Night Train to Mundo Fine (1966)

This is a truly awful movie. Keeping your attention on the dialogue is harder than holding a bar of wet soap. Sitting through that endless scene in the bunkhouse is like having a fifteen-minute continuous blackout; the moment it's over, you immediately forget what just happened. It is physically impossible to stay focused on this movie for more than about three words-- it's that painful.

That's not the only reason why this movie is impossible to comprehend. No scene in this movie seems to follow from anything else. Many scenes end with a shot of the main characters (who seem to appear in one shot, then vanish in the next, then reappear again as if nothing had happened) in a stationary plane; however, since the plane is never shown flying, it's impossible to tell if they have actually left or arrived. It doesn't help that every shot in the movie (including those supposedly in Cuba) was taken in the same small American town.

The movie begins with what is apparently a runaway convict, played by the flabby Mr. Francis himself. He gets together with about seven other people and they decide to invade Cuba (???), which actually doesn't seem like such a bad idea since as far as the movie's concerned the total population of Cuba is three soldiers and a man with a really fake beard (Castro.) This somehow gets around to a tungsten mine (back in America? who knows or cares?) and a man thrown into a well for no apparent reason.

This movie hurts. After you see this movie, you'll want to hurt it too. It's actually worth seeing just to experience the sheer awfulness of it; if you like bad movies, you'll get a laugh out of watching the line flubs, scene goofs, continuity jumps and gaping plot holes. But this movie is not funny so much as just pathetic.

Fmovies: In the prologue of "Night Train to Mundo Fine," a reporter named Jim Benton (Bruce Love) from "The Gazette" interviews Mr. Wilson (John Carradine), a train engineer, about the time three criminals hopped a train he was working on four years ago, in 1961.

After Carradine sings the title song (not a bad track), we journey to 1961. We witness Griffin (Coleman Francis) escape from prison. He meets two ex-convicts, Landis (Tony Cardoza) and Cook (Harold Saunders). Together, they decide to join a group of government sponsored mercenaries and invade Cuba for $2,000 each.

Hiring pilot Cherokee Jack (George Prince) to take them from New Mexico to somewhere near Cuba, they sign up with the group, headed by Joe (John Morrison) and Bayiev Chastain (Tom Hanson), the latter of whom wants to overthrow Castro so that his grandparents can get their sugar mill back.

The invasion goes haywire and all are captured; Chastain is shot in the leg, and Griffin says that within 24 hours he will die of gangrene. Joe and several soldiers are executed. The three criminals escape, but not before learning about the tungsten and pitchblende that is located on a mountain near Chastain's home.

In Arizona, they throw restaurateur Cliff Weismeyer (Charles Harter) down a well, leaving his blind daughter (Elaine Gibford) and stealing his car. They eventually ditch it and hop the train. They get off the train. Griffin and Landis fight for possession of Landis's ring, given to him by his father; Griffin wins and uses it to buy another car.

They reach Chastain's home, where they meet his wife Ruby (Lanell Cado). Together, the four conspire to raid the mountain. However, the criminals are spotted. Cook and Landis are arrested. Griffin shoots Ruby and flees. Chastain shows up, somehow surviving and escaping, and takes his wife back home. Griffin is gunned down by cops, who find that "Griffin ran all the way to Hell, with a penny and a broken cigarette." End.

WOW! This is one horrible movie! The only redeeming factors are the music (pretty good) and Tom Hanson's performance, which he actually tried to invest dimension into. The script, the other performances, the editing, etc, etc...all are bad.

And yet, I love this film. Why? Is it because of the witty remarks of Tom Servo, Mike Nelson, and Crow T. Robot when they viewed it on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" under the title "Red Zone Cuba?" Or perhaps because of some mysterious quality of the film itself? I don't know. I just know I love it.

And I'd love to see a remake.

Look, Folks, a lot of the reviewers here are missing the finer distinctions of artistic expression. There is a difference between being a fine work of art and being an excellent example of a given genre. Red Zone Cuba (by any name) is a stinker of a movie. It is execrable. It is abominable. But it may be a work of genius. Let's look at the facts: everything about this film is wrong. Every scene is inept, every element is unfit. The editing is botched, the sound is miserable, the acting dead and naturalistic, the characters are anti-appealing, the mise en scene is as flat and barren as capitalistic materialism, the direction is directionless, the story isn't one. Whence John Carradine and this great train robbery? What about the blind woman interminably playing that piano? Francis subverts every expectation we have of a movie. It does not entertain, nor does it provide spectacle. He gives us nothing with which to justify watching this Wretched Thing. Only a determined genius tapped into a conduit from Plato's realm of the Forms could have so deconstructed Film. It is ugly, it is dirty, it is mean and it is boring-- sounds like the world we live in. This is a portrait of our empty American existence. It is about the tyranny of a system that doesn't care about anything except its own perpetuation. It's about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was arguably as corrupt, doomed and ridiculous as Francis portrays it. Francis shows us the dark underbelly of American hegemony. It's not surprising that everyone loathes it so much and fails to see its (admittedly sub-textual) merits. If movies are about lies, this film is about Truth. Just as the little boy discovers in Flannery O'Connor's The River, Truth isn't pretty and it isn't what you've been told to expect or what you want to see.

Night Train to Mundo Fine fmovies. As far as I can tell, Coleman Francis and two other losers, escape from the cops hook up with "Cherokee" Jack and hightail it to some para military camp that's training for a invasion of Cuba. After their failed attempt to capture Cuba from a very fake Castro, our heroic trio steals a plane, make it back to the states and then throw some old guy down a well while his blind piano playing daughter goes about her music. Then they start searching for tungsten and decide to go legit.(?) This movie makes absolutely no sense. Coleman Francis cuts and cuts and those cuts hurt. There are also scenes of Coleman strangling other characters and sitting in his cell in a very provacative manner. Watch this with Mike, Tom and Crow and try to keep a straight face when John Carradine sings the haunting title track, you'll shake for weeks to come.

As far as I'm concerned this flick resets the bar for terrible movies.I have never been subjected to so much pain in such a short span of time since my last root canal.in fact, I think I would rather Laurence Olivier give me a root canal than to ever have to watch this piece of celluloid schitzen again.It had no discernible plot,the filming was horrible,and the acting nonexistent.The editing looked like it been done by Leatherface.The director(who was also the leading man)spent way too much time trying to play the tired antihero to really do any directing.If there was any kind of storyline,then it was beyond my grasp.It seemed to me like some sort of psychotic flight-of-ideas tale.The characters just amble on from one disastrous screw-up to another(which could have made a good story if you could have followed it).In the final analysis,it was just a painfully unwatchable waste of time.But,if you like,cinema terrible', then this is the one for you.rp

Everyone has already commented about this film, but I'm here for one reason: A plea. Please, someone tell me what exactly was going on? There's obviously some sort of embryo of a plot that isn't mentioned to the audience. Just trying to sort things out makes my head hurt. Only watch this movie in the MST3K version, and even then be careful not to pay too much attention to the movie, just the wise-cracks. Oh yes, and take breaks and get some sugar in you. Treat the movie like a series of unrelated, boring scenes. You've been warned.