Weirdhouse Cinema: Horror Express

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe keep the terror train rolling down the tracks with a look at the 1972 sci-fi thriller "Horror Express," starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia Tortosa and Telly Savalas.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
All right, all aboard, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
And this is Joe McCormick. And actually I was just thinking, Rob,
is this technically our first Weird House Cinema episode of
the Halloween season? Or are you counting Absurd the movie
we did last week even though it wasn't October yet.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm gonna go ahead and count absurd.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, Okay, you were jumping the gun a bit, but
that's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
If Lowe's and Home Depot can do it, then so
can so can we?

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Have I told you about how my daughter has been
getting Halloween brained?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
You've told me a little bit about this. I've seen
some some curious illustrations from your house as well.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Oh yeah, Rachel may have showed you. Okay, So, my
daughter is almost two years old, and I didn't do
this on purpose. I don't know how this happened. She
has become obsessed with skeletons, and so one of her
favorite activities over the past I don't know, probably two
or three weeks now, has been demanding that that my

(01:15):
wife and I draw skeletons for her and extend, you know,
any friends or family visiting the house. Also, they are
supposed to draw skeletons. So we have big pieces of
cardboard on the back porch and she'll she'll like lead
you out under the porch and say, draw sketon. Draw sketon,
and so we do, and then she wants another one,
and another one and another one, and the demand for

(01:37):
skeletons is unlimited. She will keep asking you to draw
them until you just say no, I am done, no
more skeletons. And then she also likes to name them.
The other day, I think I drew four of them
and they were named teeth, teeth, big teeth, and teeth,
and so somehow, I don't know if it's genetic or whatever,

(01:58):
but she she has got Halloween on the brain.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Oh that's awesome. Yeah, you guys got to bust out
some skeleton based media here.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah. I don't know if there are any child friendly
skeleton movies.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Now. I haven't watched it in a while, so I
can't speak to anything that might be inappropriate in it.
Because this is the case when you get into some
of these older cartoons. But the nineteen twenty nine Skeleton
Dance Silly Symphony from Walt Disney Dancing Skeletons. That is
a lot of fun and pretty tame unless there's something
that I am not remembering. At the top of my head,

(02:36):
I think it's on Disney Plus, so maybe that's a
good sign that maybe it's and there's nothing objectionable in it,
But I'm not.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sure technically, I don't even know if she knows that
skeletons are supposed to be scary. Maybe just no one
has communicated to her that this is frightening material.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Does she know that there's one inside each of us.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
We've talked about this. I don't know if the fact
has really sunk in, but yeah, we've told her that
she has a skeleton, and we all have skeletons. They're
all under the skin.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Such an exciting time.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Oh but sorry to divert us along the Baby Looked
at Me track. Today on Weird House Cinema, we are
going to be talking about the nineteen seventy two train
horror thriller Horror Express, Daring, Christ fh Lee, Peter Cushing,
Sylvia Tortosa, and Telly Sivalis. Now you might automatically think

(03:27):
based on the cast list, especially the first two names,
that this is a Hammer Film production, but actually it
is not. I have no proof of this, but I
would suspect the filmmakers were consciously trying to get some
Hammer special sauce on their product by casting both Lee
and Cushing. That's your classic, you know, Dracula movie or

(03:51):
Mummy movie, whatever it is. The Hammer Film's pairing. Usually
Christph Lee is Dracula, Peter Cushing is van Helsing. Here
they play with formula a little formula a little bit.
Neither one of them is the villain of the film,
but you do get both.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's right. Yeah, yeah. This was actually a British Spanish
co production. On the British side of things, we have
Benmark productions. They would go on to make or they
made Psychomania, which came out this following year. Wonderful film
that we've discussed in the show before.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
I think about Psychomania all the time. That was one
of our supernatural biker movies. It is the one where
the a British biker gang does witchcraft and realizes they
can come back from the dead. I think, what's the catch?
They just have to like really believe that it'll work
or something, and so they get to come back from

