WINTER HORROR # 2 - HORROR EXPRESS (1972)

DIRECTED by Eugenio Martin

SCREENPLAY by Arnaud d'Usseau & Julian Zimet (as Julian Halevy) from a story by Eugenio Martin.

STARRING  - Christopher Lee as Professor Sir Alexander Saxton, Peter Cushing as Dr Wells,  Alberto De Mendoza as Father Purjadov (dubbed by Robert Rietti),  Silvia Tortosa as Countess Irina Petrovski (dubbed by Olive Gregg),  Julio Pena as Inspector Mirov (dubbed by Roger Delgado),  Telly Savalas as Captain Kazan,  George Rigaud as Count Marion Petrovski,  Helga Line as Natasha (dubbed by Olive Gregg),  Alice Reinhart as Miss Jones (dubbed by Olive Gregg). Juan Olaguivel as the Creature.

PLOT - The year is 1906. Professor Saxton has discovered the frozen remains of an ape like creature that he believes to be the missing link. Saxton is transporting the frozen creature in a crate on-board the Trans Siberian Express travelling from Shanghi to Moscow. Also on-board the train is Saxton's intellectual rival Dr. Wells, a European Count and Countess and a Monk who senses an evil presence emanating from the crate.

As the journey through the snowy wilderness continues the mysterious creature in the crate is accidentally revived and embarks on a killing spree. The creature has the power to completely absorb the minds of it's victims - leaving them as drained white eyed husks. It also appears to be able to possess and take over the bodies of whoever it chooses.

Saxton and Wells must overcome thier rivalry if they are to have any hope of stopping this malevolent being but how can you stop a creature that can hide in the body of others and more importantly...who can you trust ?

DIALOUGE  - Inspector Mirov - "But what if one of you is the monster ?" Dr. Wells (shocked and offended) - "Monster ??? We're BRITISH you know !"

PERFORMANCES  -  Horror Express features the dream team of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the roles of Saxton and Wells. Unusually for once the two actors are playing characters who are both on the same side - normally they play opposite each other as enemies (for example in the Hammer Dracula films where Cushing is Van Helsing to Lee's Dracula), the two have played opposite each other so many times that it was once observed that Cushing had been throttled onscreen by Lee more times than any other actor. In real life of course the two where great friends, in fact Lee persuaded Cushing to take up the role of Wells in this film - Cushing's wife had recently died and Lee thought that acting alongside a good friend would help keep his mind off the grieving process.

Lee plays Saxton as an aristocratic adventurer. A gentleman explorer who is proud of his achievements and sometimes prone to outbursts of temper at those who get in his way. Cushing on the other hand plays Dr. Wells as a calmer, more sedate character. The two men do have an intellectual rivalry but it's never portrayed as being bitter or mean spirited, in fact you rather get the impression that they enjoy sparring with each other - you can easily imagine the two men engaging in debates with each other whilst sipping glasses of port in a private gentleman's club. 

Once again it's that sense of the two actors real life friendship bleeding over into the performances to give us this sense of Saxton and Wells's friendly rivalry. I'm glad that Lee persuaded Cushing to take up the part, it just wouldn't have worked as well if he'd been acting alongside anyone else.

Telly Savalas makes a brief but very memorable appearance in the film's final act as Captain Kazan - a Cossack soldier who commanders the train and ends up trying to stop the rampaging monster (it doesn't end well for him). Savalas's performance has been criticised for not being authentically Russian enough and its true that he mainly plays the Cossack with an American accent but seeing as (mainly due to the dubbing) the accents in this film are all over the place anyway it hardly seems fair that Savalas always gets singled out for this. Kazan is a loud, obnoxious and possibly borderline psychotic character - he's a drinker and a womaniser and a fighter and he absolutely owns the screen whenever he's present. He's a larger than life OTT character and its great fun to see him butting heads with the uptight and extremely british Lee and Cushing.

SFX - There are some pretty decent "man in a monkey suit" creature effects when the alien entity is inhabiting it's original ape-man body...

Later on the creature's eyes start emitting a red glow, this visual device is later used to inform the audience who is possessed by the alien once the original body is destroyed.

VIOLENCE  - The deaths in this film are HORRIBLE. Basically what the creature does is to wipe the minds of it's victims totally, absorbing thier knowledge and leaving behind a white eyed corpse whose eye sockets are bleeding profusely. Pretty much every death (and there are quite a few) follows this pattern.

The white empty blood dripping eyes is a truly disturbing and memorable image.

We also get an autopsy scene where we are treated to the sight of Peter Cushing sawing open a corpse's head with a bonesaw (complete with stomach churning sound effects)...

To make matters worse once the man's skull is sawed open we get to see that his brain has been wiped clean - it has none of the usual lines or nodules that a human brain normally has - it's surface is completely smooth and featureless...

RATING  - Horror Express is a nice slice of 70's Euro horror. The presence of Lee and Cushing elevates the movie to seem a lot classier than it actually is (many people misremember it as being a Hammer film due to the two actors mixed with its period setting). 

It has a great claustrophobic paranoia inducing atmosphere due to it's setting and there are some nice visuals of the train making it's doomed journey across the snowy landscape. There are also some disturbing moments of body horror.

All in all this film deserves 5 brain scouring alien parasites out of 5.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -