Sometimes you stumble over those kind of movies where the main and haunting question is - what the heck did the writer(s) smoke!? Beyond the Door III aka Amok Train aka Death Train is such a movie. What we get is some ancient satanic ritual in a rural community of Yugoslavia mixed with a good part of what is some kind of early and low budget Unstoppable (Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, 2010) - in one scene the runaway (demon-possessed!?) train even drives thru a small lake without any railway tracks just to kill some of the poor Americans! But on the other side we get a fine sniff of gore here and there and some well composed dark and weird mood including some satanic ritual (just too delicious the scene where the old witch screams: she's not a ******!) and some fine visuals (for a B-movie).

My rate would be a straight 5 but for the smoking question I add 1 more - so my overall rate is a well-deserved 6.

Much like the second Beyond the Door - which we'd rather call Shock - this movie has nothing to do with the original Beyond the Door. It comes to us from Jeff Kwitny, who also directed Iced. But what makes this movie sing is that the writing comes from Sheila Goldberg, who wrote the screenplay for Body Count, as well as the dialogue for Stage Fright, Zombi 5: Killing Birds, Ghosthouse and Eleven Days, Eleven Nights Part 2. None of these movies are known for their dialogue or coherence, so that means that I'm going to love every single moment of this film.

What takes it into the stratosphere of mania for me is the producer. Yes, Ovidio G. Assonitis, that magical Egyptian-born Greek man who crafted such wonderous objets d'art such as the original Beyond the Door, Tentacles, Madhouse and Piranha II: The Spawning. He also produced movies like Iron Warrior, Who Saw Her Die?, Forever Emmanuelle and the magical treat that is The Visitor. Somehow and someway, Disney hired him to produce their TV movie Sabrina Goes to Rome. What - Joe D'Amoto was busy?

Shy American college coed Beverly Putnic is on her way to a class trip in Yogoslavia to see an ancient cultural rite (you know, kinda like Midsommar but much more interesting). But she doesn't realize that she's due to become a bride of the devil! Blame Professor Andromolek (Bo Svenson!) for that!

This movie is also known as Amok Train, which makes much better sense as a title, because after the students escape the village where they're all nailed shut in their rooms, they board a possessed train that is driven to kill every single one of them. This train is crazy, it can separate itself into single cars, it can jump the tracks and run over people when they hide in a swamp and it can crash into another train and just keep on going.

So where is the train going?

It turns out that Beverly has been selected as Satan's bride since she was a baby. Luckily, she's found an 11th-century monk on the train to take her virginity - I bet he does it in the missionary position - which makes her a non-virgin and unfit for the bride of Satan. Um, wouldn't Satan want a promiscuous woman for a wife?

Anyways, Marius disappears and gives Beverly a book from her mother. She then returns home, looking much older than when she left. There's a Carrie shock ending where the devil tries to kill her on the plane, but that's just a dream.

This is the kind of movie that I love, where little to nothing makes sense, where moms drop you off at the airport and are soon beheaded, where everyone dies horrible and trains have personalities and are given to killing college students. It also looks gorgeous with actual thought and art behind each frame, something lost in the glut of direct to streaming films of today.

A group of American students travel to a remote part of Serbia to witness an ancient pre-Christian ritual. However, on their arrival, they discover that they have actually been lured into a trap: the freaky locals intend to offer virginal loner Beverly Putnic (Mary Kohnert) to the Devil as a bride; the rest of the students are expendable.

Fleeing the village, the group board a passing steam train, but soon learn that the locomotive is being controlled by gypsy black magic, and that their next stop will be an unscheduled rendezvous with the Satanic Serbians, who are keen to get their wedding ceremony under way.

With its ridiculous plot, a fair amount of cheesy gore, and loads of really shonky model effects, Amok Train (AKA Beyond the Door III) sounds like a bad-movie fan's idea of heaven; the first few scenes certainly had my hopes fairly high, for they feature a completely gratuitous shower scene and a dwarf—two of my 'essential ingredients' for a fun, trashy movie. Alas, despite plenty of daft moments, the film still proves to be extremely tedious, thanks to a script that, like the movie's train, goes nowhere fast.

Once the main characters have boarded the Eastern European express, the film comprises of an endless array of badly directed and monotonous action set-pieces (in which an unconvincing Hornby model frequently leaves its tracks to plough through fake plastic trees), dull scenes in which the authorities attempt to devise a plan for stopping the train (eventually coming up with the great idea of trying to derail it!!), and boring-as-hell conversation between the students, a conductor, and a spunky female thief, who makes her living stealing from the passengers.

The monotony is occasionally punctuated by some welcome scenes of outrageous gore (including a splattery 'face-peel', a body messily torn in half by a chain, an impressive impalement, and a totally crazy-bonkers-insane decapitation by the train as it thunders through a swamp!!!), but no amount of blood-letting could make up for the film's complete lack of atmosphere, awful acting, and nonsensical narrative.

The film finishes with a 'surprise' ending, in which Beverly defeats the Devil and his coven mid-ceremony by revealing that she is no longer a virgin, having been deflowered on the train by the ghost of a 16th century mute flute-playing monk (that old chestnut!).