HORROR EXPRESS (1972)

Released on Arrow Films on Bluray and is streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Eugenio Martín.
Written by Arnaud d’Usseau, Julian Zimet.
Check out the trailer here!!

While one might not leap to consider this a typical Bigfoot movie, the main monster trapped the crate in HORROR EXPRESS truly is certainly hinted at being the legendary Abominable Snow Man. With unconventional concepts, characters, and monsters shuffling between train cars throughout the film, HORROR EXPRESS proves to be ahead of its time with a sort of “throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see what sticks” attitude that you just didn’t see in other films in the Hammer Collection.

The biggest selling point of this film is its two lead actors, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Usually at odds in horror films, this time around they have a weird pairing as dueling archeologists putting their heads together to uncover a mystery surrounding an archeological find Lee happens upon during a Himalayan excavation. Lee brings this creature he finds in the ice on a the Trans-Siberian Express and immediately weird things start happening. Christopher Lee has a big ol’ Vlad Tepes moustache and Cushing, who outside of the film had recently lost his wife, appears more gaunt than usual in his role.
Both Cushing and Lee are almost upstaged by Alberto De Mendoza as a holy man who becomes transfixed on the creature. Silvia Tortosa classes up the film as the Countess who plays a great damsel and ends up being the apple of the monster’s eye. V/H/S “I Like You” girl Hannah Fireman played Tortosa in an episode of Shudder’s CREEPSHOW which focused on the HORROR EXPRESS and she’s a dead ringer for the gorgeous actress. That one turned out to be one of the series best installments and continuing the CREEPSHOW connection, the beast in the box in HORROR EXPRESS is not unlike “The Crate” segment in the original movie. Threatening to steal the show is Telly Savalas, who shows up very late in the film for about fifteen minutes, but chews on these minutes like a raw steak as a boisterous Cossack running the train.

Elements of HORROR EXPRESS show up in many a latter monster movie, most notably John Carpenter’s THE THING and PREDATOR. Much like John Carpenter’s THE THING, Cushing and Lee deduce that the creature travels from one body to the next, mesmerizing their prey with its stare. Being a fan of Bigfoot Encounters videos, a common theme among those who say that have seen the creature is that the creatures’ eyes were mesmerizing, almost hypnotic when they catch one’s stare. In HORROR EXPRESS, the creature also mimics the voices of passengers on the train much like the PREDATOR as it turns out the hairy beast is also a pretty good whistler. There are moments of ludicrousness, though, as the beast, frozen in ice for a millennium, somehow knows how to pick a padlock with a bent nail. The camera really amps up the menace of the creature in close-ups with its glowing eye and hairy body, but when they pull back, the lumbering beast loses its effectiveness. While most films don’t focus on the more mystical side of Bigfoot, this one surely does.

On top of the monster itself, director Eugenio Martin adds screeching and wailing music, reminiscent of a train’s wheels breaking, that is as haunting as the subject matter itself. The autopsy scenes performed by Lee and Cushing are amazingly gory for its time, showing much more of the red stuff than Hammer or American studios were used to. This most likely is due to the fact that the Italian filmmakers were following in the steps of Bava, Argento, and Fulci rather than the more romanticized horror of American and English directors of the time. The white eyed and bloody stares of the possessed characters of this film makes this film all the more terrifying.

I’m going to give HORROR EXPRESS a mighty Four feets and four toes.

It’s one of the better films that deal with a Bigfoot like creature without naming it Bigfoot or any of its other colorful nom the plumes. HORROR EXPRESS is a true original and shouldn’t be missed by fans of Bigfoot and the wider horror audience. Like most films of its time, HORROR EXPRESS ends abruptly but it’s full of shocks, surprises, and innovative ideas and performances. It’s a tale of a Bigfoot-like monster running amok on a train–a simple concept deftly plumbed for all its worth in a film that most definitely will not be forgotten once viewed.