L'ultimo treno della notte
Encyclopedia
L'ultimo treno della notte (also known as Night Train Murders, The New House on The Left, Second House on The Left, Don't Ride on Late Night Trains, Last Stop on the Night Train, Late Night Trains, Last House Part II and Xmas Massacre) is a 1975 Italian
revenge thriller. It was directed by Aldo Lado
, scored by Ennio Morricone
and stars Flavio Bucci
, Macha Meril
and Irene Miracle
. It gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty
in the 1980s.
) and Lisa (Laura D’Angelo), are set to take the overnight train from Munich
in Germany
to stay with Lisa's parents in Italy for Christmas. On boarding they find the train is completely full and are forced to sit in the corridor. Meanwhile, two petty criminals, Blackie (Flavio Bucci
) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi), also board the train as it is leaving Munich to escape from a pursuing policeman.
Wandering down the train looking for kicks the two thugs come across Margaret and Lisa who help them hide from the ticket collector. Blackie then encounters an upper-class blonde older woman (Macha Méril
who is never named) who he makes to molest in the toilets only for her to aggressively seduce him instead. As Curly gets into a fight, the girls become increasingly wary of the two thugs' behaviour and make their way further down the train to escape them.
Arriving in Innsbruck
in Austria
the train is stopped and searched following a tip-off that there was a bomb on board. The girls decide to try and call Lisa's parents to tell them of the delay but can't get through. Meanwhile in Italy her parents are preparing for Christmas and hosting a dinner party for their friends where Lisa's father (Enrico Maria Salerno
), a doctor, decries the growing violence in society.
Back in Innsbruck the girls decide to board a different train which will take them directly through to their destination. On boarding the new train however they find it is old, run down and virtually empty. Finding a compartment in the last carriage they settle down for their trip, happy to have seats at last, and begin to eat a packed lunch
by candlelight.
As the train travels into the night the girls are alarmed to discover that the two thugs and the blonde woman are on board as well and the three soon force their way into the girls' compartment. Stealing the food, Blackie and the blonde then engage in various lewd acts whilst taunting the girls. Curly is acting strangely and disappears to shoot up heroin in the toilets. Returning, he catches Margaret just as she attempts to escape the compartment only for the girl to knee him in the genitals. Strung out and enraged, Curly beats Margaret into submission then, egged on by Blackie and the blonde, forces Lisa to masturbate him. Now completely manipulating the situation, the blonde spots another passenger, a peeping tom who is watching them through the compartment window. Grabbing the man, the two thugs force him to rape Margaret, but when they are distracted by Lisa vomiting he escapes down the train.
Continuing to taunt and abuse the girls the blonde encourages Curly to rape Lisa but he is unable to break her hymen. Although Blackie is now becoming concerned at the way events are heading the blonde holds down Lisa whilst encouraging Curly to cut her with his flick knife to help him. The blonde enthusiastically grabs the knife and forces it deeper into Lisa causing her to hemorrhage and killing her.
With Lisa now dead and daylight breaking, the previously catatonic Margaret makes a break for it and manages to lock herself in the toilet whilst the blonde orders the two thugs to bring her back. Now frantic, Margaret climbs out of the window and flings herself from the train in an attempt to escape only to be killed in the fall.
Angry at the turn of events the blonde gets the others to throw Lisa's body out of the window followed by their luggage, stealing their tickets and some other items in the process. Angry at what has happened, Blackie blames the blonde and punches and kicks her.
Arriving at the station to meet the girls, Lisa's parents are alarmed when they don't arrive at the allotted time. The stationmaster tells them that their train had been delayed, so the doctor and his wife elect to return home and await news of the arrival time of the girls. As they are leaving they come across the blonde and two thugs and Gulio agrees to treat the blonde's injuries (received in her fight with Blackie) back at the house.
Waiting for news of the girls the couple feed the two thugs whilst Gulio treats the blonde. Lisa's mother becomes suspicious of her houseguests when she spies Curly is wearing a tie exactly like the one she was told Lisa had bought for her father as a Christmas present. The trio continue to act suspiciously and Gulio elects to take them back to town and goes to fetch the car. Whilst in the car he hears a radio report naming his daughter as a body that had been found by the train track before spying the blonde who is trying to escape having realised they are at the house of one of the girls they had murdered.
