Also released as Beyond the Door III, director Jeff Kwitny’s 1989 horror film Amok Train is a movie so insane, so amazingly, impressively crazy, that, even as you’re watching it, you won’t believe your eyes.
A class of American students is invited to Yugoslavia to observe a ritual that is performed once every hundred years. When they arrive at their destination, they are met by Professor Andromolek (Bo Svenson), who guides them to a remote countryside village. The students are led to some rundown shacks and told to rest up from their long journey. As they do so, the locals board up the doors so that the students cannot escape, then set fire to the structures.
One student, Richard (Jeremy Sanchez), is killed in the blaze. The others manage to escape, and take off running into the woods.
The group eventually makes its way to some train tracks, and attempts to hop a passing train. Four students; Christie (Sarah Conway Ciminera), Kevin (William Geiger), Angel (Alex Vitale), and Beverly (Mary Kohnert), climb on board, while two others, Larry (Ron Williams) and Melanie (Renee Rancourt), are left behind.
But none of them are out of danger just yet. It seems that Beverly, who is of Yugoslav descent, is destined to play an important part in the upcoming ritual. In fact, she has been chosen as the future bride of Lucifer himself! And not even a speeding train can outrun pure evil.
Shot on-location in Belgrade, Amok Train is even wilder than the above synopsis might suggest. Soon after the frightened students board the train, its conductor Milutin Micovic), spots some burning timbers lying across the tracks, and stops in order to clear them off. As he is doing so, the train rolls forward, crushing Milutin and decapitating him. At the same time, Milutin’s assistant (played by Ratko Tankosic), who is still on the train, is sucked by an unseen force into the fires of the coal engine.
As this is happening, the cars carrying the other passengers break away, crushing the engineer (Mario Novelli) in the process and leaving Beverly and her friends alone on a runaway train.
The gore in the above scene is not the most convincing, but it’s good enough, and sets the stage for more carnage to come. And while this sequence would surely rank high on the insanity meter, it can’t top the absurdity of what transpires over the remainder of Amok Train!
Combining a number of different scenarios (Beverly’s realization of her fate; the other students attempting to stop the train; Larry and Melanie on foot trying to make their way to safety; and the railroad executives wondering why the train refuses to make its scheduled stops), Amok Train takes its audience on a ride ten times wilder than any rollercoaster, with scenes so outlandish that it’s impossible to predict what’s to follow. For example, I always thought a train needed a track to get from point “A’ to point “B”. Well, a regular train does, I suppose, but a train under the control of pure evil? Seems like it can do anything, go anywhere, hunt anyone!
What’s more, we eventually find out that the students aren’t as alone on the runaway train as they thought. Sava, a stowaway thief (Savina Gersak), and Marius (Igor Pervic), a mysterious man in a cloak who never stops playing the flute, are also along for the ride.
There are some brutal deaths in this film (one in particular, involving two train cars, is especially gory), and there’s no shortage of impending catastrophes, chief among them the runaway train, which somehow turns completely around and starts traveling in the other direction (don’t ask how… you have to see it for yourself), putting it on a collision course with another passenger train!
And just when you think you’ve seen it all, there’s the grand finale, where Satan himself makes a cameo.
A lot of what happens in Amok Train doesn’t make a lick of sense, and you’re just as likely to laugh out loud as be frightened and amazed by it all. But it is a relentless movie. Amok Train does not let up! From the moment the kids run into the woods to escape the fire, Amok Train barely stops to take a breath.
Whether you’re having a good time with the lunacy or rolling your eyes throughout, the one thing I guarantee is you will never, ever be bored by Amok Train!
Rating: 7 out of 10