Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Brain Drain

Horror Express (1972)
directed by Eugenio Martín
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library

Horror Express feels like the first find of the season, or the movie I always want to watch when I pick up a title from Hammer Studios, free of the inevitable sense of disappointment those no-budget quickies inspire. It looks like a Hammer film, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing above the fold, but something in Spaniard Eugenio Martín's rickety direction has verve. Part of it is atmosphere, from the Siberian mountains where the action begins, to the cabins and compartments of the train itself, bustling with smoke and empty bottles of vodka. But the movie's success owes more to Martín's willingness to see the more absurd elements of the story's premise through.

What begins as an unconvincing resurrection of a man in a badly made suit becomes a silly but engaging extraterrestrial mystery with a high body count and a gimmick worthy of the many good actors onscreen. Namely, that several are possessed by the creature and allowed to commit ferocious acts upon their fellow passengers. Russian mystics, Polish beauties, and British sticky wickets defend evolution, rail against the dark, and stand aside while Telly Savalas chews through a hundred yards of scenery en route to a welcome and bloody death.

It's everything that Murder On the Orient Express was not: fleet, suspenseful, fun. "People on the train are becoming afraid, Professor," says the Countess to Christopher Lee. "People on long journeys become bored," he replies, and he and everyone else, crowded together as a continent rolls by, know just what to do to keep sleep and repetition at bay.