Countess Irina: “I have heard of evolution. It’s . . . it’s immoral!”
Alexander Saxton: “There is no morality in a fact”
Eugenio Martín, working off of Arnaud d’Usseau and Julian Zimet’s screenplay, gives us Horror Express–a Spanish production set in a very H. P. Lovecraftish 1906 with a handful of character rejects from Fyodor Dostoevsky novels who are vying for cabin space with an army of zombies upon a trans-Siberian train ride à la Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes as the cousin of John Carpenter’s The Thing traipses amid a dining car decorated from surplus set designs from the ballroom of George Cukor’s My Fair Lady before hinting at an ultimatum reminiscent of Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still while Matthew Lewis’s The Monk-cum-Rasputin rubs elbows with an American, a Chinaman, a Russian, and a Brit . . . . Whew, kitchen sink indeed.
In short, Alexander Saxton (Christopher Lee) finds a frozen fossil in the remote Province of Szechuan. During shipment aboard a trans-Siberian train ride, the specimen escapes and begins murdering passengers. However, its tentative capture is exacerbated by the fact that the creature has the ability to steal not only the memories of the various travelers, but can also take possession of their bodies once deceased.
Amid the gaggle–no plethora–of images, occurrences, and characters, somehow Martín succeeds not only in keeping his narrative cohesive as well as entertaining (and comical), but manages to create a very vehement pro-science, anti-religion diatribe along the way. Of course, this occurs after the haunting theme song is reiterated in very creative manners, we’ll call it a fugue for now, via various characters whistling the ditty atop it playing in the background as well as within the feature atop Martín giving us an eons-old alien entity, looking twice-removed from Lucio Fulci’s famed cadaver from Zombi 2, replete with “thermal vision,” that is–the ability to boil victims’ brain on sight–while, natch, having the capacity to take charge of their recently bludgeoned bodies.
Throughout the feature Martín’s characters exhibit a preoccupation with man’s ability to reach the moon (a hot topic in the world during the filming of Horror Express in that we’d accomplished the feat only four years prior), as they contemplate how we might be able to overcome gravity, ogle over recently shot pictures of the Earth from space, wax poetic with rocket science hub-bub before the train-bound community (as well as the filmmakers) ironically stumble upon what would later become known as Cell Memory. Yet this is all secular groundwork, for Martín then has his monster scoff at the monk’s (Alberto de Mendoza) apprehension that he will soon be metaphysically violated as the former reassures the holy man that there is nothing within the individual’s mind that would be of any value to him. We’ll ignore the quoted exchange which opens this review between Alexander and Irina (Silvia Tortosa) and leave Martín’s theme at the Matthew Lewis’s-esque point where his monk does a 180 and aligns himself with Satan . . .
Perhaps the only theme more predominate than the director’s theological bitch-slapping is the comedy found within Horror Express. What’s delightful about the comic element of the film, outside of it underhandedly satirical air, is that it is issued in a very Monty Python/Steve Martin matter-of-fact manner, availing itself to easy excerption without losing much of it potency. For example:
“What if one of you is the monster?”
“Monster? We’re British you know.”
“The occupant [the specimen] hasn’t eaten in two million years.”
“That’s one way to economize on food bills.”
“Miss Jones, I shall need your assistance.”
[Eyeing the doctor’s dinner companion] “Yes, well at your age I’m not surprised.”
“With an autopsy!”
“Oh, well that’s different.”
Though it demands respect for keeping all its ducks in a row, Horror Express is by no means a masterpiece. If it weren’t for the mile-a-minute barbs and quips amid the revolving door cast, the mistake might be made in questioning how a doctor is granted, carte blanche, the power to perform an impromptu autopsy on a murder victim; realize you were deprived of a professional outing in the wake of the film’s elementary school resolution; notice that one’s jaw is on the floor after witnessing the lack of ethical consideration enacted by a train company that–after the vaguest of requests–shrugs its shoulders indifferently and sends one of its transports over a rail without so much as a second thought; or wonder why a transmigrating alien, if he is seeking to do harm on a grand scale, opts to keep a low profile while at a train station in order to commence his assault upon, of all things, a train full of passengers whom he bears no particular grudge.
Obviously Eugenio Martín’s Horror Express is a fun outing which–surprisingly, given its Lovecraft-on-acid pacing and plot–is hiding the occasional eyebrow-raising kernel of thought. However, what’s ultimately more intriguing is its similarity–structurally as well as thematically–to John Carpenter’s The Thing (to say nothing of Horror Express’s resemblance to Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World and Lovecraft’s “In the Mountains of Madness”).
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
