{"id":2509,"date":"2012-11-13T16:58:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T15:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=2509"},"modified":"2012-11-13T16:59:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T15:59:30","slug":"horror-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2012\/11\/13\/horror-express\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror Express"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Horror Express<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Blu-ray (US)

\nRelease date:<\/B> 29 Nov 2011

\nDistributor:<\/B> Severin

\nDirector:<\/B> Eugenio Mart\u00edn

\nWriters:<\/B> Arnaud d’Usseau, Julian Zimet

\nCast:<\/B> Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza

\nUK\/Spain 1972

\n90 mins
\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There are few films that fit the title of \u2018cult favourite\u2019 better than Eugenio Mart\u00edn\u2019s Horror Express<\/i> (1972). Despite being one of the best Spanish horror films of the 1970s, Horror Express<\/i> didn\u2019t make much of a splash in the domestic market, but even today cult fans recognise it for what it is: a colourful, fast-paced monster movie filled with oddball characters and equally loopy plot twists.<\/p>\n

Most of the action takes place on the Trans-Siberian Railway as it hurtles across the Siberian tundra from Peking to Eastern Europe. Among the passengers are two British scientists, Sir Alexander Saxton (Christopher Lee), an archaeologist, and biologist Dr Wells, played by Peter Cushing. Others travelling on the train include a Polish nobleman (George Rigaud), his beautiful young wife (Silvia Tortosa), and their unstable, Rasputin-like priest (Alberto de Mendoza); a Spanish engineer; a Russian detective (Julio Peña), and a woman later revealed to be an international spy (Helga Lin\u00e9). Saxton is travelling with several crates containing the finds from his latest expedition, including the frozen corpse of a primitive humanoid, believed to be millions of years old. Before the train has even left the station the curious properties of the thing in the crate have begun to emerge; after attempting to open the box, a Chinese thief is found dead on the platform, with his eyes completely white. Later that night a hairy, bestial hand emerges from the crate, finds a rusty nail and expertly picks the lock. Before long there is a mounting pile of corpses on the train, and all with the same white eyes. Dr Wells performs autopsies and discovers another bizarre symptom: the victims\u2019 brains are entirely smooth, leading the doctor to conjecture that they have been drained of memory and learning. Whatever is loose on the train is not simply killing, it\u2019s also accumulating the knowledge and experience of all its victims.<\/p>\n

As you might guess from the two main stars, Horror Express<\/i> draws much of its inspiration from the Gothic horror tales of Hammer, but Mart\u00edn and his scriptwriters can at least be commended for not repeating the usual Cushing\/good vs. Lee\/evil set-up. In many ways Saxton is a typical Lee character: proud, aristocratic and distinctly unlikeable, the opposite of Cushing\u2019s good-humoured Dr Wells. Despite this, Horror Express<\/i> does give Lee a chance to flex his heroic muscles \u2013 something he rarely did with Hammer \u2013 as he leads the fight against the prehistoric monster and rescues the damsels in distress. Saxton might be an insufferable snob, but he does at least manage to save the day. Further references to Hammer\u2019s films are dotted throughout Horror Express<\/i>, whether it\u2019s the prehistoric beasts of Val Guest\u2019s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth<\/i> (1970), the disastrous archaeological expeditions of Terence Fisher\u2019s The Mummy<\/i> (1959) or the sensationalist pseudo-history of Don Sharp\u2019s Rasputin: The Mad Monk<\/i> (1966). Naturally, no true Hammer tribute would be complete without Peter Cushing opening at least one skull with a saw and chisel, and sure enough, there\u2019s one here too. There\u2019s also plenty of Hammer-style pseudo-science: \u2018The creature\u2019s visual memory resides in the eye, not the brain!\u2019 <\/p>\n

