Beyond the Door III

Last updated
Beyond the Door III
BeyondthedoorIII.jpg
Directed byJeff Kwitny
Written bySheila Goldberg
Produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis
StarringMary Kohnert
Bo Svenson
CinematographyAdolfo Bartoli
Edited byAlberto Moriani
Music byCarlo Maria Cordio
Production
company
Distributed by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video
Release date
  • 31 october 1989 (31 october 1989)
Running time
94 minutes
CountryItaly
LanguageEnglish

Beyond the Door III (also known as Amok Train and Death Train) [1] is a 1989 Italian horror film directed by Jeff Kwitny. It is the final film in the Beyond the Door trilogy, a series of unrelated films linked by a common title for marketing purposes. It was released twelve years after the second film in the trilogy, Beyond the Door II . [1]

Contents

Plot

A group of American students, including Beverly Putnic, travel to Yugoslavia and meet up with a local professor, Andromolek, to bear witness to a sacred pagan ritual that is only performed once every one hundred years. Back in Los Angeles, Beverly's mother is beheaded by a construction beam as she drives away from the airport after dropping Beverly off in an apparent freak accident, but a telegram to notify Beverly of this is intercepted and destroyed by the professor.

The students are all taken by boat to a remote village and are placed in ramshackle rooms that the villagers then nail shut in the night, mark with blood, and set on fire. The doors are rickety, however, so the students all escape except for one who burns up in his bed, and decide to escape from the village and hop on a passenger train. Two students are left behind when they fall from the train.

However, the train is soon possessed and is determined to reunite the young people with their horrifying fates. The driver of the train is beheaded by the cowcatcher on the front of the train, the engineer is dragged into the steam engine’s firebox and burnt alive, and the conductor is crushed to death when the steam engine disconnects itself from the passenger cars, leaving the students alone on the runaway train. The evil train thirsts for blood and soon the students begin dying horrible, gruesome deaths. The two students who fell from the train are eventually run over by it in a swamp as it jumps off its tracks and then returns to those same tracks undamaged and unslowed.

The Yugoslav train authority makes some efforts to stop the train, but these efforts have no effect whatsoever. The train collides with another train standing in its way causing an explosion but without even scratching its own paint, and proceeds to zoom along until it reaches the profane altar where its own destiny is fulfilled: to deliver Beverly, who has been marked since birth for an eternity as Satan's bride.

Beverly, however, manages to have sex with an 11th-century monk named Marius who is also riding the train, making her unfit as Satan's bride. Since Marius is long since dead, he also vanishes, but not before returning to Beverly a book that her mother gave her when she boarded the plane in Los Angeles a few days prior. Beverly then returns alone to America, homesick, after her adventure of about two or three days in a foreign country. However, as the plane flies through a storm, Satan's arm crashes through the window beside Beverly and tries to drag her out of the plane. A flight attendant then wakes Beverly from her dream, who tells the airline employee, "I just want to go home." [1]

Cast

Production

After producing The Curse, Ovidio G. Assonitis and his company TriHoof Investments began production on two more films, with the working titles The Bite and The Train. The screenplay for The Train was written by Shelia Goldberg, who wanted to do a horror version of Runaway Train . Assonitis hired Jeff Kwitny to direct, based on Kwitny's previous film, Iced (1988). Kwitny asked James Cameron for advice, as Cameron had directed Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982. Cameron advised him not to do the film, but Kwitny had no other offers at the time, and accepted anyway. [2]

The film was shot in and around Belgrade, Serbia in 1989. The filming was done at a fast pace, and the cast and crew often put in 18-hour days. Because of the instability in the country, some of the labourers on the crew were paid as little as one dollar a day. Shooting with a real steam engine on an active railway line took almost three weeks. Kwitny recalled: "We had a steam train that was at our disposal that we rented from the Yugoslavian government that we could do whatever we wanted with it. We had a blast! The problem was that you'd have a scene where the real train was coming down the tracks, but then I'd need to have it back up to shoot another take, but it would take an hour, because to back up a train and to get it going again would take about an hour". [2]

The special effects of the gory deaths and the train leaving the rails were shot in Rome by a separate unit headed up by Angelo Mattei. Kwitny was not present for the effects shooting, and has expressed disappointment in their execution: "The effects in that movie, and the train model, are just atrocious". [2]

The completed film was titled Amok Train, and was distributed under this title in Europe and Asia. However, the American distributors released the film as Beyond the Door III, in an effort to capitalize on the previous success of Beyond the Door . The same distributors also bought The Bite, and retitled it to Curse II: The Bite , to create an association with The Curse. [3]

Release

Shriek Show DVD Cover Amok train.jpg
Shriek Show DVD Cover

Beyond the Door III was released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1989 by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video.[ citation needed ]

The film was released on Region 1 DVD by Shriek Show. Though the box art (see left) displays the alternate title Amok Train, the title card on the film itself reads Beyond the Door III. [1]

It was also released in the Blu-ray format through Vinegar Syndrome.

