Beverly Putnic (Mary Kohnert) is a young college student, and a virgin. Beverly, along with several classmates, is planning a school trip to Yugoslavia. Her mother (Victoria Zinny) is of Serbian descent. Her father, who is deceased, was born in the area where the students are headed. Before she leaves, Beverly’s mother gives her a book that belonged to her father. The other students on the trip are Christie (Sarah Conway Ciminera), Angel (Alex Vitale), Melanie (Renee Rancourt), Kevin (William Geiger), Larry (Ron Williams) and Richard (Jeremy Sanchez). While heading home from dropping her daughter at the airport, Beverly’s mother gets into a car accident and is killed.
In Yugoslavia, the kids are met at the airport by Professor Andromolek (Bo Svenson). The kids are supposed to be there to attend a local pagan ceremony. The sacred ceremony is only performed every one hundred years. Their journey to the site of the celebration continues with a boat ride to a remote and rundown village. Once they get to the village, they find that the village is nothing more than a few rundown shacks. The villagers are somber and creepy. The students are led to various shacks to spend the night before the ritual that is planned for the next day. What they think is going to be a local tourist event is in reality a black mass where devil worshipers plan on giving Beverly to Satan as his bride.
During the night the doors of the cabins are nailed shut and the buildings are set on fire. One of the students is burned to death. The others escape and race through the forest. They find themselves at a railroad track with a train coming. The kids race after it and try to scramble aboard. Two of them get separated from the others. The train itself becomes possessed and goes to extreme lengths to find new and innovative ways to maim and kill people, including several beheadings and a lot of mutilations. The train itself becomes the instrument of destruction in the lives of anyone that tries to come between Beverly and Satan.
“Amok Train” AKA “Beyond the Door III” AKA “Death Train” was released in 1989 and was directed by Jeff Kwitny. It is an Italian horror movie and the third film in what is loosely called the “Beyond the Door” trilogy. The series is three totally unrelated films that are only linked together by their titles. This is all a marketing ploy. The film was released twelve years after the more successful “Beyond the Door 2”.
The film crew had the use of a real train but also used miniatures for some of the scenes, especially those where the train leaves the track and rambles through woods and swamps. The miniatures are OK but not great. From my understanding, the train used in the film is a Yugoslavian Railways Class 20 locomotive. 243 locomotives were made between 1912 and 1922. Only five are known to still be in existence.
The movie reminds me a little of “Death Race 2000” 1975 where random people get all kinds of messed up and run over in various and deadly ways. Other than Bo Svenson, who is quite creepy as the Devil’s right-hand man, the acting is so-so, which doesn’t really matter since it is the death sequences that are the draw. The atmosphere of the film is dreary and desolate. It was a lot of fun to watch.