Horror
Express
(1972)
(SPOILERS) This
berserk Spanish/British horror boasts Hammer titans Christopher Lee and Peter
Cushing (both as good guys!) to its name, and cloaked in period trappings (it’s
set in 1906), suggests a fairly standard supernatural horror, one with crazy
priests and satanic beasts. But, with an alien life form aboard the
Trans-Siberian Express bound for Moscow, Horror
Express finishes up more akin to The
Cassandra Crossing meets The Thing.
Countess Petrovski: The
czar will hear of this. I’ll have you sent to Siberia.
Captain Kazan: I am in
Siberia!
Christopher
Lee’s Alexander Saxton, anthropologist and professor of the Royal Geological
Society, has retrieved a frozen corpse from Manchuria. Believing it might be
the Missing Link he crates it up to transport home via the titular train. Other
passengers include his colleague and rival Dr Wells (Cushing), an international
spy, and an antic monk called Father Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza, strikingly
lunatic), who for some reason has the ear of a Polish Count (George Rigaud) and
Countess (Silvia Tortosa). Eventually, none other than Telly Savalas, as Cossack
Captain Kazan, rocks up to investigate matters, before he and his men are duly transformed
into zombies (Savalas seemed to make a bit of a habit of appearing out of the
blue in third acts during the ‘70s – see also Capricorn One).
Professor Saxton: That
box of bones, madam, could have solved many of the riddles of science.
Countess Petrovski: I have
heard of evolution. It’s… it’s immoral.
Professor Saxton: It’s a
fact, and there’s no morality in a fact.
There can’t
help but be a flavour of Murder on the
Orient Express to the setting and liberal distribution of “suspects”, but
it’s the clash of early twentieth century pseudo-scientific thought with religious
zealotry, by way of science fiction trappings, that gives Horror Express its cachet. Saxton preaches the true religion of
science, but his over-reaching quest for knowledge is as dangerous as
Pujardov’s for sacred fulfilment and meaning. Kazan, the practical materialist,
arrives occupying the confident middle ground, but is quickly revealed as
ill-equipped to deal with the forces manifesting on the train.
This
blending of religion and aliens has been fertile terrain for science fiction
and horror fare; if Horror Express is
widely acknowledged to have taken its monstrous premise from John W Campbell’s Who Goes There?, this aspect also
derives from the science/ magic/ superstition blurring found in Nigel Kneale’s take
on ancient astronauts (Quatermass and the
Pit) and later John Carpenter with The
Thing and Prince of Darkness. A
more contemporary parallel can be found in Doctor
Who, with stories like The Daemons,
and particularly the Tom Baker era (Pyramids
of Mars, Image of the Fendahl, City of Death) linking alien life forms
to the evolution of mankind.
This alien
comments that it survived for millions of years in protozoa and fish, and that
“the history of your planet is part of me”.
It doesn’t appear to have pushed mankind’s development, like the Fendahl or
Scaroth; rather, like Carpenter’s The
Thing, it accumulates the
knowledge and memories of those it infests or drains. Later, it offers a
Faustian pact to Lee (“Let me go and I
will teach you to end disease, pain, hunger”), emphasising the running
theme of Satanic inversion (on account of the mad monk); at the climax – rather
bafflingly, if it could have done this all along – it makes the dead to rise, a
blasphemous version of the saviour. And, like a decidedly less benign E.T. (also the subject of Christ
metaphors), “I was left behind, an
accident”.
Its actual
motivation is rather murky – does it live merely to destroy and inhabit? That
it is given voice at the climax suggests a reasoning force (Carpenter’s film
wisely eschews this, so keeping the terror primal and instinctive, for all the
alien’s technological prowess), but it really does little but kill people, an
energy being bent on survival.
One of the
most captivating ideas in Horror Express
is one Kneale earlier used in Quatermass
and the Pit, to depict a dead Martian’s race memories. This then resurfaced
in the Tom Baker story The Ark in Space,
wherein the Doctor links himself up to the dead insect Wirrn queen. We learn
that images are retained in the fluid of the eyes of those the creature has
inhabited; visual memory is held not in the brain, but the lens itself. As a
consequence, Wells and Saxton are able to scrutinise pictures of the Earth in
prehistoric times (“It’s a brontosaurus!”)
and from space; the eye of Satan.
