No words can describe the utter wrongness of this film. I bought this film for exactly 99 cents, for the simple reason that my father is obsessed with trains. Otherwise, I would have not even touched the cover.
Like all Hollywood train movies, this one suffers from several common failings which even an uncritical eye can perceive. Old style steam locomotives mix with state of the art diesel locomotives. Freight cars get plunked into the middle of a train with passenger cars on either side, flat cars get loaded up in such a way that they will be perfectly organized to film a fight scene on them, the trains change the number, and order of the cars on them so many times that nobody can say for certain which train is which...
The movie also has the common failings of any bad budget movie: Model scenes that look faker than my dad's undecorated model train layout, bad acting, scantily clad women milling about in unrealistic locations, male movie stars that do nothing but stare at scantily clad women in the most obvious possible ways, just in case the viewer didn't notice them. There are also fight scenes that look exactly like grown men reenacting showdown scenes from "The Karate Kid." The acting is stupendously bad. People shake, and drool for no apparent reason. The dialog is as bad as the acting. No, I stand corrected, the dialog worse. I envy the gentleman who saw it with the Spanish voice overs, because they at least did not have to hear how bad the dialog is.
As a matter of fact, the horrible, truly awful, wretched dialog is so bad that it can almost be appreciated for its own merit in the field of "campiness." I believe the first word in the film is a shouted "FUCK!" The other line of dialog that stands out in my mind is "It's a Choo-choo." a statement which is uttered by a thoroughly serious police detective character. Quite possibly the best character in the movie is a drunk Mexican train operator, who spends all of five minutes in the film listening to music while holding a bottle of tequila on his shoulder. He has no lines, and does nothing else but look up in surprise.
Like all Hollywood train movies, this one suffers from several common failings which even an uncritical eye can perceive. Old style steam locomotives mix with state of the art diesel locomotives. Freight cars get plunked into the middle of a train with passenger cars on either side, flat cars get loaded up in such a way that they will be perfectly organized to film a fight scene on them, the trains change the number, and order of the cars on them so many times that nobody can say for certain which train is which...
The movie also has the common failings of any bad budget movie: Model scenes that look faker than my dad's undecorated model train layout, bad acting, scantily clad women milling about in unrealistic locations, male movie stars that do nothing but stare at scantily clad women in the most obvious possible ways, just in case the viewer didn't notice them. There are also fight scenes that look exactly like grown men reenacting showdown scenes from "The Karate Kid." The acting is stupendously bad. People shake, and drool for no apparent reason. The dialog is as bad as the acting. No, I stand corrected, the dialog worse. I envy the gentleman who saw it with the Spanish voice overs, because they at least did not have to hear how bad the dialog is.
As a matter of fact, the horrible, truly awful, wretched dialog is so bad that it can almost be appreciated for its own merit in the field of "campiness." I believe the first word in the film is a shouted "FUCK!" The other line of dialog that stands out in my mind is "It's a Choo-choo." a statement which is uttered by a thoroughly serious police detective character. Quite possibly the best character in the movie is a drunk Mexican train operator, who spends all of five minutes in the film listening to music while holding a bottle of tequila on his shoulder. He has no lines, and does nothing else but look up in surprise.