Mixed Tape Movies: Trains.

In the eighties it was the-thing-to-do to make a mixed tape (like an mp3 but touchable, always in need of a pencil and definitely cooler). On it you would make a little playlist of all the cool songs. Now the trick was to make each song correspond with the rest of the tape. In this post I will try to do the same with movies.

Every once in a while I will select a general topic and select movies to accompany it. As you can see the more child-friendly movies are at the start of the day, but  when night falls: ‘here be monsters’. Please feel free to give suggestions of other unknown movies. 

One rule though: Auteur themes like ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘James Bond’ are not allowed. ‘Spy-movies’, naturally, are.

Theme: Trains

I love a good long train ride. Far more comfortable than that annoying ear pain you receive from airplane travel. Just sitting back and seeing the landscape fly past (or towards you depending on how you are sitting).

The second thing I enjoy is that it is cramped. You are all in this contraption together (but comfortable, at least). All these strange people piled on top of each other. It’s the closest thing to camping except the privies are a lot more private.

So with all these stranger on a train mystery and adventure are bound to happen. So let me just give you ten of my favourite train-movies.

08:00-10:00

Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000): A small forgotten movie. There’s a reason for that: It’s not a very good movie! But it’s definitely not worse than The polar express (Sorry, I don’t like that movie..at…all). Kids will love it and that’s all that’s important here.

10:00-12:00

Silver Streak: A bit of a gamble this one (the black-face scene is a ‘no no’ nowadays). But overall this is one very clever and funny thriller which actually turned Gene Wilder in somewhat of an action hero. Also seeing the poor bloke getting thrown off the train four times in a row is a hoot.

12:00-14:00

Narrow margin: “Do you know what I like about you? You’re tall!”

Gene Hackman has to keep a  witness safe on a train filled with potential mobster hitmen. A cleverly constructed thriller that builds up to the inevitable finale on the train roof (one of those tropes that just keeps on giving, like that great rooftop fight in The seven percent solution (1977)).

14:00-16:00

The first great train robbery: I wrote about this movie before (HERE). This movie is a mixed bag. It’s very good; but the three small things that feel ‘off’ about this movie are so way off they actually hurt the bigger picture. Still for a crime caper adventure movie with a charming lead this is one of the best around.

16:00-17:00

The lady vanishes: Even though the Hitchcock version is the best version out there I carry a torch for this 1979 version. Angela Lansbury plays elderly women-you-don’t-mess-with like the best. And then there are Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd  having lovely chemistry as the leads. Plus Shepherd gets to poke fun at Hitler which is always good.

17:00-19:00

Murder on the orient express: Another 70s version but this time I chose the absolute (1974) best. Everything is perfect in this rendition of Agatha Christie’s greatest novel. The script has been cleverly adapted, the pacing is fast and Lauren Bacall is, as always, a marvel.

19:00-21:00

Runaway train: Just for Danny Trejo alone. This movie made the genre of an unstoppable train common practice and it has been copied to death ever since. A little rough around the edges this movie delivers a harsh, cold, adventure ride that hits your senses ‘like a freight train’ (sorry about that pun).

21:00-23:00

Snowpiercer: Trains have always been about class (1^st, 2^nd, coach). So why not use this concept for a science fiction story about survivors of the apocalypse trying to escape their oppressors. All of which this takes place aboard a continuously moving train. As our heroes move from cart to cart towards the engine things become more and more luxurious and (people) ludicrous. Snowpiercer creates an intriguing tale with various similarities between its fiction and (our) reality.

23:00-01:00

Horror express: Terry Savalas, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee all in the same movie. In movies it’s never wise to transport a danger by moving vehicle (trains, planes or even automobiles). In this case it is a prehistoric monster being relocated. But we’ve got The Count AND Von Helsing to rely upon, so we’re good.

01:00-03:00

Train to Busan: Zombies on a train. Why not? We’ve had those undead critters everywhere else by now. But what Train to Busan does very cleverly is that it uses the claustrophobia of trains to its advantage to increase the tension. Especially the ‘climbing across’-scene is an absolute nail biting tension scene.

Honourable mentions:

When you get right down to it there are four sub-genres of movies involving trains. (1) The finding a person on a train-genre (Source code, The Commuter, or the various adaptations of The lady vanishes and Murder on the orient express). (2) The Terrorists on a train who need to be dispatched-genre (Finale run, Under siege 2). (3) The there’s horror on the train and you can’t get off-genre (Terror train). And (4) the train is a runaway (which is usually reserved for the finale of the movie).

I think I named an example for each of those movie movies in my list. These honourable mentions are the others that just didn’t make it.

There are also movie that take only partially take place on a train. The railway children, From Russia with love (James Bond movies love trains), Harry Potter 1 to 7. I discarded them.

Now I didn’t include subway movies like Death line, The taking of Pelham one, two three, Money train or Midnight meat train, because these movies are about subway trains, not railroad trains. Maybe for the next Mixed tape movies.