Too much of everything

Just perfect...

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

At one point in "Night Train to Venice", Hugh Grant's character suffers from amnesia. It's also what happened to the people who made this film; about two-thirds of the way through, they forgot the story, and wandered off in a different direction; a couple of directions in fact.A journalist, Martin Gimmle (Hugh Grant) travels to Venice by train to deliver a book he has written about Neo-Nazis. Martin is pursued by a gang of Neo-Nazi thugs and a mysterious man, The Stranger (Malcolm McDowell). On the train, Martin has an affair with an actress, Vera (Tahnee Welch) who is travelling to Venice with her daughter. After a number of incidents, the protagonists end up in Venice for the finale.Unfortunately, nearly every plot strand in the film is blurred with extraneous bits of business or simply left unresolved.It's hard to see how Hugh Grant got caught up in this. Maybe he thought a paid holiday to Venice would do him good. He gives it his best shot and brings his usual charm to the table, but the script, such as it is, gives him little chance to be convincing. Drop dead gorgeous Tahnee Welch was never the most animated of actresses and there are scenes here that leave her stranded. The excerpt from "Romeo and Juliet" is painful to watch; she wouldn't have been given a part in a high school production of the Bard's play based on this. However a good director could have coaxed a performance out of her, but more often than not, she lands flat on her back in bed with Hugh on top of her.Malcolm McDowell was more experienced than Hugh and Tahnee and no doubt could recognise a turkey being basted a mile off. His performance is almost as though he was only able to spare half a day for the shoot, and did a whole bunch of looks to camera so they could be cut in later where needed. Unfortunately it's the same look, and it's as though he was trying to pass a kidney stone.But having Malcolm McDowell on board explains one thing; it seems to have inspired director Carlo U. Quinterio to have the Neo-Nazi punks act like Alex's Droogs from "A Clockwork Orange". Old Carlo seems the sort of guy who could latch onto something like that. Could "Night Train to Venice" have worked? Sure. After all, the basic story isn't that different to "North By Northwest". However, instead of simplifying the story and working with the actors to get the most out of their performances, the filmmakers were distracted by everything from carnival masks to pigeons flying across the facades of the palazzos in Venice. Badness is in the eye of the beholder, but when a movie, which obviously had a reasonable budget, major stars and interesting locations turns out to be this incoherent, then it's a strong contender for the worst movie of all time.

This film is without doubt the worst film I have ever seen, and if you think that this claim is mere hyperbole then I implore you to see it for yourself, for once you have every film you see thereafter will seem better no matter how cringe-inducing the acting or nonsensical the plot. Night Train to Venice literally has to be seen to be believed. The so-called plot sees Hugh Grant, who should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for agreeing to appear in this drivel no matter how much he needed the money, boarding the Orient Express to Venice to take a manuscript he has written exposing a neo-Nazi movement to a publishing house. However, he is being followed by a group of badly-dubbed Nazis who are as camp as Christmas and about as terrifying as tinsel.Speaking of Christmas, Grant's laughable dialogue where he states that he hopes to receive books rather than socks next year because "I'm an intellectual", is one of the few hilarious high points, though for all the wrong reasons, and leads to the first of the film's many soft-core sex scenes, interpolated with the sight of a transvestite miming to Edith Piaf. This is just one of many examples of just how random and bizarre this film is, it's as if no one involved put any effort into making it coherent. Questions are asked but are never answered, and if you are hoping for an ending where the whole thing comes together and makes sense then think again, you'll be left scratching your head long after the sight of Hugh Grant having sex for the umpteenth time has disappeared from the screen, and not because the film is complex or in any way clever, it just seems to have been thrown together without any of the filmmakers caring about plot or substance. What exactly is the point of having Malcolm MacDowell grimace at the screen in slow motion in every scene? Why are so many scenes interrupted by shots of the train going past, as if we hadn't worked out yet that the film is set on a train? The actual script can only have been about seven pages long and the director has cruelly padded it out with naff slow-motion and totally unnecessary establishing shots. If you watch this film, prepare yourself for some (unintended by the 'filmamkers') laughs but most of all to be baffled and bored by this unbelievably awful movie.

Movies that parallel reality with a surreal, dream-like existence run the risk of alienating any audience not completely in tune with the director's vision; in this case, that alienation turns to unintended comedy when journalist Hugh Grant boards the Orient Express from Munich to Venice, where neo-Nazis have sneaked aboard and threaten to cause chaos. Also on-board this train trip to Hell is Tahnee Welch as a recently-widowed stage actress, her little girl and caretaker, plus an internationally known dancer, some drag queens, and Malcolm McDowell as a tough-talking "Stranger". From what I could decipher, it appears Grant blames the presence of the Nazis on himself (he apparently wrote an unflattering piece about Skinheads), but once the train pulls into Venice (in time for Carnival!) all that business aboard the Express seems to have been forgotten. It would be impossible to credit director Carlo U. Quinterio for his 'unique' vision; the filmmaker blatantly copies the criss-crossing style of Nicolas Roeg's thriller "Don't Look Now" (also set in Venice), creating an indecipherable scenario wherein the editor was allowed to go berserk with the flash-forwards and flashbacks. The movie is so cluttered up with murky minutiae that it allows the straight-faced proceedings some camp value (how else to describe the cobbling together of Nazi atrocities and S&M imagery with sex scenes involving Grant nibbling on Welch's breasts--shown again under the closing credits!). Low-budget mess resembles those Golan-Globus pictures from the 1980s, and poor Grant seems at a complete loss for words. NO STARS from ****

One of those films that is so terribly awful in every way that it inadvertently has comedy moments. Worth a go if you like terrible dialogue, but be warned this film contains more filler than any other film this side of art school. The "experimental camera and bizarre costumes seem to be plucked from nowhere with no clear connection between various parts of the film. The acting in general is terribly poor with the dialogue comic when it tries to be menacing, Grant is the same as always therefore not great but at the same time not awful either. If you like David Lynch films this maybe for you as it is as confusing as films such as Mullholand Drive, but take into account that there is less meaning in this than even the most bizarre of Lynch's creations. Watch and laugh but do not expect to come away with anything to think about.