The Yuletide Spirit, Italian Exploitation-Style
If you’ve ever watched The Virgin Spring and thought, “This needs more sleaze, more sadism, and a random older woman egging people on,” congratulations—you’ve just pitched Last Stop on the Night Train. It’s Christmas Eve in Europe, but instead of cocoa by the fire, we get two teenage girls, a crowded train, and the slow crawl toward one of the most unpleasant evenings in 1970s cinema. This is the kind of holiday movie where the snow outside is the least chilling thing in the frame.
All Aboard the Bad Decision Express
Margaret and Lisa board an overnight train to Italy, only to meet Blackie and Curly—petty criminals with the charm of rabid ferrets. At first, it seems like your standard “avoid the sketchy guys” setup. But then there’s the wildcard: an upper-class woman who appears shocked at Blackie’s advances… until she seduces him in the train’s bathroom like it’s Emmanuelle on Rails. From there, the movie commits to a spiral so nasty it makes Last House on the Left look like an after-school special.
From Harassment to Horror Show
Once the group reconvenes in a near-empty carriage, the atmosphere turns predatory fast. Taunting, groping, beatings—every line the movie could cross, it leaps over in platform boots. Then comes the voyeur, a man peeking through the compartment door who gets dragged in and forced to participate in the assault. You’d think he’d be the lowest moral point of the scene, but no—the upper-class woman takes that crown, cheerfully encouraging violence like she’s hosting a particularly sadistic game show.
A Murder So Ugly Even the Film Looks Away
Lisa’s death is the tipping point, a grisly sequence involving a knife that the camera refuses to linger on—possibly because even the director realized some imagery doesn’t need to be burned into the audience’s retinas. Margaret’s escape attempt, leaping from the train to her death, seals the grim fate of both victims. Their bodies are discarded like trash, a detail that feels less like exploitation and more like contempt.
The Dinner Guest from Hell
The film’s tonal whiplash reaches peak absurdity when the killers, by pure coincidence, end up hitching a ride with Lisa’s parents. This is the sort of contrivance you can only pull off in pulp cinema, and here it’s played so straight it borders on comedy. The parents host them, serve drinks, and make polite small talk, all while their daughter’s murderers are warming their hands by the fire. If there’s a more twisted example of Italian holiday hospitality, I haven’t seen it.
Revenge Served Cold, with Surgical Precision
Once Professor Giulio Stradi puts the pieces together, the movie shifts gears into revenge fantasy. Curly gets overdosed with his own heroin, Blackie takes a shotgun blast at point-blank range, and the woman—ever the manipulator—remains an enigma, walking away without the audience ever seeing justice fully catch up to her. In a film this bleak, maybe that’s the point: evil doesn’t always get neatly packaged comeuppance. Or maybe the filmmakers just forgot to write an ending for her.
Performances: From Convincing to Cartoonish
Flavio Bucci’s Blackie is a sweaty, twitching embodiment of mid-’70s Italian sleaze—half threatening, half pitiful. Gianfranco De Grassi’s Curly plays “addled thug” so well you can almost smell the heroin sweat through the screen. But it’s Macha Méril as the “Lady on the Train” who’s the real wildcard, oozing class one moment and psychopathic glee the next. She’s like a Bond girl from hell, and the fact that she never truly answers for her role makes her performance linger uncomfortably.
Final Verdict
Last Stop on the Night Train isn’t just a “video nasty” because of its brutality—it’s a nasty piece of work in tone, pacing, and worldview. It takes the revenge-horror formula, strips away any sense of catharsis, and leaves you with the cinematic equivalent of cigarette ash in your mouth. It’s ugly, mean-spirited, and intentionally so, which will either make it a must-see for exploitation devotees or a one-way ticket to the “never again” list.
This is not a movie to “enjoy.” It’s a movie to endure. And like the worst train rides, when it’s over, you’re just glad to be off.
