Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

At first there was excitement. I was initially led to believe that this movie ‘Train’ was a remake of the Jamie Lee Curtis movie ‘Terror Train’. I don’t know why there was excitement because it’s not like ‘Terror Train’ was all that good and I am pretty much fed up with remakes but I was excited nonetheless. Then I saw that box cover over there and realizing there were no severed arms in ‘Terror Train’, at least none that I remember, this movie ‘Train’ must be something else. Oh my, it was something else indeed.

A college wrestling team is in Eastern Europe. Now if I had read that description before renting this movie I’d have known what was up from the get go because don’t nothing good happen in Eastern Europe in any movie. Todd (Derek Maygar) is the stud of the team and hopes to turn pro… Now to be honest with you I didn’t know there was a pro Greco-Roman wrestling league, unless Todd wants to go ECW in which case little man had better start hitting those roids. Unfortunately his girl Alex (Thora Birch) sucks at wrestling and wishes to quit and just go on to medical school. Todd shows Alex a nifty little move that just might help her out. I wonder will we ever see that nifty move again? I wonder?

After the match Todd, Alex, Alex’s girl Claire (Gloria Votsis) Todd’s obnoxious buddy Sheldon (Kevan Reece) and assistant coach Willy (Gideon Emery) run off to one of those movie-type Eastern European style rave orgy fests and miss their freaking train, much to dismay of their uptight Coach (Todd Jensen). Getting sidetracked once again, if Todd Jensen is in your movie, Todd Jensen is going to die. I hope Todd Jensen’s children, if he has any, appreciates the fact the he dies horribly in every movie he shows up in just to put food in their mouths. Thankless brats.

Now they need to find a train to Odessa, and ‘lucky for them’ a Slavic young woman who looks plenty evil to me (Konya Ruseva) knows a train that’s going their way. Everything looks copacetic, at least until our wrestlers start disappearing. Actually they’re being mutilated and then slaughtered but we aren’t going to say why. At least not right now. Eventually Alex realizes that something fishy is going on here… the first clue to this could be coach is on a metal slab gutted all to hell, but she knows something ain’t right. And she’s going to do something about it!

Okay, the first movie I saw from director Gideon Raff was the reasonably classy thriller ‘The Killing Room’, so either he was holding back in that movie or in an effort to give the demographic what the studio apparently thinks they want, my man went overboard in creating one of the most brutal, cruel, mean-spirited, nonsensical gore fests ever. Hey, let’s punch a guy in the grill 100 times with brass knuckles, then piss on his face then cut his dick off! Yeah! Hey, let’s hook a bitch under her chin with a meat hook, hang her up, cut off her leg and then give then give her away to some soldiers to be gang raped, because apparently Eastern European soldiers rather enjoy raping bitches with meat hooks in their chin and possessing one bloody stump. Outstanding!

While the atrocities against humanity in this movie go on and on, to the point where the ref had to blow the whistle for piling on, the over excessive violence didn’t really bother me all that much, at least not enough to override the over excessive stupidity in ‘Train’. So the train is a rolling black market organ harvesting choo-choo with the passengers, I’m assuming, all waiting for some illegal transplant. What in the hell would they have done if our college kids didn’t miss their first train? Then there are the surgeries. I’ve heard of a cornea transplant but a whole eyeball transplant? Not that it ain’t possible but I’ve never heard of it. And back to the homey who got his dick cut off because they didn’t cut off my mans pecker due to their evil nature but because the receiver of this donation nodded that he found my mans dick quite acceptable. A dick transplant? Then the doctor explains to us later that she’s ‘saving lives’. How in the hell is a transplanted dick saving anybody’s life? Even if transplanting a dick were possible. Then imagine a situation were some dude is approaching you with a meat hook. Remember, even though you are a cute female you’re still a Division I college wrestler. Do you think of an escape or at least fight for your life or do you sit in a corner whimpering, allowing this cat to casually walk up to you and gore your face with a meat hook? Girlfriend, for whatever reason, chose B.

Then there’s our star Thora Birch. Ms. Birch just might be the most feminine woman ever. She’s small, soft, cute and curvy with my point being that there’s nothing about Thora Birch that screams ‘badass’. So when her character takes like a dozen super atomic punches to the face, her head propped up against ridged steel, punches being delivered by the Eastern European equivalent of the Incredible Hulk, her not only surviving this but turning the tables on the Hungarian Hulk was a bit unbelievable. Just a bit. There is so much utter nonsense in this film that it is fairly clear that any advanced thought in creating this movie went only into thinking of ways to mutilate people.

Thus if you enjoy watching people getting mutilated in all kinds of horrible ways… remember the dick transplant… all presented in glorious Technicolor and pristine surround sound, the go ahead and take the ‘Train’. If you’re looking for a touch of intelligence or logic to go along with your carnage, then you might want to check out ‘The Wiggles’ latest video to satisfy that need.