TERROR EXPRESS

On an interregional train, several passengers find themselves traveling together, including Mike and his wife Anna, the Sini couple and their teenage daughter Elena, a police officer escorting a political detainee, the prostitute Giulia, and three thugs who immediately start harassing the other passengers. After some « annoying » behaviors, the three men start to get rough and rape Anna in the toilet. They also manage to steal the policeman's gun and take the entire carriage hostage, intending to sexually abuse all the women on the train, targeting Giulia in particular. In the Italian cinematic landscape of the « 70s », it was very common to come across hard and raw films, capable of disturbing and « scandalizing » by directly targeting base instincts and upsetting common morals. One subgenre in particular aimed at this, namely « rape & revenge »; a subgenre that draws from horror, thriller, and above all drama and that has attracted the antipathy of many well-meaning people, often labeled as macho and fascist. « The Sleeping Car Girl » has been added on several occasions to the genre started with « The Last House on the Left » and in part, it actually presents the characteristics, especially thanks to the obvious references to « The Last Train to the Night » and for some « rules » that it is about to follow. With the beautiful film by Aldo Lado, it shares the railway setting and some sociological aspirations aimed at condemning the bourgeoisie; with « rape & revenge », it shares the basic assumptions related to rape and revenge. However, mainly inserted in the appropriate genre, « The Sleeping Car Girl » proves to be intrusive at times due to the excessive « lightness » of the imagery and above all due to the little attention paid to revenge, which, according to the rule of contrappasso, should always be more cruel than the actions of the rapists. Director Ferdinando Baldi has a career devoted mainly to the western (« Love thy neighbor as thyself! », « Prepare your coffin! », « Carambola ») but with « The Sleeping Car Girl » he approaches « rape & revenge » with a screenplay by George Eastman (real name Luigi Montefiori, unforgettable interpreter of « Antropophagus » and « Angry Dogs ») which seems, however, much more attentive to the erotic component than to the more properly dramatic one. The film proceeds between numerous nudity and frequent sexual acts, sometimes forced but more often consensual (the victim of the rape who enjoys violence was a small constant in the Italian genre and provoked the wrath of feminists), which see some « beautiful and available » women of our cinema of the time, here represented by Silvia Dioniso (« Dracula seeks the blood of a virgin… and dies of thirst! »; « Men are born, policemen die ») in the role of the prostitute Giulia, and Zora Kerowa (« Antopophagus »; « Cannibal Ferox ») in the role of Mrs. Anna. The Dionisio gives life to a rather original character for the genre, a prostitute who operates on a train with the « permission » of the train conductor-maganccia, a woman therefore accustomed to relationships with several men and to « particular » requests, but who here refuses her charms to those who want to obtain them with violence. Interesting, although little developed, the characters of Anna (the Kerowa) and Pierre (Gianluigi Chirizzi), the detainee. Anna is a conservative and moralistic woman, ready to immediately condemn the presence of the detainee Pierre in the dining car as an offense to the « good people », and yet she feels a certain pleasure in being raped simultaneously by the two thugs in the scene that is perhaps the most famous of the film. Pierre has the face little suited to the slender Chirizzi (« Malice »; « Zombi Horror »), an anarchist who has become guilty of politically motivated crimes, a character with a lot of potential but inexplicably left in the shadows to be recovered only at the end. Among the other characters who populate the train, the politician who has the porn magazines compared by the driver and the slimy incestuous father of the family who goes with the Dionisio imagining lying with his teenage daughter (played by the TV star Fiammetta Flamini) are worth noting. Among the three rapists, the only one who stands out is Werner Pochath (« The Cat O« Nine Tails »; « That Villa at the End of the Park »), for his unmistakable physique du role. Let's say that « The Sleeping Car Girl » works more conceptually than anything else, because when facing the film, you really have to deal with one of the least successful works of the genre. If some good ideas scattered here and there are there, it is mostly a heavily derivative film, under many other aspects « The Sleeping Car Girl » is unpresentable: Baldi's direction (who meanwhile was shooting simultaneously « The Traveling Companion ») is anonymous and not attentive and the entire staging is sordid and poorly cared for. The same cast, full of known names and faces, is poorly used and the violence on which one could insist is very light, presenting one of the most expeditious and disappointing revenge ever appeared in a film of this kind. Negligible.