GORE IN THE STORE
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5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

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Henry Lee Lucas: Serial Killer
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Triangle
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Cabin Fever 2
Stan Helsing
Pandorum
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Open Graves
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Growth
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Train
Antichrist
Wrong Turn 3
Coffin Rock
Orphan
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Drag Me to Hell
Staunton Hill
Summer Moon
Driftwood
Messengers 2

 

Directed by Gideon Raff. Starring Thora Birch, Gideon Emery, Kavan Reece, Derek Magyar, Gloria Votsis, Todd Jensen. USA 2009 91 mins.

DVD release date 25th January 2010 - £12.99.

Buff, obnoxious American athletes wind up mutilated and tortured by a post-HOSTEL bunch of conspiratorial foreigners after ill-advisedly boarding a train to Odessa.

“Sex and violence…that’s what it’s all about”, someone knowingly remarks at one moment in this belated so-called “torture porn” entry. Originally conceived as a remake of the gimmicky Jamie Lee Curtis slasher TERROR TRAIN, the flick was reworked into a feature length excuse for strapping screaming, fit young men and women to gurneys so they can be horribly brutalised. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Participating in an international wrestling championship, TRAIN’s protagonists are led by Thora Birch at her most sullen and, after some truth-or-dare frivolity, make the HOSTEL-derived mistake of being manipulated by a generic, deadly Eastern European seductress. She leads them into a grim but very familiar underworld of interchangeable villains and black market organ-trading similar to the superior TURISTAS. The only link remaining to the much milder TERROR TRAIN - train aside - is the presence of stupid people wandering around dark places in minimal clothing asking “Is anybody there?”.

Groan-inducing bathroom-mirror jolts and phoney “I didn’t mean to frighten you” false scares are the order of the day here, diluting any real sense of menace. Birch has proved her worth in higher profile movies - and scored as the teen villainess in the underrated THE HOLE - but here mundanely plods through the Final Girl paces, failing to convey much personality from her routinely written heroine.

Still, you could do a lot worse in the minefield of straight to DVD splatter movies. It’s slickly done and never boring because something extremely unpleasant and squishy happens every few minutes. Characters who would have died instantly in 1982 from a Jason-wielded machete wound here live on just so their visceral suffering can be maximised for our viewing pleasure. We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t at least some vicarious thrills to be had from TRAIN’s catalogue of castrations and nipple ring yanking. Or from the fact that one of the leery, scarred foreign bad guys looks suspiciously like the late, lamented Big Ron from “Eastenders”.

Stephen West.

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