(04:42):
the dead and be undead biker revenants and ride around
like knocking things over in grocery stores and terrorizing motorists.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah. It's a wonderful film with a nice grim sense
of humor at the heart of everything.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
So yeah, Ben Mar Productions. On the British side, and
then on the Spanish side of things, we have Granada Films,
which I'm not one certain on this, but as best
I can tell, this is a separate entity from Granada Television,
which was a British company named after a city in
Spain that the founder had just visited on holiday. It
was like Granada, That's that's what I should name my

(05:19):
television production company. That'll go on to make Trelock Comes
TV and so forth. This would be a separate Granada
as far as I understand it.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, and also separate from the Hello Matta, Hello Fata.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh yes, of course. So Horror Express is a film
we've been looking to do for a while and we
just kind of wanted to line it up with core
episodes of stuff to blow your mind that had to
do with trains. So it finally worked. But This movie
is a lot of things. It is a splendid looking
period horror film and the hammer tradition set in Imperial Russia.

(05:53):
It's a monster movie. It's a murder on a train story.
It's also a science fiction tale with of the loosest
and sloppiest sigh ever to back up some thigh but
it also manages to stir the viewers' thoughts and imagination,
even as it at times insults your understanding of science.
It's a film built around the classically trained performances of

(06:15):
Cushing and Lee, but it's also a showcase for native
Spanish talent other international talent, and I guess the brasher
acting style of America's Telly Savalis that's right.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
I'm excited to talk about his role.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
So again, there's a lot of things, but it is delightful, unique,
and I think often highly effective as well. Like it
does fill a little sloppy and loose in places, and
can be a little confusing in places also, but I
think largely succeeds, and that's why it's developed a cult
following over the decades.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
It is known as ludicrous, but also I think it's
super entertaining. The twists just keep coming, and they're very
I don't know, to my mind at least very fun twists.
It also, like you're saying, it has this excellent cast
of unusual characters. I will say a limitation is the
first time I saw it, my attention was slightly divided

(07:12):
on first viewing, and I ended up mixing up several
of the characters in my head and getting extremely confused
as to who was who. I think I was mixing
up Inspector Mirov and the engineer who knows about science
and rockets and gravity, and then I was also mixing
up Sylvia Tortosa and Helga Line possibly some other characters

(07:35):
as well. Also, I showed this movie to some good
friends last night, and I could tell it a couple
of parts. I think they were confused because they had
mixed up a couple of characters. Also, so warning it
is one of those sometimes this happens, especially with older movies.
But do not let that discourage you. Horror Express is
just wonderful. Even if you get a few of the

(07:55):
characters mixed up, it's gonna be okay. Also, despite the
problems it creates with remembering all the different identities, the
large cast of characters is useful for the plot because
the monster really runs through them at a quite efficient pace. Yeah,
a couple of other acting notes about this. I was

(08:15):
thinking about this movie made me think about how there
are really two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls. So
Christopher Lee, I think you could argue, is the main
protagonist of this film, though I don't know. It's more
of an ensemble cast. I would say, but Christph Lee
is like the person who speaks in the opening narration,

(08:36):
so we're with him before anyone else. And so the
two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls are the jolly,
ironic Christopher Lee and the severe Christopher Lee. And in
this movie we do get the severe christ fher Lee.
I would say. The jolly Christopher Lee prototype in my
mind is the Lord Somerle performance in The Wickerman. And

(08:57):
there are two very different kinds of presences. And so
maybe we can talk later on about, you know, what
the difference in feeling is and why you deploy each one.
But I thought that was kind of interesting because he's
also with Peter Cushing in this film, and Peter Cushing
kind of gets to be the more jolly or ironic

(09:18):
version of Christopher Lee here Peter Cushing usually I don't know,
he plays a slightly cheekier, jollier, more enthusiastic character than
Peter Cushing often does.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, I mean Peter Cushing and what I saw an
extra with the director of this film pointed out that
Peter Cushion could often play a warmer character. Now, at
the same time, Peter Cushion could also play evil characters
and could play you know, ridiculous and silly characters. He
was a highly skilled and professional actor. But yeah, Christopher Lee,