Related Research Articles

<i>Scent of a Woman</i> (1992 film) 1992 film by Martin Brest

Scent of a Woman is a 1992 American drama film produced and directed by Martin Brest that tells the story of a preparatory school student who takes a short-term job near Thanksgiving as a companion/assistant to a retired Army lieutenant colonel who is blind, depressed, and irritable.

Dracula (<i>Castlevania</i>) Video game character

Vlad Țepeș Dracula or simply known as Dracula, real name Mathias Cronqvist, is a fictional character from the Castlevania video game series created by Konami. A vampire and a sorcerer, he is the main antagonist of the series, the archenemy of the Belmont clan, and the final boss of almost every installment. In the series reboot Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Dracula is reimagined as an 11th-century holy knight named Gabriel Belmont and serves as the central character of the game and its two sequels. The Lords of Shadow series tells the story of Gabriel's quest to save the world, vampirism and redemption.

<i>Little Nicky</i> 2000 film by Steven Brill

Little Nicky is a 2000 American action fantasy black comedy film directed by Steven Brill, written by Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler, and Brill, and starring Sandler in the title role, Patricia Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr., Rhys Ifans, and Rodney Dangerfield with supporting roles by Allen Covert, Kevin Nealon, Jon Lovitz, Michael McKean, and Quentin Tarantino.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">France Nuyen</span> French-American actress, model, and psychological counselor (b. 1939)

France Nuyen is a French-American actress, model, and psychological counselor. She is known to film audiences for playing romantic leads in South Pacific (1958), Satan Never Sleeps (1962), and A Girl Named Tamiko, and for playing Ying-Ying St. Clair in The Joy Luck Club (1993). She also originated the title role in the Broadway play The World of Suzie Wong, based on the novel of the same name. She is a Theatre World Award winner and Golden Globe Award nominee.

<i>Dracula 2000</i> 2000 film by Patrick Lussier

Dracula 2000 is a 2000 American vampire film co-written and directed by Patrick Lussier and produced by Joel Soisson. Starring Gerard Butler in the title role along with Christopher Plummer, Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Omar Epps, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Jeri Ryan and Jennifer Esposito, the plot follows Dracula, who arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana in the 21st century and seeks out Mary Heller, the daughter of Abraham Van Helsing.

<i>End of Days</i> (film) 1999 American film

End of Days is a 1999 American action horror film directed by Peter Hyams and written by Andrew W. Marlowe. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, Kevin Pollak, Rod Steiger, CCH Pounder, Derrick O'Connor, Miriam Margolyes, and Udo Kier in supporting roles. The film follows alcoholic former New York Police Department detective Jericho Cane (Schwarzenegger) who, after he saves a banker (Byrne) from an assassin, finds himself embroiled in a religious conflict and must protect an innocent young woman (Tunney) who is chosen by evil forces to conceive the Antichrist with Satan.

<i>Piranha II: The Spawning</i> 1982 horror film by James Cameron

Piranha II: The Spawning is a 1982 monster horror film directed by James Cameron in his feature directorial debut. It is the sequel to the 1978 film Piranha, and the second installment in the Piranha film series. The screenplay was written by Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, under the shared pseudonym "H.A. Milton". The film stars Tricia O'Neil, Lance Henriksen, Steve Marachuk, Ted Richert, Ricky Paull Goldin, and Leslie Graves.

<i>Burial Ground</i> (film) 1981 film

Burial Ground is an Italian exploitation zombie movie directed by Andrea Bianchi. It is one of several films released under the alternative title of Zombie 3.

Ovidio Gabriel Assonitis is an Egyptian-born Greco-Italian entertainment executive, film producer, screenwriter, and director best known for his numerous B-horror films including Beyond the Door, Tentacles,The Visitor, and Piranha II: The Spawning.

<i>Snakes on a Train</i> 2006 film

Snakes on a Train is a 2006 direct-to-video action thriller horror film released by The Asylum as a mockbuster on August 15, 2006. Aspects of the film are inspired by the film Snakes on a Plane, which was scheduled for theatrical release three days later on August 18, 2006.

