L'ultimo treno della notte [Last Stop on the Night Train / Late Night Trains / Night Train Murders / etc.] (1975)

I try not to be overly dismissive of movies in genres I'm not entirely familiar with, but I find it extraordinarily difficult to find anything in "Last Stop on the Night Train" (or whatever they're calling it these days) that justifies it being made. I should note I haven't seen either "The Last House on the Left" or "The Virgin Spring," the movies this is apparently emulating ("Second House on The Left" is one of many titles this was released under in English). I take some solace in the fact that the consensus among genre fans seems to lean towards this being a cheap knock-off, rather than existing in conversation with its predecessors in any kind of interesting way I'm missing.

That's not to say "Last Stop on the Night Train" isn't saying anything - it has themes and was competently filmed. But an extended series of sexual assaults overtakes the film in a way that feels grossly exploitative and leaves you with the impression any philosophical musing is lip service tossed in to justify a misogynistic and demeaning story and imagery. Frankly, this is trash.

I'm not going to go into too much detail in my synopsis, both because there's very little plot in the movie and a more detailed description of the story would require trigger warnings. For what it's worth, the movie's most disturbing sequences are more implied than shown, though there's a shot of a surgical cut early on I assume was taken from an actual medical operation.

There's an opening sequence at a crowded German Christmas market introducing the characters. Margaret and Lisa, the movie's main characters (and fated victims) are teenage girls shopping for presents. Blackie and Curly are a pair of criminals we see beat up and rob a man dressed as Santa Claus (or possibly Weihnachtsmann). It's a little unclear whether nearby shoppers witnessed the attack - if so, no one intervenes or seems to care. We also get our first glimpse of an adult woman who's never properly named but will be the movie's main antagonist.

Margaret and Lisa are on their way to Italy to spend the holidays with Lisa's family. Eventually, everyone winds up on a train heading south. Blackie and Curly interact with Margaret and Lisa, who help the boys evade a ticket collector. At this point, they mistake the boys for harmless, but as Blackie and Curly become more aggressive, the girls try to avoid them.

Blackie follows a woman into a restroom, begins assaulting her, then ends up having consensual sex. This is the other woman I mentioned from the market. She's a woman in her thirties who dresses conservatively and wears a sort of decorative veil at times. We see her earlier engaged in a philosophical discussion surrounding the downfall of civilization and the balance between anarchy and authoritarianism. I don't think those themes really pay off, but the movie at least wants you to think it's more than a rape/revenge fantasy.

Moving on. Blackie and Curly quickly start following the woman, who treats them like acolytes. Whether they realize it or not, she's in control. When the train stops at a border crossing, Margaret and Lisa switch trains in an attempt to get away from the increasingly aggressive men. Unbeknownst to them, Blackie, Curly, and the woman move to the same train to evade police. The train they change to is virtually empty.

Eventually, they find the girls and force them into escalating sexual acts. They also catch a voyeur passing by and depending on your point-of-view either make or allow him to rape one of the girls. Things get progressively worse, and - without going into details - Margaret and Lisa wind up murdered and thrown off the train.

The rest of the movie, of course, centers on the "revenge" portion. The three perpetrators wind up picked up by and initially assisted by Lisa's father, who's unaware his daughter is dead. He brings them to his home to assist with a minor injury the woman sustained. While there, he eventually pieces together what happened around the same time the killers realize whose house they're at. The woman convinces Lisa's father she's an innocent victim, and he spares her. But of course he kills the other two brutally, in contrast to his profession as a doctor.

So I guess it's a partial revenge fantasy, because the woman (who really orchestrated the whole thing) gets away, presumably to do something similar with another group of boys or men she corrupts.

See? Trash.

Okay, aside from "sexually promiscuous women are evil," the movie seems to be playing with themes surrounding humanity's darker, more violent impulses. The vengeance is presented as less cathartic than brutal and seems to be evoking a sort of "heart of darkness" motif. This might also be meant to reflect fears of societal collapse and fatalism that were common in '70s media, which in turn often uses the holidays as a sort of symbol for the ending of an era.

It's possible director and co-writer Aldo Lado thought all that through when he made this. Or maybe he just wanted the Christmas elements there as contrast (the movie cuts back and forth between the extended sequences of abuse the girls are subjected to and Lisa's family's holiday gathering). But, to be absolutely clear, whether or not there was any thought put into the justification for the exploitation permeating the film, it's still just exploitative trash. The amount of time spent assaulting the girls is far greater than the amount devoted to any serious topic.

Though, honestly, most the runtime is neither. Most of this is some mix of set-up and just burning time to get this to an hour and a half. Frankly, you could easily cut thirty minutes of filler from the first half and lose nothing of value. But then again, you could just as easily cut the entire ninety minutes and be better off still.