Having now watched all three BEYOND THE DOOR films, I can say that not only are they entirely unrelated one to the other but they are all of equally mediocre quality (this does, however, retain Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli from the first entry among its credentials). Coming so long after the others, one can see how much the "Euro-Cult" style had been degraded by this point: here, we only have Bo Svenson and Victoria Zinny (from Luis Bunuel's VIRIDAIANA {1961}!) for mildly familiar presences and both do not figure in it all that much!
Anyway, we have a mix of typical scenarios here: stranded teenagers as splatter-fodder (which can be pretty inventive at times but also demonstrates a baffling penchant for decapitation and gut-busting!), a virgin destined to be mated with Satan (her mother appears to her after death as a head-shaven disciple who unleashes a baby dragon from between her legs!), and even the driverless train (being an Italian-Yugoslavian-U.S. co-production, both the Italian title – which translates to THE TRAIN! – and the alternate monikers, AMOK, AMOK TRAIN and DEATH TRAIN, relate to the latter plot strand which, in fact, occupies much of the running-time). Oddly enough, a fair share of the dialogue, describing the progress of the runaway train along its various checkpoints along the tracks, comes in untranslated Serbian (and I wonder now how it was presented in the Italian-language version which I also have a copy of somewhere – but I opted to go with the English print in view of the fact that the director is not Italian: I'm not sure about scriptwriter Sheila Goldberg, though, since she has worked on a number of other latter-day "Euro-Cult" efforts).
Anyway, by contriving to do away with almost the entire principal cast before the finale (including a local self-reliant female thief the group encounters on the train and who plans to blow it all up), the film offers little surprises throughout. While Svenson is obviously evil since he sports a Captain Beefheart-type goatee and immediately takes a more than casual interest in the heroine (who has several ties to the foreign land she is visiting, not least a birthmark on her chest which is the tell-tale sign of her being the chosen one for the ultimate dubious honor of breeding the Devil's spawn), we also get a blind fortune-telling witch who shows up to cackle maniacally from time to time. On the other hand, there is a shady, silent and flute-playing hooded figure on the train who may or may not be an envoy of Evil – at the very end, we are told he is a real-life monk who was burned alive for practicing witchcraft but then had his accusations retracted and eventually sanctified as a most pious man(!), and what he does here is spoil the Satanic party by...er...despoiling the heroine (talk of perverting the Church's dogma for the common good!) so that the talon-sporting and monstrous-looking Devil (propped all the while SPINAL TAP-like inside a glass cage eagerly awaiting to get in on the action) cannot touch her and instantly blows (or, more precisely, fizzes) up upon learning the truth, though not before venting his wrath upon the understandably baffled Svenson.
The last scene takes care to provide one final frisson as the girl receives an unexpected visit from her 'intended' on the flight back to the States but, of course, it turns out to be just a dream and all is really rosy for her (and, it goes without saying, safe for the rest of us as well). The end result, then, is not quite as bad as I had been expecting – but, in the long run, it does little more than reaffirm the sad state to which Horror (and "Euro-Cult" in particular) has faltered, and from which there is little sensible hope of recuperating...
Anyway, we have a mix of typical scenarios here: stranded teenagers as splatter-fodder (which can be pretty inventive at times but also demonstrates a baffling penchant for decapitation and gut-busting!), a virgin destined to be mated with Satan (her mother appears to her after death as a head-shaven disciple who unleashes a baby dragon from between her legs!), and even the driverless train (being an Italian-Yugoslavian-U.S. co-production, both the Italian title – which translates to THE TRAIN! – and the alternate monikers, AMOK, AMOK TRAIN and DEATH TRAIN, relate to the latter plot strand which, in fact, occupies much of the running-time). Oddly enough, a fair share of the dialogue, describing the progress of the runaway train along its various checkpoints along the tracks, comes in untranslated Serbian (and I wonder now how it was presented in the Italian-language version which I also have a copy of somewhere – but I opted to go with the English print in view of the fact that the director is not Italian: I'm not sure about scriptwriter Sheila Goldberg, though, since she has worked on a number of other latter-day "Euro-Cult" efforts).
Anyway, by contriving to do away with almost the entire principal cast before the finale (including a local self-reliant female thief the group encounters on the train and who plans to blow it all up), the film offers little surprises throughout. While Svenson is obviously evil since he sports a Captain Beefheart-type goatee and immediately takes a more than casual interest in the heroine (who has several ties to the foreign land she is visiting, not least a birthmark on her chest which is the tell-tale sign of her being the chosen one for the ultimate dubious honor of breeding the Devil's spawn), we also get a blind fortune-telling witch who shows up to cackle maniacally from time to time. On the other hand, there is a shady, silent and flute-playing hooded figure on the train who may or may not be an envoy of Evil – at the very end, we are told he is a real-life monk who was burned alive for practicing witchcraft but then had his accusations retracted and eventually sanctified as a most pious man(!), and what he does here is spoil the Satanic party by...er...despoiling the heroine (talk of perverting the Church's dogma for the common good!) so that the talon-sporting and monstrous-looking Devil (propped all the while SPINAL TAP-like inside a glass cage eagerly awaiting to get in on the action) cannot touch her and instantly blows (or, more precisely, fizzes) up upon learning the truth, though not before venting his wrath upon the understandably baffled Svenson.
The last scene takes care to provide one final frisson as the girl receives an unexpected visit from her 'intended' on the flight back to the States but, of course, it turns out to be just a dream and all is really rosy for her (and, it goes without saying, safe for the rest of us as well). The end result, then, is not quite as bad as I had been expecting – but, in the long run, it does little more than reaffirm the sad state to which Horror (and "Euro-Cult" in particular) has faltered, and from which there is little sensible hope of recuperating...