Mystery Science Theater 3000 (TV Series) Red Zone Cuba (1994) User Reviews

Night Train to Nowhere

[choward125 · 8/10 · 31 March 2012]

Very funny episode of MST3K concerning one of the most incomprehensible films of the entire series. Red Zone Cuba (aka Night Train to Mundo Fine) is one of the most awful films ever made by one of the most awful film-makers (Coleman Francis) that every walked onto a set.

The episode starts with a short on Public Speaking from the 1950's University of Kansas that is hilarious. The fashion and the advise are incredibly dated.

Then we hear the title song sung(!) by cameo actor John Carradine (!!). We then are treated to about sixty minutes of the 'bots riffing on this ineptly made, grim and humorless adventure tail that meanders all over the place and then wides up in Cuba during the Castro revolution for no reason at all. The story of three escaped convicts trying to out run the law by traveling to Cuba is unwatchable and 'bots riffing is the only thing that makes this watchable.

If it possible for a movie to be so horrible that it is painful that is the only thing that keeps this episode from being classic.

Night Train To Mundo... Not So Fine!

[geminiredblue · 8/10 · 24 November 2014]

MST3K has had their share of bad films that even they couldn't do much with. But they soldiered on and joked away. Truth be told, there are some films so bad that nothing could improve them. Enter the repertoire of Coleman Francis movies. Even though he only made 3 films (and all of them appeared on MST3K), he left behind a legacy of depression and inanity. RED ZONE CUBA is his most epic, and also most incompetent, project. It's certainly seems ambitious. The slim plot is this: Coleman Francis plays an escaping convict. He hitches a ride in the bed of a truck driven by two ne'er-do-wells. All three down-and-outers decide to join up with a secret Army squadron to fight in Cuba. After a disastrous failure at the Bay of Pigs, the guys manage to escape somehow. Steal a plane, and wind up back in... Cuba? Or is that New Mexico? Nothing makes much sense. The acting is pretty wooden, to say the least. And the delivery of their lines makes them sound comatose. Oddly enough, there is a weird sort of poetry to all it. Like maybe it's an art movie criticizing the Bay of Pigs incident. But it's a chore to sit through. As for the "war footage", it's not the opening D-Day scene from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Since there's only seven soldiers in this "army", it quickly becomes comical watching the same guys meandering across beaches, scaling bunny cliffs, and occasionally falling down like they've been shot. To the MST3K version, I give it 8 well-deserved stars. On it's own, I'd give NONE!