. Haha. Then........... a tour guide says "you'll watch a play that was made 2,000 years ago" "Student Says "how can you have a play about Christ that predates before Christ was even born?" The professor replies "good question ". What the heck? Christ birth was 2500 years ago it's BC and AD. Lol. These two things are in the first 10 minutes of the movie for Pete's sake. Haha Like I said in the description damn on another kind of level.
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benjithehunter6 November 2019If you haven't seen the other two Beyond the Door movies, never fear because this movie hasn't got anything to do with them. There are supernatural happenings and many of the sets have doors, so I guess that's the only requirement to be a part of this series.
This time, we have the world's surliest teenager (seriously, why is she so angry?) who goes on a class trip with her classmates to Yugoslavia and finds out that she's about to be the virgin sacrifice for a weirdo cult. Fleeing to their safety on a train, their terror has just begun as strange things start trying to kill her and her classmates.
Take Rosemary's Baby, throw in a bit of Final Destination, and a few generous helpings of The Wicker Man and drizzle it with tons of gore and you might have some idea of what to expect with Beyond the Door III. It's borderline nonsensical at times, hoping from subgenre to subgenre with surprising dexterity. If you're not feeling the cult aspects, just wait it out, because the Final Destination/Omen style kills might be more to your liking.
Beyond the Door III is beyond idiotic, but you can never accuse it of not providing a good time. -
HorrorFan198410 August 2020This third film in the Beyond The Door series takes viewers to Yugoslavia as a possessed train runs amok killing anyone who dares to get in it's way.
A group of American students from Los Angeles embark on an educational trip to Yugoslavia. Once they land, they are taken by boat to a remote village. Our main character Beverly is a shy girl who seems to have some connection to the pagan rituals the tour guide/professor talks about. One night while sleeping in an old log cabin, the villagers nail shut the doors and set the cabin on fire! Most of the students escape, and hop on a train.
Pretty soon it seems like the train has a mind of it's own and is thirsty for blood! Almost immediately, we see two of the drivers and a conductor all murdered in strange and mysterious ways by the train. Eventually, satan reveals himself to Beverly and tells her that he wants her to join him and become a satanist as it is her birthright. Will she follow his lead, or break free and let the good shine through?
I give Beyond the Door III a ton of credit for it's gore and special effects work on the death scenes. A couple of them, including a very gory decapitation via train, are extremely realistic. The acting was just OK. Mary Kohnert led the way as our heroine, the rest were below average for me. Character development was sorely lacking in this one so I didn't care if most of them lived or died.
My biggest problem was the lack of direction by Jeff Kwitny. We'd get some really cool scenes with gore and action, and you'd think the story might be heading in a sensical direction, but it never did. It was hard for me to keep my interest with this one and I really tried. I saw a version that also didn't provide subtitles, so there were some scenes I just couldn't follow as the locals in Yugoslavia were speaking in their Native tongue.
Overall, I'd skip Beyond The Door III unless you are a masochistic horror completist like myself who needs to see every film in a series (whether it is unrelated or not). It was kind of boring just watching the train attack people for an hour and a half.
4/10 -
glenmatisse3 July 2020Nothing in this makes any sense, but when it's delivered with such joy, it's hard not to enjoy every silly second of it. Once again, this is one of those so-called sequels that has nothing to do with the previous films and seems to be renamed to cash in on the previous two films. Instead of demonic possession, you've got crazy trains and creepy cults that need a virgin to complete some sort of ritual. Some of the death scenes have a nice Omen quality to them and there's plenty of gore to go around.
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timhds7 June 2021Things I wondered about while watching this movie.
1. Why spend so much time showing the train dispatch center and the dialogue between the staff when there are no subtitles? I mean, you get there is panic, but you could establish that in a few seconds. No need to have us watch the back and forth if you aren't going to give us subtitles.
2. Did the train turn around when it jumped the tracks? How did it get back to the original village?
3. Were the kids unconscious when the villagers nailed those heavy boards over their doors before trying to burn them alive? How did they not hear anything?
4. Why not just take the girl directly to the ceremony instead of this long drawn out production? Once the professor knocked her out with the soup he could have just kidnapped her, am I right?
5. Does the thief understand that gunpowder can ignite from the cigarillo dangling from her lip?
6. The engineer, who does manual labor for a living, couldn't free himself from a knit scarf? Unless they use a different material in Serbia, I'm pretty sure he could have extracted himself from some yarn.
These are just the ones that stood out that I hadn't seen anyone else mention.
It was fun to watch, but confusing at times. Constant action kept me entertainerd. Solid B-movie, and like others said, it was well lighted and shot. Kudos to the special effects crew, solid work on an obviously low budget. Plausibility could have used some work. -
The rating may be off a little bit..due to my love of this cheezy horror movie! I saw this movie when I was little,my mom didn't approve of an 8 year old watching R-rated movies, but my father didn't care ha-HA! (the mom was working midnights then). Realizing later (years later, more like 14 years later)that this movie has Absolutely NOTHING to do with the first Beyond the Door movie. The plot of the movie is based around a girl named Beverly, who has caught the eye of the Prince Darkness. She has the mark of the devil on her stomach, that the audience can clearly see the mark as the head of Satan, but Beverly just thinks it's a birth mark. She is apart of this European culture class at her school, and her professor is taking the class to some Slavic-type foreign country. The peasants of this county are ridiculously portrayed: poor,pale, invalids that just shuffle around, stare and clap bricks together (the clapping of bricks is towards the end of the movie as the train is finally derailed and they are coming to get Beverly to prepare her for "her wedding"). The rest of the movie consists of crazy train rides, multiple derailments - with "superior special effects" by that I mean all the derailing shots consist of a model train running on a country-side model surface; several decapitations - all of which are poorly made dummy heads. Eventually after all her classmates are dead, she is left in the train with the mysterious flute playing monk (which he cannot play - his finger and breathing rhythms don't match up with the flute music), whom "helps her lose her virginity" in order to escape the Prince of Darkness' want of her - the girl has to be a virgin in order for her to be 'his'. The country peasants come and get her and is placed on the alter for the "virgin test" from a blind, grossly looking old woman that puts her hand between Beverly's legs to check her purity. Finding out that she is impure, all the peasants and Satan (whom was rising from the earth at that time) are burned and explode. Beverly is the only left alive to return home. I have been looking for years for this movie, when I did find it, I almost peed my pants (I didn't though, just using as a reference for my extreme excitement). To me, this is one of the greatest cheezy horror movies of my childhood. You obviously don't have to take my word for, you may agree or totally disagree with me. All in all, I am SOOO GLAD that I found this movie, and I will always love it. Just give it a try and see what you think.
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DavyDissonance4 March 2020Some idiots travel the s···holes of Europe on a train to only become victims of some satanic guy and one of them, who is a virgin, is destined to f··· Satan or some garbage. Yes, Beyond The Door 3 is an incompetently made piece of caca but, my God, this movie was fantastic. Other than the s··· acting, you'll be entertained by some the most r·tarded death sequences ever. Almost every death scene that occurs is by the victims own incompetence. My favorite one is when the blonde dude gets torn in half and, in one instance, you can see that he turns into a mannequin before he falls off the train. The story is dreck but no one cares. Definitely for those who like unintentional humor and stupid wacky horror.
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loathsomethings2 July 2022Grab some beer, some friends, and watch this movie with low expectations in your heart.
Don't read the spoilers, just grab a seat and let this movie take you to your giggly destination!