"You think evil can be killed with bullets?" (Horror Express (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Horror Express (DVD)
Date:	18/12/08 (156 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Enjoyable, well made, good cast

Disadvantages: Not at all frightening

A review of just the film. A DVD costs a mere £3 on amazon, but I haven't actually got it, so don't know if it has extras etc.

This is a Spanish horror film from 1973, featuring English horror stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. It's obviously attempting to imitate the old Hammer horror style, although whether that was really a good idea in 1973, when Hammer was choking to death on its own vomit, is questionable.

An English archaeologist, Saxton, digs up a skeleton of a caveman in Manchuria. He takes it on the Trans-Siberian railway, eager to show it off to the Royal Society (this is set sometime between the invention of the telegraph and the First World War). He's less than happy to discover a rival scientist, Wells, on the train; he also makes the acquaintance of various noblemen, detectives, monks and adventuresses. Meanwhile, something with glowing red eyes starts killing people...

The plot is fairly predictable (although the nature of the creature itself shows a bit more thought than usual). You'll probably be able to guess almost everything that happens without any real difficulty; the film carefully signposts important plot developments well in advance. All the characters are broadly-drawn types, with little to distinguish them from characters in other films. Lee is good, giving one of his more engaged performances as the brusque Saxton; Cushing, as Wells, is charming and sardonic and a lot more cheerful than usual. There's some good hamming from Alberto de Mendoza as a deranged monk, and Telly Savalas makes a very welcome late-in-the-day cameo, effortlessly stealing his few scenes.

Although it has something of that slightly cosy Hammer ambience, this is clearly marked as European right from the start. Instead of the shrieking orchestrals you'd find in a British film of its type, we get a sardonic whistling-and-guitars opening theme that could just as easily have been written for a giallo or spaghetti western. The cast are Europeans (quite well dubbed, thankfully), and the director, billed as Gene Martin, is really the Spaniard Eugenio Martín. The sets and train model were left over from a more expensive film, so it looks a little more impressive than a lot of 70s Euro-horror.

It isn't really scary, although the ending is quite exciting. There are a few mildly grisly autopsy scenes, but they only earn the film a 12 certificate, which seems a bit conservative to me. I think I first saw this when I was about 10, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It feels more like a kids' film than an adult horror - I mentioned that it was a bit 'cosy', and horror really ought to be unsettling. The Lee/Cushing double act reassures us rather than scares us, which is a shame - their early films together for Hammer were radical for the time, but by this point they seem content to bumble through amiable nonsense like this. They're both good, as I said, but this feels like it was an exercise in nostalgia even in 1973.

What it really feels like is an early-Tom-Baker Doctor Who story. The nature of the threat is *very* Who; there are only six or seven substantial speaking parts; and the restrained, kid-friendly horror is exactly the kind of thing the good Doctor would come up against in the mid-70s. On the evidence of this, Christopher Lee would have been a cracking good Doctor Who, although I daresay he'd have been quite insulted at even being asked.

There's not a lot else to say, really. It's well made for what it is, but there's nothing groundbreaking here. The silly things that seem to skew the story towards comedy in the early scenes are admirably explained away, although there's a fair bit of obviously humorous dialogue. The monster itself looks ludicrous, but you don't see it much (another classic Dr Who trick - keep the cheap monster mask in the shadows so no-one realises how rubbish it is). It's all punctuated with frequent shots of the train chugging along, and the location is used quite well - there aren't many places to hide on a train, after all.

This turns up on TV fairly regularly, I think, so probably no need to buy it. It's a decent, unchallenging horror film of a type they certainly don't make any more. I think most fans of old horror will enjoy it, but it's far from essential viewing.

Summary: A loveable but inconsequential 70s horror film