Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Joseph Pezzuto "Griffin...ran all the way to hell...with a penny...and a broken cigarette." Coleman C. Francis' last installment to his notorious film trilogy is Night Train to Mundo Fine, also billed as Red Zone Cuba. Night Train to Mundo Fine (pronounced "Finé", in which Francis also starred as well) is an American drama film telling of the meandering adventures of three mercenaries caught in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. After directing such bombs such as 'The Beast of Yucca Flats' (1961) and 'The Skydivers' (1963), this film, as the other two, still hold their prominent places on IMDb's Bottom 100. This final entry, like the others in the trilogy, have nothing in common with each other, except all use preoccupation with light aircraft and parachuting, coffee and cigarettes, which serve as prop or a center of conversation, and a vigilante-style gunning down of suspects without a trial to conclude the film as frequent motifs. With a minimal budget of $30,000 and shot entirely in the general Santa Clarita, California, (as per his two films) what could possibly go wrong? Francis' films have often been criticized for their abysmal production values, repetitive plot devices, murky picture quality and stilted acting. Critics have characterized his films as among the all-time-worst, even suggesting that he may surpass Ed Wood in terms of ineptitude. Would this film had been better off had the train not left the station? Let's take a look.'Night Train' opens with a young reporter approaching an old train engineer (John Carradine, the only big name in this picture) about three men--Griffin (Francis and the narrator), Cook (Harold Saunders) and Landis (Anthony "Tony" Cardoza, of whom also produced and played Castro)--of whom hopped his freight train back in 1961. Carradine must have wanted out pretty fast, because this is the only time we see him throughout this monochrome drudgery. He does sing the theme for the opening credits, performed by Ray Gregory and the Melman, but that's it after that. Griffin, a hulking escaped convict, joins up with Cook and Landis when the men are sitting down to eat in the desert while pointing a gun at them. A police officer arrives to question the men as Griffin hides in the brush. The office informs them to watch for Griffin of whom has $5,000 on his head. Upon his leaving, they know they can't turn the towering brute in due to having him kill them, so they allow the lug to travel on their sojourn in earning money to fight in Cuba. They go to a man named Cherokee Jack, (George Prince), and they trade in their truck for $35 in return for a flight to the war-torn communist country. Once there, the man get captured and become prisoners of war. They abandon their superior officer Bailey Chastain (Tom Hanson), although he begs for them to take him along with them. He desperately informs them of his family's mine back home, of which contains pitchblende, tungsten and other precious metals. They trio manage to escape through a window after Griffin strangles a guard. Stealing one of Castro's planes, they flee to Arizona. Once on American soil, the threesome partake in throwing diner owner Cliff Weismeyer (Charles F. Harter) down a well and Griffin creeping up and grabbing the blind daughter (Elaine Gifford), tearing her away from sitting at the facility's tinny piano and strangling her on a bed. The gang then steal Cliff's car and hop a train. Post engaging in a variety of crimes, the threesome finally make it to Chastain's home as they and his wife (Lanell Cado) head towards the mine the following day. Eventually the law catches up with them. Cook and Landis both surrender, Griffin refuses to go down without a fight. A shootout ensues and he dies in the desert sand. 'Night Train' is an hour and a half and feels like to longest ninety minutes I felt as if I ever had to sit through in a long time. It was almost as testing as sitting through 'Manos'. At least this film had the audacity to have a plot, which kept my interest a little more than 'Manos' did, but not so much. Everything in this film is practically filler and stretched out to unbearable lengths. We see the three men in uniform amongst some other soldiers running on the beach, walking along trails and scaling ledges. We witness executions in the Cuban prison camp, though we have no emotional connections to these anonymous souls being shot as we were just introduced to them. And for a film entitled 'Night Train to Mundo Fine', the train itself is barely in this picture. On December 17, 1994, 'Night Train' appeared on an episode of MST3K. It was the second of Francis' films to be featured on the show's sixth season, following 'The Skydivers' and preceding 'The Beast of Yucca Flats'. Francis received notoriety due to these televised spots and as a result of their appearing on the show as well. Cherokee Jack even went later on to appear in The Office episode 'Threat Level Midnight'. 'Night Train to Mundo Fine' is indeed a train wreck, meandering more than the characters on screen to an unbearable, lengthy extent, metaphorically derailing over an unfinished railroad bridge ascending over a hundred plus feet of gulch. And Coleman C. Francis, director and conductor, went down with it. He passed away at only age fifty-three due to cardiovascular disease. Though arteriosclerosis was listed as the official cause of death, Cardoza said that his body was found in the back of a station wagon at the Vine Street Ranch Market with "a plastic bag over his head and a tube going into his mouth or around his throat". Though he did make two more bad films before passing, 'Night Train' stills remains as a loud whistle blowing in homage to his terrible craft.