(09:52):
there's the jolly and there's the stern. Though it is
clear which one of these two Christopher Lees, you know,
cash the paychecks.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, Yeah, it's the.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Stern Christopher Lee that most people wanted to cast. And
so there's even a spectrum there where you have like
the stern hero side of things, like the lead character
and the devil rides out, Yes, which.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Simon, I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, a character that is at once the hero and
also so stern as to be thoroughly.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Unlikable, constantly sending other characters to bed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
And in this film, we you know, we have a
stern Christopher Lee. That also has a few wrinkles to
the character that I think make it a little more
interesting than that. And then of course there's a whole
other realm of stern villain Christopher Lee, where you have
the likes of Dracula and sorrow Man. So yeah, this
is this is I think one of the more nuanced

(10:48):
and human Christopher Lee performances we've discussed on the show before.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yes, this severe Christopher Lee is very different than the
one in The Devil Rides Out, the one in The
Devil Rides Out. This is a good point you make,
and the Devil Rides Out, he is moralistic and paternalistic,
and that's not how he is here. Instead, he is
very a cold and amoral and intellectual until he sort
of has to have a heroic moment at the end.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, and is also eventually self aware a little bit. Yeah,
Like there's a part where a character asks him if
he doesn't care about the people that have died so far,
which at that point was like a thief and a
man that worked in the baggage car, and he's like, no,
I don't care, but I should. Like it's an interesting

(11:36):
wrinkle to the character that he realizes that he's cold
and insensitive, and he should strive to be better.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
I would be a better man if I did care. Yeah.
But also on the acting front, I think this movie
is interesting because it is part of a category of
films that you might call the third act takeover films,
in films in which a brand new character shows up
in the final third of the movie and completely seizes

(12:05):
command of the screen. I don't know if you would
agree with me, but that's how I feel. That's what
I feel Telly Savalis does in this movie. Once Telly
Savalis shows up, the movie just becomes the Tellisavalis show
until he is until he is dispatched by the monster.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I agree. It's interesting too that he
was clearly prominently featured in the promotional material for this movie,
but he doesn't show up for an hour, and even
then it's like he's not really he's not a major character.
He plays an important role and when he is on
screen thoroughly captivating. But yeah, definitely a third act takeover.

(12:43):
I like that terminology.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Listeners right in with other examples of this. I want
to start making a list.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the chief examples
would be Kurts and Apocalypse Now another charismatic bald man performance. Yeah, so,
I don't know how many third act takeovers are by
charismatic bald men. I would be interested to know. Maybe
it's just these two listeners. Let us know, all right,
what's the elevator pitch here, Joe?

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, so, the official tagline on the poster is I
think one of the worst I've ever heard. It says,
your non stop ride to Hell boards at eight pm?
Can it be stopped? I don't know. Is it NonStop
or isn't it? I think that could. That could stand
a bit of work shopping.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
But I do like that it gets into some of
the ideas we discussed about train horror fiction on the
core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind this week,
the idea that the train cannot be stopped, that the
train is a journey of fate. Yes, and perhaps that
fate is very much in question. What will happen to
us at the end of this line?

Speaker 3 (13:51):
M Yeah, that's a good point. But what's our weird
house cinema elevator pitch? I'm gonna say, climb aboard a
human being, disembark with butt cheek brain.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
I feel like you're gonna have to go ahead and
explain butt cheek brain. So people, No, you're not just
being ann here.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
No, just wait, wait, the listeners will wait. We'll talk
about it in the plot section.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
All right, it is related to the plot. It is
related to the plot. All right. Let's go ahead and
listen to just a little bit of the trailer audio
from this picture because it has some fun narration boo.
For two million years, in these subterranean caves, a creature
of superhuman evil was entombed in a wall of ice,

(14:37):
waiting to be free, waiting to live again. Travel with
us on the journey into a world where nightmare.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Becomes reality. Are you telling me that, at eight two
million years ago, got off to that crate, kill the
baggage man and put.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Him in there.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, I am, it's alive.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
It must be. Travel with us if you dare on
the Horror Express.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
All right, If you would like to go watch Horror
Express before proceeding with the rest of this episode, we
encourage it. Go watch it or rewatch it. It is
widely available. I watched it on the excellent severin Blu Ray,
rented from Atlanta's own videodrome here. There also seems to
be an excellent Aero Films Blu ray with many of