Grabbing the blonde, Gulio tries to strangle her but she convinces him that the two thugs had killed the girls and had threatened to do the same to her. Believing the woman, Gulio leaves her with his wife before heading off to find the others. He discovers Curly in his surgery injecting some heroin he had found and grabs the younger man forcing the needle further into his arm, overdosing him. The doctor then repeatedly beats Curly with various furniture and surgical instruments leaving him in a bloody mess on the floor.
Spying Blackie trying to flee, he grabs a shotgun and pursues him through the gardens. Curly manages to crawl into the driveway and tries to grab the blonde only for her to kick him to death. Gulio wounds Blackie in the leg before shooting him at point blank range. As the police arrive, the blonde woman's fate remains uncertain.
wrote, "Night Train Murders has a few redeemingly uncomfortable moments that make the numerous comparisons to The Last House on the Left
seem deserved. Still, it suffers from so many flaws -- poor pacing, an anemic screenplay, weak overdubbed dialogue, and a tendency to flinch during the sparse brutality -- that I can't recommend the movie on its own merits with any great enthusiasm."
DVD Verdict
said, "If Wes Craven's
train leaves Connecticut traveling east at 25 mph and Alan Lado's
train leaves a station in Verona traveling west at 35 mph, then can a cheap imitation of a film actually be better than the film it's ripping off? Well, in this case yes. While The Last House on the Left's success came largely from its grittiness, Lado proves that a professional sheen can be just as effective, and puts his film on the express track to success."
J.C. Maçek III of WorldsGreatestCritic.com commented, "Most viewers would find the disconcerting elements to be too much to take, ignoring the more artistic aspects (which admittedly are minor). In this respect, Lado was completely successful. He strove to make a movie calculated to make audiences walk out and audiences walked out... and then it was banned with the rest of the Video Nasties. Unlike many of the rest of its peers with this dubious distinction, L'Ultimo Treno Della Notte has still never been released in the UK. In that respect, too, Lado was successful, as his movie is in good company. Guy Fawkes
wasn't released in the UK either. And, like Lado, he knew bombs pretty damned well!"
in 1983, though it was acquitted and removed from the list in 1984. It did not get a full release until 2008 when it was finally passed uncut and distributed on DVD
by Shameless Screen Entertainment
.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
revenge thriller. It was directed by Aldo Lado
Aldo Lado
Aldo Lado is an Italian screenwriter and film director. He was born in Fiume, Italy .He wrote 21 films between 1968 and 2004. He also directed 16 films between 1971 and 1994.-Selected filmography:...
, scored by Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
and stars Flavio Bucci
Flavio Bucci
Flavio Bucci is an Italian actor. He has appeared in 76 films and television shows since 1971. He is best known for playing Daniel, the blind pianist, in Dario Argento's Suspiria.-Selected filmography:...
, Macha Meril
Macha Méril
Macha Méril, born Princess Maria-Magdalena Vladimirovna Gagarina on 3 September 1940, Rabat, Morocco, is a French actress and writer, descended by her father from the Russian princely house Gagarin and by her mother from a Ukrainian noble family...
and Irene Miracle
Irene Miracle
Irene Miracle is an American film and television actress and director.-Early life:Irene Miracle was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma and is of Scots-Irish, Russian, French and Osage descent.-Acting career:...
. It gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty
Video nasty
"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982 which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse and various religious organizations.While violence...
in the 1980s.
Plot
Two young girls, Margaret (Irene MiracleIrene Miracle
Irene Miracle is an American film and television actress and director.-Early life:Irene Miracle was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma and is of Scots-Irish, Russian, French and Osage descent.-Acting career:...
) and Lisa (Laura D’Angelo), are set to take the overnight train from Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to stay with Lisa's parents in Italy for Christmas. On boarding they find the train is completely full and are forced to sit in the corridor. Meanwhile, two petty criminals, Blackie (Flavio Bucci
Flavio Bucci
Flavio Bucci is an Italian actor. He has appeared in 76 films and television shows since 1971. He is best known for playing Daniel, the blind pianist, in Dario Argento's Suspiria.-Selected filmography:...
) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi), also board the train as it is leaving Munich to escape from a pursuing policeman.
Wandering down the train looking for kicks the two thugs come across Margaret and Lisa who help them hide from the ticket collector. Blackie then encounters an upper-class blonde older woman (Macha Méril
Macha Méril
Macha Méril, born Princess Maria-Magdalena Vladimirovna Gagarina on 3 September 1940, Rabat, Morocco, is a French actress and writer, descended by her father from the Russian princely house Gagarin and by her mother from a Ukrainian noble family...
who is never named) who he makes to molest in the toilets only for her to aggressively seduce him instead. As Curly gets into a fight, the girls become increasingly wary of the two thugs' behaviour and make their way further down the train to escape them.