TheLittleSongbird There is a good indication of whether a movie is bad if it's featured on MST3K and if it's on the bottom 100. Both of those cases apply to Night Train to Mundo Fine, a movie that has a reputation for being one of the worst movies ever made and is one that lives up to that reputation. It is a memorable movie, but as said in the review summary unfortunately it isn't for the right reasons. What is further unfortunate is that Night Train to Mundo Fine is also one of those movies where it is next to impossible to be entertained by it, because you spend the whole duration infuriated by how incompetently done it is. If there was anything that was remotely decent, no matter how small, it was the theme song which is actually pretty good. The editing and camera work however look like a real amateur's job, it's poorly lit, shot in a jumbled way and edited in a way that suggests the editor being drunk. The story is even worse, when it wasn't being so jumbled in structure and so tedious in pacing- though not quite as badly as Manos, Monster A-Go Go and The Creeping Terror- there was hardly even one. The dialogue is sheer laziness and reeks of cheese and you are never emotionally invested in the characters(as a matter of fact the only emotion for them that you feel is annoyance). To say that the direction is flat is being too kind, and the acting is some of the worst acting you'll ever witness, most look as though they're not even trying to act. All in all, so poorly done in every area apart from the theme song, no entertainment to be had in it whatsoever. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Ben Holland So there are good bad movies (plan 9, attack of the giant X monster movies) and then there are bad bad movies, like this one and Manos. The bots do some justice to these movies but what makes them just terrible is that absolutely nothing happens. Yes, the editing is beyond the pale, music sounds like it came out of a greeting card, the script is non- existent, and the acting is terrible and dull. We all know this, otherwise it won't be on MST3K. What makes this movie truly stand out is, like Manos, nothing happens for about an hour. You see cars moving, something about a truck being sold, pawning a gold ring, murdering some random person with a blind daughter, a "for rent" sign, and these are the memorable parts of the movie. The unmemorable parts involve wonderful song scenes of driving, flying, driving, climbing up somewhere not Cuba, flying, driving, sleeping, smoking, and more driving. Who could possibly forget the memorable and thrilling scene of buying some sandwich makings before getting into a car? If this reminds you of 10 minutes of random fields as credits roll by, it should.

Torgo_Approves (r#41)1966 sure was a great year for movies! It must've been hard for the poor moviegoers to decide which movie to see first with such blockbusters as 'Manos' The Hands of Fate, Gamera vs. Barugon, Agent for H.A.R.M., Secret Agent Super Dragon and The Deadly Bees in theatres! The biggest question is, which of these movies topped the box office? It sure must've been a tough competition. Finally I realized that there could only be one box office king - THE defining film of the sixties, a milestone in artful movie-making, a touching, grim drama with powerhouse performances. No, I'm not talking about some Bergman flick - I'm talking about the epic crime drama Red Zone Cuba, also known as Night Train to Mundo Fine. What a movie.All sarcasm aside, this is a bad movie. And I don't mean it's a bad movie like Gigli or Simon Sez are bad movies. This goes beyond that. It almost equals the Fuhrer of awfulness itself, 'Manos'. It is SO unbelievably awful that it should be set as a bad example at film schools. "This is how not to make a movie". I could even go so far as to say that other bad movies can be rated on a Red Zone Cuba scale - Leprechaun in the Hood, for example, would be three Red Zone Cubas out of five. It's that bad.Let's begin with the cast. Coleman Francis himself plays "our friend and humble narrator", Griffin, a chain-smoking butt-wipe who sponges his friends' food before strangling them in their sleep (thank god our friend Bad Editing is here to make sure the victims are alive and well in the very next scene!). Coleman Francis is possibly the worst actor ever born and in this film he's in his "prime". In some shots he might as well have been dead, I swear (maybe he was, who can tell in a script with holes the size of Texas?). Anthony Cardoza, responsible for both the production of, and one of the lead performances in this film, is just awkward. John Carradine makes an inexplicable cameo and gets to sing the title song. Sound like fun yet? The true hero of the film is the plot. From what I understand, Griffin is a criminal on the run. He teams up with Cook and Landis (Anthony Cardoza and Harold Saunders) and invades Cuba. After spending some time in prison, they seek down their former inmate's wife and go hunting for a treasure or something (honestly, the messy direction lost me at this point). That's it. Seriously.The direction makes Boll look like Kubrick, the script is to scriptwriting what Aleister Crowley was to Christianity, and the film is about as fun to watch as watching your grandparents do the balloon dance (well, I guess some people are into that sort of thing). If you want to be bored for an hour and a half, this is the film. Coleman Francis is the Milos Forman of bad movies and this is his most "classic" outing. Overall this is a painful zit in the crack of the cinematic ass, and one that badly needs to be popped. Avoid at all costs.