Beyond the Door III (1989)

Another faux sequel or, to be accurate, a faux sequel to a faux sequel.  The original Beyond the Door (1974) was, of course, the US retitling of the Italian Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby cash in Chi Sei?, (originally released in the UK as The Devil Within Her, but with reissues adopting the US title).  It was sufficiently successful that its US distributors acquired the rights to Mario Bava's Shock (1977) and retitled it Beyond the Door II for its US release, despite it having no connection whatsoever with the original movie.  Clearly it was felt that the title had some kind of name recognition, as the US distributor of Amok Train decided to retitle it Beyond the Door III, despite it having no connection with either Shock/Beyond the Door II or the original film.  But in the world of the modern exploitation film, marketing is everything - if people have liked one film they've seen on DVD, then they are more likely to rent or buy another one marketed as a follow-up with a similar title.  Which is why, fifteen years after the first Beyond the Door and twelve years after its fake sequel, another one was released direct to home video.  Presumably, eighties home video releases of the previous two had sold well, so a new cash in title seemed logical.  Which makes this a fairly early example of the 'in name only' sequel phenomenon, which has since become endemic in the direct-to-video and streaming markets, with disparate films now frequently being retitled so that they can be packaged as a 'series', despite having no continuing or recurring characters,directors, writers. crew or plot continuity between 'installments'.  Usually, all that links them is that all follow some vague theme and, to be fair, the Beyond the Door 'series' are thematically linked.  (The first and third are also linked by Ovido G Assonitis, who produced and directed the first and executive produced the third).  All three films are, in one way or another, about 'possession': the first has a woman possessed by a demonic pregnancy, the second sees a child apparently possessed by the ghost of his murdered father, while the third has an entire train possessed by the devil.

That's right - a whole train gets possessed by the devil and careers, apparently unstoppable, across the Yugoslav railway network, carrying one of its passengers to to a demonic date.  But we have to wait a while before we get to the train, with the first part of the film laboriously .setting up the plot.  We open in Los Angeles, where a group of anthropology students are about to go on a trip to Yugoslavia, in order to observe a ritual which only takes place once in a hundred years.  The focus falls upon Beverley, an introverted student of Serbian descent, whose father's family, according to her mother, comes from the very village that the students are heading for.  Beverley has, as we see in an otherwise gratuitous shower scene, a large wine stain type mark on her abdomen.  Unbeknownst to Beverley, while driving back from seeing her off at the airport, her mother is decapitated in a bizarre road accident.  Once the party arrives in Yugoslavia, they are met by stereotypical mysterious East European Professor Andromolek, who destroys a message informing Beverley that her mother has died, before conducting the students to the remote village where the ritual is to take place.  The village, naturally, is inhabited exclusively by anachronistic East European peasant weirdos, including dwarves, old crones and shifty looking blokes in rustic dress.  Before they know it, the villagers are trying to burn all of the students, except for Beverley, to death by locking them into their huts before setting them ablaze.  All but one of them escape, running through the countryside until all but two of them manage to board a passing train.

At which point things finally get into gear, as the train takes n a life of its own, shedding all but the two forward carriages (carrying the students) and gorily dispatching its own crew, (the driver is decapitated when the locomotive runs over him as he inspects the track, while the fireman is drawn into the firebox and burned to death).  The train careens on regardless, ignoring station stops, crashing through barricades set up by the railway authorities, even smashing through another train heading toward it on the same track.  All without suffering any damage.  It also keeps deviating from its original route, the tracks ahead of it moving themselves to redirect the train - it even drives through a swamp in order to dispose of those two students who didn't get on the train and are now sheltering in a hut.  Meanwhile, on board the train, Beverley learns that she has been marked out, (quite literally by that mark on her abdomen), as the devil's virginal bride, while the other students all start dying horrible deaths.  When she is the only one left, the train stops and Professor Andromolek arrives in a horse drawn carriage to take her to her wedding night.  With Beverley lying on an altar, the devil puts in an appearance, (coming up from Hell in what looks like a glass elevator), but before he can do the business, an old crone from the village does the manual virginity test on the girl.  Horror of horrors!  She's not a virgin any more!  (Up to this point, none of the Serbian dialogue had been subtitled, but the crone's declaration is subtitled, despite this being the one point where it wasn't needed as it is obvious what she is saying).  The devil is so disgusted that he kills Andromolek before gets back in his elevator.  All the acolytes flee and we jump cut to Beverley at the airport about to fly back home.