Father Pujardov: You
think evil can be killed with bullets? Satan lives! The unholy one is among us!
Pujardov is
revealed as a devotee of anything that can bring him the spiritual attainment
and knowledge he seeks (as such, Saxton, in refusing the creature’s offer, is
shown to be morally upright, despite his disavowal of such limited perspectives
when viewed through the untainted microscope of scientific theory). De
Mendoza’s performance is delightfully demented, the express’s very own Rasputin
(he’s even referred to as a mad monk), and the holy man practising demonic
deeds (“Come unto me, Satan!”)
recalls the aforementioned ancient astronaut Doctor Who story of the previous year, The Daemons, even if Pujardov makes for a no-holds-barred nutter
in comparison to the Master. (Among other colourful Pujardov lines, the
standout is, “There’s the stink of Hell
on this train. Even the dog knows it”).
Inspector Mirov: But
what if one of you is the monster?
Dr Wells: Monster?
We’re British, you know.
Horror Express’s appeal is as much down to the proliferation
of fine and funny lines as its themes and idea. The screenplay was written by
Americans Arnaud d’Usseau and Julian Zimet, and exhibits a deliciously playful
approach to its period’s historicity. Savalas’ Cosack is so arch its untrue,
with his exclamations of “Peasants!
Peasants!” and wry response to Wells’ “But
what if the monk is innocent?”; “Ahhh,
we have lots of innocent monks”.
Countess Petrovski: My
husband, the Count Petrovski, says that in the fifteenth century your King
Henry betrayed us to the Russsians. Hmmm?
Professor Saxton: I hope
that you and your husband, madam, will accept my profoundest apologies.
There’s also
Irina’s memorable summation Englishness (“Oh,
yes, England. Queen Victoria, crumpets, Shakespeare”) and the exchange between
Saxton and Wells regarding the incapacity of his corpse (“The occupant hasn’t eaten in nearly two million years”). Cushing in
particular is granted the wonderfully incredulous,
Dr Wells: Are you
telling me that an ape that lived two million years ago, got out of that crate,
killed the baggage man and put him in there, then locked everything up, neat
and tidy, and got away?
Even the
probably unintended laughs (“My God, it’s
the baggage man!”) can be seen as self-aware. The unlikely ability of the
creature, when sucking out memories “Iike
chalk erased from a blackboard”, to leave the brains of its victims wrinkle-free
is summed up by Miss Jones (Alice Reinheart) with “Smooth as a baby’s bottom!” Which I’m fairly certain is the only
time that’s ever been said about a brain. It’s also unclear why the creature
should develop a Neanderthal hairy hand when it has taken over a new victim,
other than as an effective signifier of it as a host.
The effects
are mostly very good, by virtue of being minimalist; the creature, only
revealed in the dark, is identifiable by its glowing red eyes, while its
victims are signified by the whites of theirs, fringed by blood as if their
corneas have burst. Martin’s direction is inventive, and he’s aided by an
infectiously jangly – very un-Hammer, which is in its favour – score from John
Cavacas. If the Hornby model of the train going over a cliff isn’t fooling
anyone, the final ominous shot of the Earth receding into space is an effectively
portentous point to leave matters, echoing the fears expressed on the express
earlier (“A creature like that – how
would it ever die?”)
The picture
was titled Panic on the Trans-Siberian
Express in Spain, and one presumes it was a desire to beef it up elsewhere
as a “legitimately” English affair that saw Spanish director Eugenio Martin billed
as the more anglicised Gene Martin. He employed sets from his previous movie, Pancho Villa, which also starred Telly
Savalas. This was Cushing’s first feature following the death of his wife, and
he was considering pulling out until Lee persuaded him to remain.
It’s easy
to understand why Horror Express has
established a cult reputation. Many of the Hammers are revealed as rather stolid
affairs, but beneath its formulaic veneer, Express
flaunts an appealingly vital European sensibility, and a welter of
inventiveness in its mash-up of ideas. It’s one thing to riff on Who Goes There? by transposing it to the
turn of the century, quite another to then relocate it to a locomotive stoked
by tensions between increasing pervasive science and under-threat religious
thought, while lacing the whole concoction with calculated humour. And then bring on Telly Savalas! It’s no
masterpiece by any means, but Horror
Express is sort-of brilliant.
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