Director Aldo Lado leaps on board the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT bandwagon with this entry. Craven's story is reprised but this time set on a train, and the nastiness is upped GREATLY. The sexual violence is presented in a far more ambiguous light in this movie, and there are several extremely morally dubious scenes of so called "porno rape"- where the female victims actually begin to ENJOY their assault half-way through. Couple this with the fact that the female criminal was politely discussing philosophy with other passengers before her rape transformed her into an evil murderess (implying that "all women need is a good f**k") and you can probably see that this film is extremely morally contentious and misogynistic. Similar to Deodato's HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, the morality on display here seems almost alien in these enlightened PC times.
LATE NIGHT TRAINS works both positively and negatively. The positives are that by choosing a train to set this tale upon, Lado has allowed a deep-rooted claustrophobia to become a main feature of the film. In the context of a story like this, it should work well, but in many cases the cinematography just doesn't make the best use of the situation. The darkness and grimeyness works well but could have been played on to a much greater extent. Also, the plot is extremely contrived and relies on ridiculous coincidence (the girls changing trains half way through their journey, the old man who walks in on the assault accidently breaking off the door handle to the next carriage, etc) and the characters are left undeveloped, as pointed out earlier. In the latter case this almost ADDS to the atmosphere of the film, though. The tone is one of absolute inevitability and nihilism. Unfortunately, the acting throughout is very poor, especially from the male protagonists- their lethargic performances pale in comparison to those by David Hess in his "psycho" roles. There is a Morricone score too, but not a particularly fitting or good one in my opinion.
This is certainly an interesting film. Despite there being good points and bad points, the sleaziness certainly keeps you watching. Once again it is a case of the outrageous misogyny having to be overlooked in order to enjoy this. LATE NIGHT TRAINS remains banned in the UK and this certainly won't change any time soon. There is little gore but the themes themselves are explicit enough to upset the BBFC.
