RED ZONE CUBA aka NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE

     Director Coleman Francis is best known for THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS which is I believe the worst film ever released to movie theaters. He also directed THE SKYDIVERS which is a fairly well shot B movie that you can't believe was made by the same people who made THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS.
     Francis made one other movie an adventure film/ crime drama / war picture called RED ZONE CUBA and is also known as NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE (MUNDO FINE  means the the end of the world) I have never seen a print of the film under the title  NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE so it may have been a production title before release. I have never seen a poster for the film so it must of had a very limited release or went straight to television for the local late night market of the era.
     The production values to RED ZONE CUBA are not as low as THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS but they fall way below the B movie production values of THE SKYDIVERS.
     The screenplay for the movie plays like the first draft of a badly written novel. It tells the story of a mean escape convict named Griffin who joins up with a pair of loser ex cons and the three of them join a group of soldiers who go to take part in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Their group is wiped out but they escape Cuba and return to the U.S.A. and go on a crime spree. That the film's end Griffin is shot down by the police and the ex cons are arrested.
     The film has a horrible atmosphere of of doom about it.  John Carradine appears at the film's begin and tells a reporter that Griffin ran all the way to Hell which  for tells his death. The ex cons Cook and Lanis who wanted to keep out of trouble and jail end up arrested. They take part in the doom Bay of Pigs invasion. Griffin and Lanis encounter a man who's business is going down the drain and his daughter is a war widow who gone blind. There is a happy reunion between a wounded soldier and his wife who was shot by Griffin. I always thought that scene was an last minute rewrite. The death of both would have been more in the tone of this movie.
     RED ZONE CUBA is a crudely made productions in a kind of blurry black and white that gives the film an accidental arty look. It's as if this was an art house movie gone bad. The title NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE sounds like an art house movie title.
     Coleman Francis aside from directing and writing the screenplay also plays Griffin. He is not bad in the role. A better screenplay and production values would have helped.
     But if low budget filmmakers waited till they had money for good production values a lot of movies would have never been made.