VIDEO NASTIES – Night Train Murders (aka Late Night Trains)

Published on: 31st August, 2009

VIDEO NASTIES - Night Train Murders (aka Late Night Trains)  | read this item

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Exactly how much of a fixture Aldo Lado’s 1975 rape/revenge drama L’ultimo treno della notte (Late Night Trains/Night Train Murders) was on the ‘Video Nasties’ list remains uncertain, but it was one of countless Italian productions that would at some point be targeted by the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) and labeled as ‘obscene.’ Its most controversial aspect had been its sexualized violence, which would place it alongside Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave, Ruggero Deodato’s La casa sperduta nel parco (The House on the Edge of the Park) and Matt Cimber’s The Witch Who Came From the Sea on the list of banned movies. It would remain unseen in Britain for thirty years and was often be dismissed as a rip-off of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (Italian cinema at that time had become notorious for shamelessly plagiarizing American productions).

Whilst critics may have commented on L’ultimo treno della notte’s similarities to Craven’s film, it was itself a take off of Jungfrukällan, a Swedish drama by cult filmmaker Ingmar Bergman that had been released in 1960 in English-speaking countries as The Virgin Spring. Having not only won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but also the prestigious Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie would become a critical success and help bring Bergman further international success after the acclaim that Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) and Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) had received. And when Craven was finally offered the chance to direct his first feature, he decided to produce a carbon copy of Bergman’s story but relocated it to a more contemporary setting.

Lado had first entered the film industry in the mid-1960’s as an assistant director to Maurizio Lucidi, working with the filmmaker on a variety of projects including 1969’s Hamisha Yamim B’Sinai (The Battle of Sinai) and Probabilità zero (Heroes Never Die) and the 1971 thriller La vittima designata (The Designated Victim), the latter a reworking of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train. That same year he would make the leap into the director’s chair with the acclaimed giallo La corta notte delle bambole di vetro (Short Night of the Glass Dolls), following it a year later with Chi l’ha vista morire? (Who Saw Her Die?).

Roberto Infascelli was the son of cult Italian filmmaker Carlo Infascelli, who had directed the 1974 thriller Il bacio di una morta (Kiss of a Dead Woman). Having worked as a producer on several westerns during the 1960’s, he had also dabbled as a screenwriter with Sans sommation (Without Warning) and La polizia sta a guardare (The Great Kidnapping). Upon viewing The Last House on the Left and seeing the kind of success such a low budget, no-name feature could make, Infascelli decided that he should try to produce something similar. He eventually approached Lado and pitched him the idea. Although he had not seen Craven’s film, he was intrigued by the premise and felt that it could make an interesting thriller.

Infascelli had developed his treatment with Ettore Sanzò, who had co-wrote the notorious poliziottesco thriller La polizia chiede aiuto (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) with director Massimo Dallamano in 1974 and would later work on the likes of Luca il contrabbandiere (Contraband) with Lucio Fulci. To adapt the story into a screenplay, Lado would collaborate with Renato Izzo, whose impressive résumé would include Les caprices de Marie (Give Her the Moon), L’assassino… è al telefono (The Killer Is on the Phone) and La muerte llama a las 10 (The Killer Wore Gloves). The four of them would fashion a script that would move recycle The Last House on the Left and transport it onto a train.

Lado would surround himself with an array of talented individuals, most notably composer Ennio Morricone, who had scored such classics as Sergio Leone’s Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars), Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik and Dario Argento’s L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage). Cinematographer Gábor Pogány had been working in the Italian film industry for thirty-five years and had been responsible for countless success movies, although his greatest international hit had been the concert film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. Editor Alberto Gallitti had previously worked with Lado on The Battle of Sinai and Heroes Never Die, whilst both the costume and production design would be handled by Nude… si muore (Naked You Die).

The two protagonists in L’ultimo treno della notte would be young women, both of whom would fall victim to a series of humiliations, rape and, eventually, murder. Laura D’Angelo would choose not to pursue acting soon after completing the movie, instead only opting to appear in three more films. Her co-star, Irene Miracle, would later gain acclaim for her role in the harrowing prison drama Midnight Express, as well as Dario Argento’s Inferno and the cult horror Puppet Master. Incidentally, much of the cast would be made up of actors who at some point would work alongside Argento, such as Enrico Maria Salerno (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage) and Macha Méril (Profondo rosso/Deep Red), whilst Gianfranco De Grassi would later appear in La chiesa (The Church), produced by Argento. Both Franco Fabrizi and Marina Berti, meanwhile, had co-starred together in What Have They Done to Your Daughters?.

L’ultimo treno della notte would be shot across three separate countries, opening in Munich, Germany, before passing through the Austrian region of Innsbruck in Tyrol, and finally ending in Verona in Italy. The majority of the shoot would take place on trains, which would help keep locations to a minimum but would provide its own set of problems. As would be expected, the long scenes of sexual torment would take their toll on the young actresses, although both remained professional throughout the shoot. One interesting aspect of the story was how the chief antagonist would not be a man as expected (in The Last House on the Left it had been the sleazy Krug, portrayed by David Hess) but instead a respectable middle-aged roman, played by Méril. And whilst her two male accomplices would be punished for their crimes, she is allowed to survive purely because she seemed too elegant to commit such acts.

Perhaps the film’s most notorious scene would involve the treatment of D’Angelo’s character, Lisa. Not content with simply scaring or tormenting the girls, one of the young men goes so far as to stab his knife deep inside her vagina. The censors’ attitudes towards sex and violence would result in the sequence becoming the key factor in the film’s subsequent controversy and is a deeply unpleasant sequence to watch. The violence is particularly unsettling as both D’Angelo and Miracle portray the girls as sweet and likable, even more so than with The Last House on the Left, which the girls had fallen victim after attempting to buy dope off of the criminals. In L’ultimo treno della notte, their only crime had been travelling home late.

The movie was released in Italy on April 8 1975 and would prove to be a modest hit, with West Germany following in August 1976. For its American run, it was handled by Bryanston Distributing (who had previously handled Deep Throat, Dark Star and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) but would fail to generate the same kind of business as The Last House on the Left. The film was immediately rejected by the BBFC and would later be classified as a ‘video nasty,’ remaining unavailable in the United Kingdom until it was released uncut on DVD in 2008. This would coincide with an American release of the movie by Blue Underground, both under the title Night Train Murders, although throughout its life it had also been known as Late Night Trains, New House on the Left and even Xmas Massacre.

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