(15:47):
the same special features. I'm not sure which one is
the most recent release and which one's more easily accessible
if you're ordering this online, but as usual, we just
urge you to watch it in the best quality find,
be that physical or digital, because it's actually a great
looking film, and I think it long circulated in subpar quality,

(16:08):
so yeah, get as good of a cut as you
can find.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
There. I think is a version streaming on Amazon Prime
that does not look very good, So I don't know
if there are multiple versions on there. Maybe there's a
better looking one than the one I initially watched, but
at least one of them on there is not the best,
so yeah, seek it out in the good quality. Also,
you know, we were talking about how the cast list
seems to be trying to call to mind Hammer films.

(16:34):
It also looks like a Hammer film, And did you
notice that the use of the technicolor, the sets, the photography,
the costumes, it's all. It has an extremely Hammer reminiscent
visual style.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think they do a great job of
creating a like a period look that you completely buy,
even as the film delves increasingly into speculative and wild territory.

(17:10):
All right, let's talk about the people involved here, Beginning
with the director. It's Eugenio Martin, who lived nineteen twenty
five through twenty twenty three, Spanish director, probably best known
internationally anyway for this film and a handful of other
horror pictures. Nineteen sixty two's Hypnosis, nineteen seventy one is
The Fourth Victim starring Carol Baker, nineteen seventy three is

(17:33):
a Candle for the Devil starring Judy Gleeson, nineteen eighty's
The House and the Outskirts, and nineteen eighty two's Return
of the Poltergeist, which features one of the best bits
of terrible VHS box art ever.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Is that the one that looks like a like a
werewolf aerobic exercise tape.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, like it's scripping a bowling ball or something. I
don't know, but it looks pretty wild. He also directed
the nineteen sixty six western The Ugly Ones and the
nineteen seventy two film Pancho Villa starring Telly Savas, and
the film Panchovia is actually a key to understanding this film.
So that was an Italian Spanish spaghetti western featuring several

(18:14):
connections to this film, but most notably the train itself,
which the producers had purchased for the production of Pancho Villa,
and in order to maximize their investment, they said, well,
what else can we do with this train? Let's do
another train movie. Somebody get me another script, and this
eventually led to the creation of the script for Horror Express,

(18:38):
reusing the same train, so you know the slash location,
slash train and presumably the really I thought excellent train model.
So any of these external, moving wide shots of the
train in this movie are model shots.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Oh wow, I didn't realize that. I thought some of
them were real.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, same here. It wasn't until I went into the
extras on the disc and there's an interview with the
director here with Martin, and he's like, oh, yeah, we
had a lot of fun with this train, Like Peter
Cushion and Christopher Lee were there with me and we
would just run this train around. But it's like a
large scale model, so it doesn't look as small. And
they did a I think a great job with the

(19:18):
landscapes for it, so excellent model train, Like you don't
even think about it being a model train until like
one key scene towards the end of the picture.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
We were talking in our episode about the Green Slime
about how I love miniature models even when they're bad.
But these are good. These are like really realistic, solid,
excellent looking crossing the Siberian landscape.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
All right, Moving on to the riders, we have Arnaud Dussau,
who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety American playwright and
B movie screenwriter, The son of noted Silent era screenwriter
and director Leon do So and actress O'tala Nesmith. Arnault
here wrote some serio plays. He wrote nineteen forty one's

(20:02):
Lady Scarface as well as a handful of other projects,
but his career seems to have been impacted by the
Hollywood Blacklist in nineteen fifty. He was also a writer
on nineteen seventy three Psychomania. Likewise, we should mention that
this film, as with Pancho Villa, was produced by American
writer producer Bernard Gordon, who was also forced to work
in exile, mostly in Spain, due to the Hollywood Blacklist.

