Excellent but underrated film

Dreadfully Boring

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

For a blaxsploitation flick, this movie's sure got a lot of white people in it. I'd never heard of the R&B group "Bloodstone" before but apparently they were popular when they made this low-budget musical homage to Hollywood back in 1975. A "Blackstone" band member gets knocked out backstage at one of their concerts and dreams the group are porters on an Art Deco train bound for Hollywood with Bogie, W.C. Fields, Jean Harlow, Jeanette Macdonald & Nelson Eddy, Dracula, The Godfather & The Wild One, Rhett Butler & Scarlett O'Hara, Peter Lorre, and a sheik & his harem along for the ride. There's quick sketch romance, dance, and murder that the band interrupts often to flex their pipes singing pop tunes like "Toot-Toot-Tootsie Good-Bye", a du-wop ditty or two and, of course, original compositions ("...There's nothing as scintillating, nothing so captivating as a train ride..."). Unless there's some subliminal substance to this silliness, the stars' servant-like roles may be accidentally un-PC today but it's all in innocent, corny fun geared toward a kiddie mentality. The Godfather suffocating his victims with his armpit, all the stars getting stoned on the sheik's hookah pipe, and an obese boxing match with a gorilla are just some of the slap-happy shenanigans going on in a concussion-induced Hollywood hallucination not unlike Dorothy's in THE WIZARD OF OZ. The celebrity impersonators are pretty good and an authentic Art Deco L.A. train station was used for one song & dance number but the only actor I recognized was Phyllis Davis (who I think I remember from TV) as Charlotte O'Hara. Die-hard movie buffs may find this harmless nonsense mildly amusing but, even then, I'd recommend it only as a second feature for THE MAN WITH BOGART'S FACE (1980).

Train Ride to Hollywood is a musical comedy. Bloodstone's Harry Williams is fascinated with Hollywood and its famous actors of old. He falls and hits his head just before going on stage, no thanks to their producer (Michael Payne) tugging on his leg. The movie is his dream, a goofy dream at that. There are auditions in Hollywood and they need to take a three-day train ride to get there. The only problem is they don't have the money for train tickets. So they trick real railway workers and steal their uniforms. The train's passengers consist of a Sheikh and his harem, W.C. Fields, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, a loveable Dracula, The Godfather, Humphrey Bogart, Jean Harlow, Nelson Eddie and Jeanette MacDaonald and others. Bloodstone turns into detectives ala Sherlock Holmes following a double murder. Guess the killer couldn't stand Nelson Eddie and Jeanette MacDonald's continuous singing. A wacky funeral, fight with a gorilla, and threat of being turned into a wax museum figure are all part of Harry's dream.Dance numbers are good especially the memorable Train Ride number filmed in L.A's Union Station. (Funny thing is they start at Union station and end there). I've watched it over and over again. Charles McCormick and his falsetto voice are wonderful in the number with the Rhythm professor. Charles Love singing to Tracy Reed is also great to watch. Too bad there is no soundtrack for this film. The movie is overall fun.

This is a fun, silly movie which takes very bizarre and unexpected turns. But I've watched the "Train Ride" musical number over and over again. It's worth the rental. As they say, "Get your ticket get your ticket you gotta have a ticket for this train ride..."

Members of the 70's pop/soul group Bloodstone ("Natural High") enter a dream sequence in which they disguise themselves as porters to get to Hollywood for an audition. Also on the train are cheap impersonators of Bogie, W.C. Fields, Rhett and Scarlet, Jeanette and Nelson, Bela Lugosi, plus a sheik and his harem. Some fine musical numbers liven up a rather hackneyed self-referential movie. Still an interesting trip for cinema fans, and more economical than the later star-laden failure "Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood."