Crow: I wanna hurt this movie, but I can never hurt it the way it hurt me.
Mike: Did they even need to GO to Cuba?
Far be it for me to spoil a movie this early into a recap, but
Red Zone Cuba is a film that seriously gives
Seinfeld a run for its money in the "being about nothing" department.
, also known as
Night Train to Mundo Fine, is a movie about... well, it's hard to say really. It follows
Curly Howard Griffin, an escaped convict and outlaw played by none other than
Coleman Francis, and his two associates as they try to survive. They learn that the army is planning to invade Cuba (good job on the whole "secret" thing, huh?!) and decide to sign-up — so they can desert with the signing bonus. (Unfortunately for them, the Army doesn't pay cash up front.)
After less than 24 hours in boot camp and a laughable desertion attempt, the Army "strike force" (which consists of five guys, and gets
handwaved by being a preliminary raiding force or something) "shoves off" to
New Mexico Cuba to
pave the way for the main Bay of Pigs invasion, only to be foiled by
a guy with a badly-fitted fake beard Fidel Castro, who captures our daring trio and takes them to a POW camp. While in prison, Griffin learns that one of their fellow soldiers - on the verge of death - owns a valuable uranium/diamond/tungsten mine, and the three decide to break out and take control of the mine themselves.
Once back in the US however, the trio are distracted by a restaurant and decide to vent their frustrations by murdering the owner and raping his deafblind daughter, hopping on a freight train (driven by none other than John Carradine) and stealing each other's keepsakes for petty cash. When they finally get to
Mordor the mine, the soldier's widow happily offers to split the deeds to the mine with them, and, out of gratitude, Griffin shoots her. Then the soldier, who it turns out was not dead after all, finds his dead wife somehow and cries (she may still be alive - the actress' inability to remain still makes it unclear). Coleman Francis is shot, his partners surrender, and the film thankfully shudders to a stop.
The movie currently holds the dubious honor of the #6 spot on the
IMDB bottom 100 list
. %%As of July 30, 2011
This film contains examples of:
- Acrofatic: Griffin
- Acting for Two: Producer Tony Cordoza plays both Landis and El Presidente himself.
- Anti-Hero - Supposedly Griffin (maybe), though any audience sympathy has evaporated by the time he's raping the restaurant owner's blind and deaf daughter.
- Artistic License - Military: Apparently the entire process of enlisting, completing training, and being deployed on a top secret mission only takes 24 hours.
- Moreover, the US Army is willing to enlist hobos, some of whom have criminal records
- Author Appeal: Coffee, vigilantism, light aircraft, big breasts aimed at the camera - it must be a Coleman Francis film!
- Banana Republic: Cuba is portrayed as this
- Book Dumb: Cherokee Jack
- Book Ends - Red Zone Cuba begins and ends with the phrase "ran all the way to hell".
- California Doubling - Reasonably well for Arizona. Not nearly so well for Cuba.
- The Cameo: John Carradine, who's listed as a "guest star".
- Chronic Villainy - Griffin spends less than five minutes wanting to "go legit" before he beats up one of his friends and robs him.
- Hell, Griffin seems incapable of passing up the opportunity to commit any crime.
- Dangerous Deserter - Our three "heroes", after their escape from Cuba.
- Do It Yourself Theme Tune - "As John Carradine's picture fades away, we suddenly hear the voice of Satan himself. No, wait, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. Actually, what we hear is John Carradine singing [!!!!] this movie's theme song."
- Economy Cast - Practically every actor whose character dies gets resurrected as another. In one case, a dead soldier comes back as a member of the firing squad who killed him!
Mike: Fortunately Cuba has only eight guys in it.
- The Eeyore: The restaurant owner. Being murdered by Griffin was probably the best thing that ever happened to him.
Mike: Pie doesn't make ya wanna kill yourself. Want some?
- Fat Bastard: Griffin
- Framing Device - The whole movie is a flashback being told by the driver of a train that the trio briefly rode on. How he knew all the details of their story (or any, considering he tells a reporter that he never saw them and it was dark anyway) is left unsaid.
- Gainax Ending: "Griffin, he ran all the way to hell... with a penny and a broken cigarette."
- Groin Attack. The dog, on itself, on the barb wire fance.
Crow (as the dog): Ow! Now I'm barren!
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Griffin
- The Hero Dies: Well, it depends on your defenition of "hero"
- Heroic Sociopath: Griffin
- Hollywood Darkness: Several "night" scenes are clearly shot in the daylight
- I Got Better - Chastain, the dying soldier, whose fever is magically cured and somehow teleports him back to the US.
- Informed Ability: It's hard to believe Griffin could be a magnate of anything, much less "The Cotton King of the South".
- Money, Dear Boy: The only explanation for John Carradine being in this movie.
- A lot of people would be surprised at how much tasteless exploitation John Carradine is in because of this very reason.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut - Griffin beats someone up for reading in a newspaper a report that his wife has become a prostitute.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Chastain
- Pet the Dog: At one point while driving, Griffin sees that Cook is freezing in their convertible, so puts the top up.
- The trio also initially act nice towards Chastain's wife, but you never know - Griffin is a ticking time bomb.
- Random Events Plot
- Rape Is The New Dead Parents: Griffin rapes a girl, and this event is never mentioned again
- Rape Your Disabled: Griffin forces himself on a blind and deaf woman
- Rouge Angles of Satin:
"CHEROKEE~JACK"
WILL FLIE [sic] YOU ANYWHERE? [sic]
RATES – PRETTIE [sic] – REASONEBLE; [sic]
SIGNED
- Cherokee Jack-
- Even thought it's deliberate misspelling, director Francis even manages to screw up the joke by only allowing the viewer less than a second to read the sign.
- Scare Chord: Following "He ran all the way to hell..." (to which Servo replies "But there's always a stop in Wausau!")
- Title Theme Tune - "Night Train to Mundo Fine", except the title of the movie was later changed.
- Too Dumb to Live: The Three Hobos, for hitching a plane ride with Cherokee Jack, who is unable to spell "fly"
- Villain Protagonist: Griffin
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? - The camera zooms in on a Burma Shave "How will you spend eternity?" advert. Judging by the pacing of the movie, probably watching this scene.
The MST3K presentation contains:
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