#666) Hell-bound Train (1930)

#666) Hell-bound Train (1930)

OR “The Little Devil That Could”

Directed & Written by James and Eloyce Gist

Class of 2021

I was able to track down the full movie at Kino Now.

The Plot: While many a preacher will simply tell you about fire and brimstone, the filmmaking couple of James and Eloyce Gist show you the wages of your sin with their film “Hell-bound Train”. Engineered by the Devil himself (Actor Unknown), this train speeds to its one-way destination with a separate car for every possible sin; from big ones like murder and infidelity to more questionable ones like jazz (both the listening of and dancing to). And the only way off this train is total devotion to the church with zero gray area or room for error. All aboard!

Why It Matters: The NFR calls this movie a “[s]urreal and mesmerizing allegorical film” and “an important and until recently overlooked milestone in Black cinema.”

But Does It Really?: Heavy-handed and preachy? Obviously. A natural for the NFR? Absolutely. “Hell-bound Train” has a lot going for it; a work by independent Black filmmakers, an amateur film brimming with creativity, and a time capsule of the religious scare tactics of the day (some of which are still in use). Even with the darker subject matter, you get the sense of a community coming together and having fun putting on a show. A yes for “Hell-bound Train” on the NFR, one of the more unique entries I’ve had the pleasure of covering for this blog.

Everybody Gets One: Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information out there about James and Eloyce Gist due to most of their records being destroyed in a house fire. What we do know is that James Gist was a traveling evangelical preacher, while Eloyce was a writer and beauty culture entrepreneur native to D.C. Although they practiced different religions (James was Christian, Eloyce was of the Bahá’í Faith), they agreed on the main bullet points such as morality and spirituality. From what other researchers have surmised, James had already filmed and completed “Hell-bound Train” when he and Eloyce met, though Eloyce appears to be responsible for re-writes and re-shoots of later versions of the film. The Gists would travel the country screening “Hell-bound Train” at churches; Eloyce providing live musical accompaniment, and James delivering a sermon after the film. And of course, a collection plate was passed around.

Wow That’s Dated: This whole movie has that early 20^th century mentality where city living is an automatic sin.

Other notes

The version of “Hell-bound Train” you are watching is a reconstruction pieced together from different surviving prints of the film. As previously alluded to, there were multiple versions of “Hell-bound Train” over the years, some with different intertitles, alternate footage, or a restructured order of events. Shoutout to Steven Torriano Berry and Gloria Gibson for their early efforts to restore this film, which ultimately led to the version we have today.
From the start you know what kind of movie this is going to be once the Devil shows up, dressed in the Halloween costume version we associate with the Prince of Darkness. In fact, he’s dressed almost identically to the way I was in “Ghost Bros.” (A small point of pride: We filmed that in February 2020 and I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight since then).
The first car on our tour of this heck-bound train is reserved for the sin of dancing, which starts this movie off on a “Footloose” vibe. By the way, when is that making the NFR? Seems like the kind of ’80s popcorn movie they love throwing on the list.
This film posits that the dancing of the day is indecent, and I see what they mean; these kids are dancing way too close together. As one of my teachers said at my middle school dance, “Save room for Jesus!” (Odd considering I went to public school).
Every time – and I mean every single time – a sin is committed in this movie, there is an intertitle telling us that the Devil is rejoicing in this, followed by a shot of our Halloween Devil gleefully jumping up and down. Seriously, this would make a good drinking game. Speaking of…
Second car – Drunkenness. And among the sinners on this car are another sign of the times: Bootleggers!
When are they gonna get to the rich people cars at the front of the train?
I love all the shots of the train speeding by, clearly filmed as real trains happened to pass by the shooting location. There’s also a great shot where we follow the train, meaning the Gists are either driving alongside the train or filming on another train traveling in the same direction. Either way, it’s impressive.
Third car – Jazz! Oof that’s a rough one. What’s so bad about jazz? Is it because it was new? If the Gists really wanted to incorporate jazz, they would make this movie about the sins you don’t commit.
The next car is reserved for “Thieves, Crooks, & Grafters”, which was a Cher song if I’m not mistaken. Also, did they mean “grifters”? I’ve heard of grafting, but I’ve never heard the term grafter.
Any vignette that doesn’t end with a character dying of their committed sin ends instead with them being arrested by the police (And don’t worry, the Devil rejoices in those too). A few of these sequences continue with our main sinners in prison, wearing the classic black-and-white striped uniforms and breaking rocks, two clichés that were phased out decades ago, but are still the cultural shorthand for prisoners.
Next up, Murderers & Gamblers. I’m enjoying the random pairing of these two, as if gambling always leads to murder, or vice versa.
I noticed there’s a lot of references to daughters in this film. Young women dancing are “someone’s daughter”, gamblers corrupting your daughter, etc. Know your audience, I guess.
Next car: Immorality. Oh come on, that’s just an umbrella term for everything covered so far. You’re not even trying anymore. This is also the segment in which a young girl emulates her parents’ behavior and smokes a cigarette! At first I was very concerned for this child’s health and well-being, but then I remembered it was the ’30s and that kid was probably already up to three packs a day.
This movie shows us at two separate points that close dancing leads immediately to having a baby. Those jump cuts do a lot of heavy lifting. After the second instance, this movie delivers an unexpected gut-punch: the near-death of a woman who takes “medicine to avoid becoming a mother”, which this movie declares is “murder IN COLD BLOOD”. I know the severe condemnation is intentional, but Jesus Q. Christ! It’s all fun and games until we bring up birth control.
The next car is “Backsliders, Hypocrites, [and] Used-to-Be Church Members”. By this movie’s logic, 99.9% of the world population has sinned. The Gists weren’t leaving your church until everyone in that room felt guilty for something.
Car number seven (although I think the filmmakers lost count at this point) is “Overcrowded with Liars”. [Insert Your Own Political Joke Here]
Among those liars are “false preachers”. You mean like Paul Robeson and Robert Mitchum? Were fake churches really that big a scam back in the day? Seems like quite a commitment to pull off successfully. And what’s a travelling evangelist like James Gist doing railing against preachers who come out of nowhere and take your money?
Also a sin: worshiping automobiles. I would argue that the greater sin is to make an incredibly boring counterculture movie about worshipping automobiles.
As we wrap things up with a guy dressed like the Grim Reaper welcoming the arriving train as it speeds into a tunnel, we get an amazing shot of a model train on fire, representing a trip to Hell. This is amateur filmmaking at its finest. “Hell-bound Train” could have been shorter, but that ending is worth the wait.

Legacy

James and Eloyce Gist followed up “Hell-bound Train” with another morality film: “Verdict Not Guilty” (um…spoiler). A third film – “Heaven Bound Travelers” – only exists in small excerpts and appears to have never been completed. Eloyce never made another film after James’ death in 1940, focusing instead on her writing. Following Eloyce’s death in 1974, the surviving elements of the Gist films were donated by their family to the Library of Congress. After the aforementioned efforts to reconstruct the film over the decades, “Hell-bound Train” received a digital restoration in 2016 when Kino Lorber released the film as part of their “Pioneers of African American Cinema” disc.

Almost every article I have read about “Hell-bound Train” was published post-2016, with a majority of them being written in the last two years since the film made the Registry. It’s exciting to think that this 93-year-old film’s cultural legacy is just beginning as movie lovers and historians discover it for the first time. And that’s the power of the NFR bump.