Red Zone Cuba (USA, 1965) 89 min B&W DIR-SCR: Coleman Francis. PROD: Coleman Francis, Anthony Cardoza. MUSIC: John Bath, Ray Gregory (theme). DOP: Herb Roberts. CAST: Coleman Francis, Anthony Cardoza, Harold Saunders, John Carradine, Lanell Cado, Tom Hanson, George Prince, Frederic Downs. (Hollywood Star Pictures)
The final film in Coleman Francis’ trilogy is his tour de force: Red Zone Cuba (originally entitled Night Train to Mundo Fine). The maverick writer-director also takes a principal role. Where Beast of Yucca Flats spared nothing in form, The Skydivers was uncompromising in theme, Red Zone Cuba is challenging in its structure. Because the plot is constantly being frustrated, the film is then forcing us to study the irrationality of human nature. Right from the start, the storyline is going spastic. John Carradine is an engineer in a desolate train depot, who is interviewed by a reporter about some criminals who hopped his train four years earlier, in 1961. As with Beast, Francis bewilders us with an opening scene. After this brief introduction, and the opening credits (over which Carradine sings the title song- sounding a lot like Vaughn Monroe), we are back into the past.
Francis plays Griffin, an escaped convict on the lam who meets two ex-cons, Landis (producer Anthony Cardoza) and Cook (Harold Saunders). Rather than make a fast buck by turning him in, they decide to accompany Griffin in the inane idea of joining a ragamuffin group of mercenaries who are going to storm Cuba and overthrow Castro. The operation of course backfires and our original trio is incarcerated in a prison that looks like an outdoor hot dog stand. They escape, and then plot to prospect at the mountain that their platoon leader Chastain (Tom Hanson) has said is loaded.
Somehow they end up at a roadside diner, kill the owner and make off with his car, ditch it and get on the train. A ha! Finally, we get to see the locomotive that warranted so much attention that it was mentioned in the prologue to the movie! And what happens on the train? Absolutely nothing! About ten seconds after getting on, they get off.
Griffin then hocks Landis’ ring to buy another car. They meet Chastain’s wife at his home, and then plan to take the mountain. But somehow the climax is doubled by the inexplicable arrival of Chastain, the law quick on their heels, and, this being Francis-esque, are hunted down by authorities in helicopters. Whew!
Let’s go back to the opening. As we see, Carradine’s character buys absolutely nothing. We never see this old engineer again, even in the actual train sequence (such as it is). The opening scenes of Francis’s films operate on a figurative level. They are indicators that some property of filmmaking is to be subverted. In other words, once we learn that the “night train” is a nothing role, we understand the syntax of this haywire “plot”. With very little difficulty, the Cuba subplot could actually have been written out of the film completely. It only exists as a set piece for the trio to acquire information on this mountain they intend to plunder. Given that, they could have saved a lot of dough on grainy day for night combat sequences, and they could have eschewed the shaggy Castro lookalike (also producer Cardoza).
The only true motivation in this story is killing for greed. This is the only operative in the cruel world that Francis portrays. Once again, we are given a film with an unending string of depravity. The vignettes are actually secondary to this motivation. Francis purposely up-ends the story and forces us to study the unpredictability of the characters; thus, they are as inconsistent as real people. This film is a lot like life: a series of seemingly unrelated events nonetheless strung together. This unsparing depiction of the inhuman condition and human irrationality is how Francis completed his odyssey as a filmmaker.