Arriving in Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
the train is stopped and searched following a tip-off that there was a bomb on board. The girls decide to try and call Lisa's parents to tell them of the delay but can't get through. Meanwhile in Italy her parents are preparing for Christmas and hosting a dinner party for their friends where Lisa's father (Enrico Maria Salerno
Enrico Maria Salerno
Enrico Maria Salerno was an Italian theatre & film actor, also a film director. He was also the voice of Clint Eastwood in the Italian version of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy films, and the voice of Christ in The Gospel According to St...
), a doctor, decries the growing violence in society.
Back in Innsbruck the girls decide to board a different train which will take them directly through to their destination. On boarding the new train however they find it is old, run down and virtually empty. Finding a compartment in the last carriage they settle down for their trip, happy to have seats at last, and begin to eat a packed lunch
Packed lunch
thumb|A typical American bagged lunchthumb|[[Bento]] packed lunchA packed lunch is a lunch prepared at home and carried to be eaten somewhere else, such as school, a workplace, or at an outing...
by candlelight.
As the train travels into the night the girls are alarmed to discover that the two thugs and the blonde woman are on board as well and the three soon force their way into the girls' compartment. Stealing the food, Blackie and the blonde then engage in various lewd acts whilst taunting the girls. Curly is acting strangely and disappears to shoot up heroin in the toilets. Returning, he catches Margaret just as she attempts to escape the compartment only for the girl to knee him in the genitals. Strung out and enraged, Curly beats Margaret into submission then, egged on by Blackie and the blonde, forces Lisa to masturbate him. Now completely manipulating the situation, the blonde spots another passenger, a peeping tom who is watching them through the compartment window. Grabbing the man, the two thugs force him to rape Margaret, but when they are distracted by Lisa vomiting he escapes down the train.
Continuing to taunt and abuse the girls the blonde encourages Curly to rape Lisa but he is unable to break her hymen. Although Blackie is now becoming concerned at the way events are heading the blonde holds down Lisa whilst encouraging Curly to cut her with his flick knife to help him. The blonde enthusiastically grabs the knife and forces it deeper into Lisa causing her to hemorrhage and killing her.
With Lisa now dead and daylight breaking, the previously catatonic Margaret makes a break for it and manages to lock herself in the toilet whilst the blonde orders the two thugs to bring her back. Now frantic, Margaret climbs out of the window and flings herself from the train in an attempt to escape only to be killed in the fall.
Angry at the turn of events the blonde gets the others to throw Lisa's body out of the window followed by their luggage, stealing their tickets and some other items in the process. Angry at what has happened, Blackie blames the blonde and punches and kicks her.
Arriving at the station to meet the girls, Lisa's parents are alarmed when they don't arrive at the allotted time. The stationmaster tells them that their train had been delayed, so the doctor and his wife elect to return home and await news of the arrival time of the girls. As they are leaving they come across the blonde and two thugs and Gulio agrees to treat the blonde's injuries (received in her fight with Blackie) back at the house.
Waiting for news of the girls the couple feed the two thugs whilst Gulio treats the blonde. Lisa's mother becomes suspicious of her houseguests when she spies Curly is wearing a tie exactly like the one she was told Lisa had bought for her father as a Christmas present. The trio continue to act suspiciously and Gulio elects to take them back to town and goes to fetch the car. Whilst in the car he hears a radio report naming his daughter as a body that had been found by the train track before spying the blonde who is trying to escape having realised they are at the house of one of the girls they had murdered.
Grabbing the blonde, Gulio tries to strangle her but she convinces him that the two thugs had killed the girls and had threatened to do the same to her. Believing the woman, Gulio leaves her with his wife before heading off to find the others. He discovers Curly in his surgery injecting some heroin he had found and grabs the younger man forcing the needle further into his arm, overdosing him. The doctor then repeatedly beats Curly with various furniture and surgical instruments leaving him in a bloody mess on the floor.
Spying Blackie trying to flee, he grabs a shotgun and pursues him through the gardens. Curly manages to crawl into the driveway and tries to grab the blonde only for her to kick him to death. Gulio wounds Blackie in the leg before shooting him at point blank range. As the police arrive, the blonde woman's fate remains uncertain.
