Amok Train - Fahrt ins Nichts

Beyond the Door III (1989) is an Italian horror movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a young virgin American college coed who is tricked into traveling to Yugoslavia to witness a pagan ritual to bring back Satan. She doesn't know the part she has to play in the ritual that includes sacrificing a virgin....

This movie is directed by Jeff Kwitny (Illegal Alien) and stars Mary Kohnert (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Bo Svenson (Inglorious Basterds), Victoria Zinny (The Tunnel) and Alex Vitale (The Bronx Executioner).

This was a fun watch even if it was a fairly average addition to the horror genre. The car crash opening was well executed, much like Beyond the Door. The mother in this was crazy, as was the soup sequences. The makeup and props were uneven with some elements really well done and some not so much. The model train they used to create the crash scene cracked me up. The "kiss me" sequence was the highlight of the movie and very well done too. The plane ending was solid and a perfect way to end the movie. Oh, and there's no Beyond the Door II, the marketing team just wanted to name the movie after the original Beyond the Door and thought this was clever, even if this isn't a sequel.

Overall, this isn't anything special but is still worth a watch. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Third 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.

Everyone 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.

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.

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.