Such knowing references might well appear lazy and derivative in a lesser work, but in Horror Express<\/i> \u2013 a film that displays its influences openly \u2013 they contribute to its considerable charms. A key factor in this is a witty and original script that treads comfortably between humour and horror, without undermining either of them. It\u2019s a claim that\u2019s often made and rarely warranted, but there really isn\u2019t another film like Horror Express<\/i>. At first it\u2019s a fairly standard creature feature, with the victims locked in an enclosed space with an ancient monster, but before long the bizarre plot developments start to appear. [SPOILER ALERT]<\/B> The primitive primate is not the creature itself, it\u2019s just a body the being inhabits \u2013 and it can move bodies too, along with a few other abilities that make killing it a bit more difficult. The heroes\u2019 task is complicated by human factors too, including the increasingly unstable priest who comes to believe that the monster is a being of divine origin. Fed up with pandering to the \u2018spiritual needs\u2019 of the nobility, he decides to offer himself to the diabolic creature and tries to stop Saxton and Wells from killing it. Even more troublesome is the presence of Captain Kazan, an army officer played with enthusiasm by Telly Savalas. Sent to deal with the problems on the train, Kazan believes it\u2019s all the work of agitators or anarchists, and his solution involves whipping or beating anyone whose face doesn\u2019t fit. Naturally the Count and Countess are spared this treatment and allowed to return to their carriage. [END OF SPOILERS]<\/B> If there\u2019s a subtext to Horror Express<\/i>, it concerns the insulation of the Count and his wife. Appropriate surrogates for Generalissimo<\/i> Franco, still in power at the time, they sit in luxurious and comfortable surroundings while their servants brutalize anyone they please with impunity. <\/p>\n

As well as Cushing and Lee, Horror Express<\/i> features a number of well-known faces from the European horror scene. Seasoned gialli<\/i> stars Alberto De Mendoza and George Rigaud both appeared in Lucio Fulci\u2019s One on Top of the Other<\/i> (1969) and A Lizard in a Woman\u2019s Skin<\/i><\/A> (1971) together, as well as a handful of Sergio Martino films separately. German-born actress Helga Lin\u00e9 is much the same, having racked up an impressive number of genre credits, including Amando de Ossorio\u2019s When the Screaming Stops<\/i> (1976). Before his death in 1972, Julio Peña had been a mainstay of Spanish cinema, appearing in almost 100 films since the 1930s. Although Horror Express<\/i> is one of her few genre credits, Silvia Tortosa is still a popular TV star. Special mention much go to Telly Savalas, whose flamboyant, over-the-top performance as the thuggish vodka-drinking Captain Kazan is one of the film\u2019s most memorable aspects, even though Savalas is only on screen for about 15 minutes. Whether it\u2019s entirely appropriate is up to the individual viewer, but Kazan\u2019s sudden appearance kicks the film into high gear and brings in the energetic final act as Saxton and Wells make one last attempt to save the passengers and destroy the monster.<\/p>\n

Although it doesn\u2019t play fair by bringing some new monstrous abilities for the climax, such left-field plot developments are comparatively commonplace in Spanish horror films of the 1960s and 70s. Thankfully Mart\u00edn and his two leading men have the sense to approach the film\u2019s increasingly loopy narrative entirely straight, aware that even a hint of irony or condescension could have a disastrous effect on a movie like this. The finished result is an atmospheric, original and very entertaining film, and one of Spanish horror cinema\u2019s best works. Ironically enough, it\u2019s also the kind of film that British studios were finding it increasingly difficult to produce. Hammer\u2019s most recent efforts were not inspiring: Dracula A.D. 1972<\/i> was a misbegotten attempt to bring Dracula into the 20th century, while the promising Vampire Circus<\/i> (1972) was hampered by rewrites and post-production difficulties. Similar problems afflicted Amicus, the producer of endless anthologies of short horror films. In comparison with Horror Express<\/i>, the 1970s output of both Hammer and Amicus looks somewhat pale indeed. Jorge Grau\u2019s excellent The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue<\/i> (1974) is another Spanish horror film that makes far better use of its English locations than most British directors could.<\/p>\n

Jim Harper<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are few films that fit the title of \u2018cult favourite\u2019 better than Eugenio Mart&#237n\u2019s Horror Express<\/i> (1972).
\nReview by Jim Harper<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[393,516,75,141,519,248],"class_list":["post-2509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","tag-christopher-lee","tag-creatures","tag-hammer","tag-horror-cinema","tag-peter-cushing","tag-spanish-horror"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-Et","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2007\/11\/01\/dracula\/","url_meta":{"origin":2509,"position":0},"title":"DRACULA","author":"VirginieSelavy","date":"November 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"What better way to mark the 50th anniversary of Hammer Horror than with the re-release of Dracula - not only Hammer's first take on the Bram Stoker classic, but undoubtedly its finest. 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