<i>El Retorno de Walpurgis</i> 1973 Spanish film

El Retorno de Walpurgis is a 1973 Mexican-Spanish co-production horror film that is the seventh in a twelve-film series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. This film ignored the events in all of the earlier Wolf Man films and began an entirely new origin for el Hombre Lobo, which is strange because the film's Spanish title The Return of Walpurgis seems to tie it in with Naschy's earlier 1970 film Walpurgis Night. The Wolf Man makeup was done by Fernando Florido. The film was shot in June 1973, and by September, it was already in theaters in Spain, as El Retorno de Walpurgis. It wasn't released theatrically in the U.S. however until 1976, as Curse of the Devil.

<i>Beyond the Door</i> (1974 film) 1974 Italian horror film by Ovidio G. Assonitis

Beyond the Door is a 1974 supernatural horror film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli, and starring Juliet Mills, Gabriele Lavia, and Richard Johnson. The plot follows a San Francisco housewife who becomes demonically possessed in the midst of a pregnancy. The film was a co-production between the United States and Italy. It was released in the United Kingdom in an extended cut under the title Devil Within Her.

<i>Beyond the Darkness</i> (film) 1979 Italian horror film directed by Joe DAmato

Beyond the Darkness is a 1979 Italian exploitation horror film directed by Joe D'Amato. It follows Francesco Koch, an orphaned taxidermist who inherits a house in the woods where he lives with his housekeeper Iris, who is determined to become the new owner. After Iris kills his girlfriend Anna with a voodoo curse, Francesco steals her corpse from the local cemetery. He then commits murders connected to his enduring passion for her. A local undertaker investigates and meets Teodora, Anna's twin sister.

<i>From a Whisper to a Scream</i> (film) 1987 American film

From a Whisper to a Scream is a 1987 American anthology horror film co-written and directed by Jeff Burr and starring Vincent Price, Susan Tyrrell, Clu Gulager, Terry Kiser, Harry Caesar, Rosalind Cash, Cameron Mitchell, and Martine Beswick. The film features four horror stories set within the small town of Oldfield, Tennessee, each related by an elderly local historian (Price) to a local journalist (Tyrrell) who reported on the execution of his serial killer niece.

<i>The Curse</i> (1987 film) 1987 science-fiction horror film directed by David Keith

The Curse is a 1987 American science-fiction horror film directed by David Keith in his directorial debut, and based on the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft. It tells about a meteorite that crashes into a farming community in Tennessee, which begins to infect the land and its residents. The film stars Wil Wheaton, Claude Akins, Cooper Huckabee, Malcolm Danare, John Schneider, and Amy Wheaton.

<i>Dracula in the Provinces</i> 1975 film directed by Lucio Fulci

Dracula in the Provinces is a 1975 Italian horror comedy film, directed by Lucio Fulci and starring Lando Buzzanca in the main role.

Curse II: The Bite is a 1989 horror film directed by Frederico Prosperi, credited as Fred Goodwin. It is the second entry in the Curse tetralogy, a rebranding of unrelated films for marketing purposes.

Curse III: Blood Sacrifice is a 1991 horror film written and directed by Sean Barton. Although released as Curse III, it bears no resemblance to either The Curse or Curse II: The Bite and is a sequel in name only.

Beyond the Door is a horror film series that consists of three originally unconnected films that were retitled to be part of a supernatural franchise for the American and English speaking markets, and one direct sequel to the 1974 original. Several loose connections between the first three films are that all three were Italian productions, Ovidio G. Assonitis produced parts I and III, child actor David Colin Jr. starred in Parts I and II.

<i>The Curse</i> (film series) Horror film franchise

The Curse pentalogy is a horror series of five originally unconnected films that were retitled to be part of a supernatural franchise for the American home video market. The series started in 1987 with The Curse. 1993's Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice is notable due to the fact the fourth film was originally made in 1988, predating the third film Curse III: Blood Sacrifice which was released in 1991. The only loose connections between the films are the first two are Italian productions produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis, otherwise the films are completely unrelated.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Shriek Show DVD Case, 2008. Last accessed: October 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 Freitag-Fey, Paul (May 19, 2017). "Illegal Aliens, Killer Skiiers [sic], and Amok Trains: The Cinematic Legacy of Jeff Kwitny". Daily Grindhouse. Archived from the original on 2017-10-23. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
  3. ↑ Interview on Shriek Show "Amok Train" Documentary, 2008. Last accessed: October 2009.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.