(20:24):
His productions include Flesh and Fury from fifty two, Earth
Versus The Flying Saucers from fifty six, fifty five, Days
at Pee King from sixty three, and The Day of
the Triffids nineteen sixty three. On some films he ended
up working like uncredited due to his blacklisted status.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Mmmm. Oh but wait, So with Dusseau here, it's not
just the same production company on the British side as Psychomania,
but literally one of the same writers.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, okay, two very different films. Like they don't
feel like spiritual siblings, but in a sense they are.
I guess, can dgin.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
If Christopher Lee had been in Psychomania, how good it
would be?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Oh man, Yeah, yeah, I mean there was a role
for him there, but yeah, it would have been a yeah,
it would have been a different trajectory for that picture.
I think, you know, if you get a name like
Lee in there. Let's see, there's another writer credit, and
that's Julian Zimmett, who lived nineteen nineteen through twenty seventeen,
American born writer whose other screenwriting credits include Pancho Villa
and Psychomania.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Now getting into the cast here, we have a number
of repeat performers for weird house. So as usual for
names like this, we're not going to go add deep
into their filmographies. We're just going to maybe try and
put them in the context of this production. Starting at
the top top build, we have of course Christopher Lee
playing Professor Sir Alexander Saxton. Lee lived nineteen twenty two

(21:47):
through twenty fifteen, British horror legend. I here cast as
as we said, essentially the good guy scientist. He's, you know,
but it's also again it's interesting because he's a bit cold,
but he's he acknowledges that he's a bit too cold
and unfeeling. He's also the guy who unleashes a murderous
monster on everyone. And he's also I thought I enjoyed

(22:11):
some of the details about him being a bit naive
about the realities of international travel.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah. Yeah. When he first shows up at the train
station at the beginning of the movie, you know, he
can't get aboard the train and he's like, but I
have arranged I have arranged passage, and they're like, yeah, sorry,
you're not on the books. And then Peter Cushing just
walks in. He's like, you're supposed to pay them a bribe. Look,
here's the here's how you do the bribe, and Lee
is like, I refuse and instead just like throws all

(22:37):
the guy's stuff off his desk and bullies him into
getting him on the train. So, yeah, I don't know
what's what's the morally superior act there to participate in
a corrupt system and give a bribe or to or
to bully the station master until they let you on
the train.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
I mean, I guess there's maybe a case to be
made that they're both they're both examples of some sort
of British ideal.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yes, So this film came out the same year as
Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, and also alongside the London
underground cannibal film Deathline, as well as there's a Spanish
absurdist movie that has Lee in it from the same
year as well, umbrackel Oom Broussel. I'm not sure exactly

(23:22):
how to say this, but a less known absurdist film.
I don't know that Lee even has a big role
in it, but he is credited.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I don't know anything about that. Are we going to
talk about Deathline one day?

Speaker 2 (23:34):
I hope. So that is a film about underground Cannibals.
It has Christopher Lee in a very typical Christopher Lee role,
but then it has Donald Pleasance in a wonderfully atypical
casting as a blue collar police inspector. It's a lot
of fun, but the monsters just kind of like gross.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, it's Cannibal's in the tube. I think we talked
about this movie not in a weird house, but we
talked about it in passing. In a core episode we
did about the London underground mosquitoes.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Hmmm, that's right, that's right. Peter Cushing, of course, is
in this plays Doctor Wells. He lived nineteen thirteen through
nineteen ninety four, legendary horror icon frequently co star, and
Cushing's character has elements of his often type cast role
as a relatable elder scientist or investigator, though again with
a few added touches of a proper British scoundrel that

(24:30):
I liked. You know, he knows how to bribe local officials.
He seems to be maybe a bit of a flirt.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
He's got a bit more of a twinkle in his
eye in this movie than he does in a lot
of his roles. More often, he plays a very straight forward.
Good guy here. He's a bit of a rascal, and
I like that.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
This film is notable in Cushing's careers. It occurs, as
a number of other films do in this period, directly
following the death of his wife Violet, which orally had
it just a devastating effect on him, to the point
that he initially expressed his desire to just not do
this film. He apparently like flew out to meet the
director and was like, look, I wanted to tell you

(25:10):
this in person, but I don't think I can do this.
And it was Christopher Lee, who was not only his
frequent co star but a close friend, who convinced him
to press on, you know, to keep working and supported
him through the production. And Cushing seems to have, yeah,
really thrown himself into work during this period, because there
are six different films from this year featuring Cushing. There's
Tales from the Crypt, Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two, Doctor

