Now Is the Perfect Time to Climb Aboard Horror Express – Gizmodo

Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas in a heated Horror Express moment.Screenshot: Arrow Video

Last week,Shudders hit anthology series Creepshow aired its second season finale, Night of the Living Late Show, featuring a character whos obsessed with a nearly 50-year-old movie called Horror Express. Its a real movieand a really entertaining movie at that. If youve never seen it, nows the perfect time.

Horror Express is a B-movie with zero aspirations to be anything more, made by a Spanish production company, released in 1972, and boosted by a cast that contains two horror superstars (Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, together outside of Hammer for once) and a number of over-the-top performances (from Telly Savalas, Alberto de Mendoza, and Julio Pea). It also has the curiosity factor of being loosely adapted from Who Goes There?, the 1938 John W. Campbell novella that also inspired 1951's The Thing From Another World and 1982's The Thing, as well as the 2011 Thing prequel. And, well, its a story about a missing link specimen that un-freezes and reanimates while aboard the Trans-Siberian Express from Shanghai to Moscow, circa 1906... unleashing an alien life-form with the ability to leap into different human hosts.

It takes a while for that to happen, of course. The first third of the movie mostly consists of scientist Sir Alexander Saxton (Lee) forcefully trying to keep his discoverywhich he believes will help prove that evolution existssecret from everyone else on the train, especially his professional rival Dr. Wells (Cushing), whos immediately so curious he pays a baggage handler to peep into the carefully locked crate. Others aboard include the officious Inspector Mirov (Pea), tweedy academic Yevtushenko (ngel del Pozo), a glamorous spy (Helga Lin), and a colorful entourage that includes Count Petrovski (George Rigaud), whos recently invented a new, cutting-edge type of steel; his much younger wife, Irina (Silvia Tortosa); and Pujardov (de Mendoza), the suspiciously Rasputin-ish monk who travels with them.

Any long-haul train journey with this eccentric group would probably stir up some conflict, but nothing says keep your friends close and your enemies closer like a rampaging monster with red glowing eyes. Its neatest trick is vacuuming all the knowledge out of each victim, leaving their eyes completely white and their brainsas Dr. Wells discovers when he does a little onboard dissectioncompletely smooth. We eventually learn that the alien, stranded on Earth since the dinosaur days, just wants to get the hell off-planet as soon as possible. Good thing this particular Trans-Siberian Express voyage happens to contain multiple genius-level scientists and someone who invented a metal that can withstand super-high temperatures... the sort of stuff youd need if you wanted to, say, build a spaceship.

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Horror Express is fairly straightforward, all things told, but it has a few layers to it. Its a creature feature, but its also very much of the intrigue-on-a-train genre, and it makes time for science vs. religion debates while playing its goofier sci-fi elements with a straight face, for the most part. Though the monster starts taking over the bodies of characters weve come to knowyou can tell whos the thing because their eyes glow red in the dark, and sometimes one human hand remains very hairy and primitive ape-likeits hard not to root for it to get what it needs so it can return to outer space.

The Horror Express homage in Creepshows season finale showcased Simon (Justin Long), a man so fond of the film he builds an immersive device that allows him to virtually step inside the movie. Though hes thrilled to interact with Lee and Cushing, his main interest is in the beautiful Countess, played by Hannah Fierman so that Tortosas limited scenes in the actual movie can be expanded. As you can imagine, this causes problems in Simons already strained marriage, and his exasperated wife (The Good Places DArcy Carden) has her own run-in with the train alien before coming up with a deliciously creative revenge strategy.

Simons horny quest into Horror Express ends before the movie gets to the best part, however, which comes nearly an hour in, just when you think the whole thing is gonna be posh passengers screaming and getting brain-drained as the alien slinks through each car. Though he proves utterly useless when it comes to fighting monsters, Captain Kazan (Savales)summoned aboard by a desperate crew after its clear a mass murderer is in their midstis an absolute champion at swigging vodka, barking orders, being a swaggering asshole, and devouring every scrap of scenery in his all-too-brief screentime. Horror Express would still be a fun one without him, but the performance is so satisfyingly obnoxious it elevates a low-budget horror movie with a few cool things going for it into the realm of a bona fide cult classic.

Horror Express is available for rental via Amazon Prime;Creepshowseasons one and two arenow streaming on Shudder.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Horror Express is streaming on Shudder, which is incorrect. io9 regrets the error.

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Now Is the Perfect Time to Climb Aboard Horror Express - Gizmodo