According to Fangoria, Shriek Show will release Beyond the Door III aka Amok Train on March 18 - anyone seen this late 80's flick about a blood-thirsty train?
I like this one kind of. A bunch of bland American students are invited to Yugoslavia to see a passion play predating the birth of Christ. The main girl Beverly's father was supposed to have come from the same area (her mother [Veronica Zinny - mother of Urbano Barberini] is subsequently killed in an OMEN style accident after telling her this and seeing her off at the airport). The local rep (Bo Svenson) takes them to the village and they are ambushed by the mysterious villagers. Most of the students escape and all but two of them hop aboard a passing train which then becomes possessed and won't let anyone off, killing anyone who tries to stop the train (the train even goes out of its way - and off of the tracks - to kill the two inconsequential students who weren't able to hop onto the train). Meanwhile, at the transportation department for no reason in particular we have a big Slavic woman doing a Raymond Burr GODZILLA 1985 impression by commenting on the action from afar as they try to trace the track hopping possessed train - the only real difference is that these scenes are in Serbo-Croat.
Shot in the former Yugoslavia (when it was still Yugoslavia), the film seems like a Full Moon production crossed with a Filmirage production with a bigger budget and amped-up gore. The misty, atmospheric photography is by Adolfo Bartoli (who shot several Full Moon productions) and the ambitious (if not always convincing) train miniatures are credited to Angelo Mattei. Late eighties horror regular Carlo Maria Cordio contributes another synth and percussion score. Production design is also quite atmospheric from the raised wooden huts of the fogbound village to the BLACK SUNDAY-style black velvet carriage that comes to meet Beverly at the train's final stop. As far as gore goes, people are crushed by the train, decapitated, spit up maggots, impaled, cut in half (I was shocked by the difference between the R and uncut versions).
BEYOND THE DOOR 3 was released in the US on video by Columbia Pictures as one of their Vision International acquisitions. That version was cut of just about every scrap of gore there was for an R-rating. The Japanese release under the BEYOND THE DOOR 3 title was uncut and letterboxed but only had Japanese subtitles for the Serbo-Croat dialogue (the US tape had English subtitles). The Australian DEATH TRAIN tape was also uncut and featured English subtitles. That tape was also fullscreen but the subtitles and opening credits are positioned high in the screen revealing that the Japanese tape is just matted. Dragon Entertainment released AMOK TRAIN on DVD but that version is hard to find and I have no idea about the specs.
The Shriek Show disc is uncut but it is letterboxed at 2.35:1. It works at this ratio but it makes me wonder if the previous presentations were slightly enlarged since none of the credits are cut off by the scope matting (its still obviously an open-matte film - maybe Super 35mm). Some subtitles appear on the print itself but a lot of the Serbo-Croat dialogue subtitled on the print in previous English versions is now optionally subtitled on the lower matte. Although it has the international title AMOK TRAIN on the menu, the onscreen title is BEYOND THE DOOR III.
Interviews with Ovidio G. Assonitis and Adolfo Bartoli are also provided and some trailers though none for the feature itself.
