Horror Express (dir. Eugenio Martin, 1972)
I like John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” from 1938 well enough, but if I want to read a novella written by a racist about ancient aliens in Antarctica, H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness not only exists, but was published in the same magazine by Campbell himself. Similarly, The Thing From Another World is a fine fifties science fiction B-movie, but not one of my favorites. It wouldn’t be until 1982 that the perfect version of that story would come about. Until then, the best I could hope for was a knock-off set on the Trans-Siberian Railway starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
It’s 1906. Professor Alexander Saxton (Christopher Lee) has discovered an apparent hominid frozen in ice while on an expedition in China. At the train station where he intends to depart with his find for Moscow, he discovers that his hated rival Dr. Wells (Peter Cushing) is traveling with him [1]. In addition, a thief mysteriously dies after tampering with the crate containing the mystery creature in ice. We meet the other passengers on this train: a mad monk who isn’t technically Rasputin named Father Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza); the Count Marion Petrovski (George Rigaud), his wife Irina Petrovski (Silvia Tortosa), and their dog (sadly uncredited); and police Inspector Mirov (Julio Pena) [2].
Wells, desperate to see Saxton’s discovery, bribes a porter to break into the crate. The creature, however, is already awake and having drained with its hypnotic eyes the memories of the thief at the station has already freed itself. Mirov manages to kill the creature, but it turns out that it was merely an Earthly host for an alien parasite who is able to move from body to body and resurrect the corpses at will.
Oh, and Telly Savalas shows up as Captain Kazan. He’s a Cossack who still looks and acts like a Greek-American actor who plays a detective on television.
I like the movie. I can’t hate anything where someone says: “There’s the stink of hell on this train. Even the dog knows.” I have an affection for period settings in horror films. I find the Trans-Siberian Railway almost as interesting as Antarctica, because I believe travel is only worthwhile if it is terrible. You can’t argue with anything with both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing sharing screentime, even if it’s Dracula A.D. 1972. Horror Express also feels like it was adapted from someone’s tabletop RPG campaign, which is something I like out of my B-movies. Telly Savalas showing up for the last half of the film seems like he’s a replacement PC for a player whose character died. It would have been better if they’d played up the Russian setting even more, but again, this is a cheap picture made in Francoist Spain, so you take what you can get there.
My only real complaint is the title: sure, the horror part is accurate, but the Trans-Siberian Railway makes frequent stops. It’s not an express train at all.
[1] Academic rivalries were common in the period depicted in the film, such as the Bone Wars of the late nineteenth century, and aren’t uncommon now as anyone who’s familiar with the animosity between paleontologists Jack Horner and Robert Bakker.
[2] Have I mentioned that this is a Spanish production?
October 29, 2018
oliveresque 