Filthy Casual Reviews: Filmic Friday 1

Movie: Hostage Train

Format: VHS Screener

What even the heck was this.

So, every Friday night, my friends and I all sit down and watch a movie together. Sometimes it’s chosen by one of us (I may or may not have chosen Gymkata last time I got to pick…), sometimes it’s provided by the cinephile whose house we watch movies in, sometimes it’s an episode of Mystery Science Theater.

Sometimes, however, we break out the bin of random VHS tapes from the thrift store and roll for it.

This most recent evening, one of my friends rolled the purple 10-sided die and landed on a bizarre screener copy that had two films on it (and therefore two numbers he could have hit). The two films in this case were Night of Abandon and a Judge Reinhold vehicle called Hostage Train.

I’m told we’re lucky he landed on Hostage Train.

I’m sure we were, but still, it was… something.

If you’ve never seen a screener VHS tape, I’ll walk you through the experience. First, we put the tape in the VCR (if you’ve never seen a VHS movie, I’m speaking Greek to you, but if you have, you probably either have a warm feeling of nostalgia right now or a sharp stab of annoyance that anyone would remind you of the movie-devouring device that would clog up space for your gaming consoles until DVD came around and made things simpler…). When the tape started up, it presented us with the usual movie previews, but there was a twist!

Now, I’d never seen a screener before, so I was unprepared for the gelatinous green cgi film lot which popped up and gave us an Amazon Trail style flying tour before alighting on the Republic Pictures’ unused cgi logo. After this came a tsunami of advertisements for different films.

- The movie we were going to watch: Hostage Train (which had a bunch of explosions in the trailer, so we were getting excited to watch big dumb fun)

- A Gary Busey vehicle called, of all things, Lethal Tender

- Night of the Demons III, which we were told was a pale comparison to the first two Night of the Demons movies, but at least they had one actress in common, unlike Hostage Train…

- Night Falls on Manhattan (which I don’t remember, and my notes only include the title)

- A very artsy trailer featuring David Duchovny and a typewriter and lots of erotic overlays which turned out to be the trailer for the other film on the tape: Night of Abandon. Something about prostitution and journalism?

- A movie where Peter Weller apparently gets laid a lot more than I feel comfortable remembering called End of Summer

- Lots of cgi spaceships and people running down the same corridor because of evil science and bad, bad germs called Ravager. It had the dubious honor of the best line of the night: “You’re either the Hunter… or the Huntee”. Yes, Huntee. Not Hunted. We were beside ourselves.

- PRICED FOR SELL-THROUGH: They had way too much Highlander the series crap, which meant that they were trying to sell a bunch of single-episode VHS tapes for $14.98 in 1997. They even offered a sweepstakes for a trip to Paris and a walk-on role in the show, 10% discount offers on the Highlander catalog (that existed?) and finally, an ad for the brand new, exciting DVD format!

- Suddenly, the s/o and I start flipping out. The theme to WCW Thunder was playing under an advertisement for tons of crappy VHS tapes. Much miming of shirt-ripping was had.

- A 5-tape collection of Stephen King movies: The Stand, Cujo, The Langoliers, The Golden Years, and The Night Shift Collection. Remember, this was 1997.

- A pretty cool looking documentary called hype! Which was a chronicle of grunge for $19.98

- Yet another copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, which I like well enough, but I have seen it more times than I’ve had Christmases, so I’m on a break with it…

- Angel Baby was an Aussie indie film that looked… dumb.

- Horror music was playing, Hollywood Native Americans were talking, a guy found a dog in a hole, and it turned out to be a weird boy-and-his-dog-fight-pollution-and-corrupt-government-officials movie called Legend of the Spirit Dog or something like that. What even… I’ve seen Segal movies that made more sense than that trailer.

Finally, after 25 minutes, the movie began.

The opening was basically static white credits on a black background intercut with people in fatigues moving ammo boxes with C4 spray-stenciled onto the lids and boring dialog. Eventually, Judge Reinhold showed up, taking photos of a vaguely European guy with a receding hairline and a ponytail who seemed to be giving the orders.

I got bored for a while, then explosions happened.

I could probably give you a rundown of this movie if I really, really tried, but we talked over the whole thing, got annoyed by the title, which is a lie, the train is not a hostage. The hostages are taken from the train and stowed underground, where we sit the whole time. There’s a helicopter scene, some explosions, and a very uncomfortable third act where Judge Reinhold is covered in soot and looking… a bit too Al Jolson for my tastes.

Things in this movie’s favor:

- We see a lot of lingerie & boobs

- The explosions we get are huge and fiery

- The attempts at action are terrible and hilarious

- There is a Czech lady who kicks ass and looks great doing it, her accent is pretty good, and she looks like a million bucks. 10/10 would watch her in other films. Unfortunately, she’s not in any other US movies :( She was a fantastic villain. Much better than the actual villain, who was (spoilers) Michael Sarrazin, not the vaguely European guy with the aforementioned bad hair.

Things that were not in the movie’s favor:

- It’s a sequel to a different action movie (Crackerjack [1994]) with no one from the original cast, a different director, and nothing to do with one another. Well, there was a flashback to the wife in the first movie getting blown up.

- For a movie called Hostage Train, they don’t spend much time on the train.

- Nothing in this movie works that way in real life. We’d all be dead if cops were this incompetent, we’d all be dead if they had attack helicopters at the ready, we’d all be dead if this movie’s world was ours.

- No one in this movie except the Czech lady could act. Sorry Judge. That was bad.

- She was the only one who didn’t seem drunk.

Things that made me laugh:

- At one point, the explosions shift position slightly as the camera pans, making it very, very obvious that those plumes of ridiculously orange fire were not happening in the shot.

- I hated everyone and whooped when they died.

- There’s a torture scene with an intensely douchey rich guy and the Czech lady. She was having such a great time pulling his teeth out and he was speaking awfully clearly for a guy with a set of pliers halfway down his throat…

- Judge Reinhold’s face. It was never in the right expression for any scene.

- When full boob-nudity showed up, one of our number was in another room and we just hollered “BOOBS! ACTUAL BOOBS!” until they came back. Just in time for her to be covered up again. (If you know who I’m talking about, please keep it to yourself. No names here :) )

Overall, I’d give the experience a 8/10, but the movie gets a D.

For a more in-depth review of the actual movie, check out one of the many people who’ve reviewed it, like the Cinema Snob:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73bVz86FGnk

That’s all for me, but if you wanna watch a bad movie with big booms and at least one shot of boobs, then… I dunno. I guess you can watch Crackerjack 2: Hostage Train (which says Crackerjack 2 NOWHERE ON IT).

Go out there and enjoy something!

Addendum:

If any brave souls want to check out these films mentioned here, I’ve compiled the IMDB listings below

Hostage Train (Crackerjack 2)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119317/

Lethal Tender

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119520/

Night of the Demons III

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116073/

Night Falls on Manhattan

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119783/

Night of Abandon