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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Re: Railroad Movies (Spoiler, but so was the quoted article)
Message-ID: <1097@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 02:26:07 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1097
Posted: Fri Feb  7 02:26:07 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 11:08:52 EST
References: <1086@lsuc.UUCP> <6500001@hpcvla.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 46
Summary: Thumbs down on Cassandra [sic] Crossing (1977)

john (john@hp-pcd.UUCP) writes:
> How can you talk about railroad movies without mentioning "The Kassandra 
> Crossing"? It's the epic tale of a European train with a passenger who
> is infected with the Plague. They get passed across Europe like a hot
> potato until someone decides to run them over a old bridge that is
> sure to collapse. They don't make them like that anymore.

I wish they didn't.  This movie was just stupid.  The actual plot
was that Burt Lancaster's character, who turns out to be someone willing
to first confine and then murder a trainload of people to keep secret
the existence of the disease, and who is in a position to arrange all
this, has the train routed over an old bridge that he HOPED would collapse.

The condition of the bridge was not well known, and nothing was done to
weaken it.  The reason nothing was done to weaken it was that if something
had been done then it would not be a surprise that Lancaster's character
was trying to kill them rather than save them.  Why, we'd even know
that when Lancaster was spending half the movie repeating that he didn't
know if the train would make it across, we'd think he hoped it would.

In other words, the writers could think of no better way to conceal from
us that he was a killer than to make him an incompetent one.  (Given all
the other measures he was able to arrange, he could certainly have had
something done to the bridge.)

Anyway, dropping a train off a bridge of that height is nowhere near
sufficient to kill everyone on it; but it would be sufficient to breach
the barriers that had been put on to trap everyone on the train.
For the plot it was essential to have NO survivors, so the writers
conveniently arrange a flash fire in an oxygen-enriched atmosphere.
Oxygen will certainly accelerate the fire, but what is supposed to have
started it in the first place?  They don't have gaslights in trains
these days!

Or how about the scene with the helicopter trying to make contact
with the moving ELECTRIC train?  Notice how the overhead wires, which
(as we have been seeing in all exterior views of the train) are suspended
from cross supports that swish by every couple of seconds, suddenly are
NOT there just when the helicopter is close to the train, and then
reappear afterward?

I've gone on at much greater length than this stinker deserves.
If you want to see a GOOD railway movie with Burt Lancaster, see
The Train (1963).

Mark Brader