In order to engineer this denouement, the film has to introduce a huge deus ex machina, in the form of a mysterious character on the train, wearing a monk's habit who, it seems, has relieved her of her virginity.  This character is never properly introduced and his liaison with Beverley is never made explicit.  He is only explained in a coda at the film's end, when Beverley is given an old book before getting on the plane, which has been left for her by the mysterious monk, who she glimpses, before he vanishes.  Reading the book, she learns that he was Marius, an Eleventh Century monk wrongly executed for heresy, but posthumously vindicated and canonised.  Clearly, he enjoys a pretty racy afterlife, his sainthood guaranteeing his place in heaven while still being allowed to return to earth and bonk imperiled mail order brides of Satan in order to save their souls.  I have to say though, that I'm not sure that he could have taken her virginity: having been dead for eight hundred years or so he is obviously a ghost, so I'd question whether being shagged by his ectoplasmic member would actually count as penetrative sex as, well, there'd be no actual substance to the thing.  But logic is not Beyond the Door III's strong point, as the whole script is riddled with inconsistencies.  Most glaringly, if Beverley was the sole focus of the satanists' plot, then were surely easier and less conspicuous ways of luring her to that village than sending an entire party of students there, only to murder all but one of them.  (Her family ties to the village alone, would have given a pretext for getting her there, surely).  Instead, the cultists draw attention to themselves first by trying to kill the entire party, (whose deaths would have to have been explained to the local and US authorities), then by having a possessed train very conspicuously rampage around the countryside.  

On the positive side, though, the film does feature some pretty gruesome and well staged deaths, including at least three decapitations, the skin being pulled off of someone's face and another character being torn in half.  The gore effects are probably the film's strongest point.  Being shot largely on location in Yugoslavia, (about eighteen months before the country descended into the brutal civil war that resulted in its eventual dissolution), with the co-operation of the local authorities the film, despite a low budget, looks well resourced, with extensive shooting on the rail network and the use of a steam hauled train.  Nevertheless, while director Jeff Kwitney moves things along a reasonable pace, particularly once the students are on the train, the whole film has a roughly hewn feel about it, with little finesse being given to any of the set pieces.  The bleak and wintry rural Serbian locations, however, do lend the film a certain gloomy, down beat atmosphere.  The only 'name' actor in the film is Bo Svenson as the Professor, who gets to sport a goatee beard and what he thinks is a Serbian accent.  The rest of the cast, particularly the students, feel interchangeable and are quite unmemorable.  The biggest let down lies in the effects work used for when the train leaves its route, with some very poor miniatures work employed.  The track which shifts direction is all too clearly HO gauge model railway track, (probably Lima or Rivarossi - the miniatures work was done in Rome), while the miniature train looks suspiciously like a proprietary model of the same scale, which doesn't match up particularly well with the real train.

All in all, Beyond the Door III isn't a particularly good film and will be particularly disappointing to anyone coming to it expecting a 'proper' sequel to the first film.  That said, it isn't a particularly bad film either and, when considered on its own merits as a standalone film, is, while its one, a reasonably enjoyable, if not especially memorable, piece of cinematic schlock.  It has some good gore effects and the train sequences are generally well handled, but it telegraphs all of its plot developments and would be twists well in advance and never develops its characters to the degree that you actually care what happens to them.  Still, as a sad and obsessive completist, I'm glad that I've now finally caught up with it and can boast having seen all three films in this 'series'.