Cast
- Flavio BucciFlavio BucciFlavio Bucci is an Italian actor. He has appeared in 76 films and television shows since 1971. He is best known for playing Daniel, the blind pianist, in Dario Argento's Suspiria.-Selected filmography:...
as Blackie - Macha MérilMacha MérilMacha Méril, born Princess Maria-Magdalena Vladimirovna Gagarina on 3 September 1940, Rabat, Morocco, is a French actress and writer, descended by her father from the Russian princely house Gagarin and by her mother from a Ukrainian noble family...
as Lady On The Train - Gianfranco De Grassi as Curly
- Enrico Maria SalernoEnrico Maria SalernoEnrico Maria Salerno was an Italian theatre & film actor, also a film director. He was also the voice of Clint Eastwood in the Italian version of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy films, and the voice of Christ in The Gospel According to St...
as Professor Giulio Stradi - Marina BertiMarina BertiElena Maureen Bertolini, known as Marina Berti, was an English-born Italian film actress.Her first screen appearance was in the Anna Magnani film, La Fuggitiva in 1941. She appeared mainly in small roles and in the occasional leading role in nearly 100 films both Italian and American...
as Laura Stradi - Franco FabriziFranco FabriziFranco Fabrizi was an Italian actor.Son of a barber and a cinema cashier, he was a soap opera photo actor, for example, the fotoromanzo Arizona Kid, in the newspaper Avventuroso Film...
as Perverted Train Passenger - Irene MiracleIrene MiracleIrene Miracle is an American film and television actress and director.-Early life:Irene Miracle was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma and is of Scots-Irish, Russian, French and Osage descent.-Acting career:...
as Margaret Hoffenbach - Laura D'Angelo as Lisa Stradi
Critical reception
Adam Tyner of DVD TalkDVD Talk
DVD Talk is a website for DVD enthusiasts founded in January 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman when DVDs and DVD players were first beginning to hit the market.The site started as an online forum, an email newsletter, and a page of DVD news and reviews...
wrote, "Night Train Murders has a few redeemingly uncomfortable moments that make the numerous comparisons to The Last House on the Left
The Last House on the Left
The Last House on the Left is a 1972 horror film written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Sean S. Cunningham.The story is inspired by the 1960 Swedish film The Virgin Spring, directed by Ingmar Bergman, which in turn is based on the 13th century Swedish ballad "Töres döttrar i Wänge"...
seem deserved. Still, it suffers from so many flaws -- poor pacing, an anemic screenplay, weak overdubbed dialogue, and a tendency to flinch during the sparse brutality -- that I can't recommend the movie on its own merits with any great enthusiasm."
DVD Verdict
DVD Verdict
DVD Verdict is a judicial themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. Current editor in chief is Michael Stailey, who also reviews for Rotten Tomatoes...
said, "If Wes Craven's
Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...
train leaves Connecticut traveling east at 25 mph and Alan Lado's
Aldo Lado
Aldo Lado is an Italian screenwriter and film director. He was born in Fiume, Italy .He wrote 21 films between 1968 and 2004. He also directed 16 films between 1971 and 1994.-Selected filmography:...
train leaves a station in Verona traveling west at 35 mph, then can a cheap imitation of a film actually be better than the film it's ripping off? Well, in this case yes. While The Last House on the Left's success came largely from its grittiness, Lado proves that a professional sheen can be just as effective, and puts his film on the express track to success."
J.C. Maçek III of WorldsGreatestCritic.com commented, "Most viewers would find the disconcerting elements to be too much to take, ignoring the more artistic aspects (which admittedly are minor). In this respect, Lado was completely successful. He strove to make a movie calculated to make audiences walk out and audiences walked out... and then it was banned with the rest of the Video Nasties. Unlike many of the rest of its peers with this dubious distinction, L'Ultimo Treno Della Notte has still never been released in the UK. In that respect, too, Lado was successful, as his movie is in good company. Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes , also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.Fawkes was born and educated in York...
wasn't released in the UK either. And, like Lado, he knew bombs pretty damned well!"
Controversy
The film was rejected by the BBFC when submitted for cinema classification in the UK in 1976. It was banned as a video nastyVideo nasty
"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982 which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse and various religious organizations.While violence...
in 1983, though it was acquitted and removed from the list in 1984. It did not get a full release until 2008 when it was finally passed uncut and distributed on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
by Shameless Screen Entertainment
Shameless Screen Entertainment
Shameless Screen Entertainment is a British DVD label specialising in exploitation films.The label launched on 1 October 2007; the launch was announced in August that year.-Releases:...
.