(25:34):
Five's Rises Again, Asylum, Fear the Night, and Horror Express.
And really, I mean, Cushing is always such a consummate
professional and so great on screen. You know. I see
people review these films and discuss ways in which they
can see this effect on his performance, but I've never
been able to see that. I feel like like Cushing

(25:54):
is still the consummate pro. He's still great at embodying
a character on screen. I don't, for my money, I
would not notice this inner suffering that may have been
going on at a time. Again, it's a fun role
and not you know, sometimes he would play, even in
films from around this time period, a more haunted character,

(26:15):
which I guess might reflect what he was going through more.
But this is this is not a haunted character. This
is a guy who's I think, mostly having a good
time as he travels across the continent. M all right,
we mentioned Telly Savalas. This is the first time we've
talked about a film with Telly Savalis. He plays a
Cossack by the name of Captain Kazan, who, again, as

(26:37):
you said, shows up an hour into the picture in
the third act.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
If you've only seen the movie once a long time ago,
you will probably misremember him as being there throughout the
entire movie because he makes such an impression when he
shows up. As we said earlier, he just takes over
once he arrives, and it's his movie until he's gone, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Plus, I mean it is the kind of character he plays.
It's a yeah, a belligerent captain who is tyrannical to
everybody except for the you know, the count of the Countess.
So yeah. Savalis lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four.
Third build on this and often a key part of
the promotion for the film, even though he doesn't appear

(27:19):
till later. It's a very memorable role. He believes it
brings a lot of chaotic energy, you know, a different
acting style. Martin and the extras talked about how with
Cushing and Lee you got pretty much the same, the
same thing every take because they, you know, they had
everything down in their head and they knew exactly how

(27:40):
they were going to play it, and they'd give you
the same thing again. But Savalis had just a different
operating method in place, Like he might try radically different things.
He'd want to mix it up, he'd want other things
to be different so that he could like act off
of them. And I think you see that in some
of these when he's a board, he's like he's take
a shot of vodka and just throwing the shot glass,

(28:03):
you know, across the train car. Things like that do
feel wild, and he has essentially taken the whole train
hostage during the sequence as well, so it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
What would you say the alignment of this character is.
I feel like he vacillates between sort of chaotic neutral,
lawful evil and then chaotic evil.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
I think, so, yeah, there's a waffling there. He's there
to just impose his will as much as actually solve anything.
But we'll get more into the details of his arrival
when we get to it in the plot. But you
know American actor here, who's TV credits date back to
the late nineteen fifties. He came up in radio and
then television insteadily got more and more into TV acting

(28:47):
and then film. But everything apparently changed for him when
he finally shaved that beautiful head of his for the
role of Pontia's Pilot and the Greatest Story Ever told
from nineteen sixty five, a look that he's stuck with
for the rest of his life. He obviously had a
great nag for playing tough guys, heavies, villains, and characters
of dubious moral character, which of course culminates in such

(29:10):
roles as Blofeld in nineteen sixty Nine's On Her Majesty's
Secret Service.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's a James Bond movie that kind of stands out
because it was the only film to feature George Lazenby
in the role of James Bond. But it also stands
out for a number of reasons. A lot of people
rank it as like one of the best or the
best of the series. I really love it because it
has Diana Rigg as the character of Teresa, who James
Bond gets married to. People forget that James Bond gets

(29:37):
married in one of these movies. Yeah, she locked him
down briefly. Unfortunately the movie ends tragically with her death,
but yeah, Telly Sabalis is the villain in this one.
He plays Blofeld, a Blofeld who is oddly concerned with
trying to get a claim to being part of some

(29:59):
kind of kind of British nobility verified by some kind
of I don't know, a house that like verifies your
heraldry or something. So that's like James Bond's in into
Blofeld's organization in this movie. He pretends to be somebody
who like verifies that somebody is part of a British
aristoocratic line, and so Blofeld is doing that, and he's

(30:21):
running an allergy clinic I think in the Swiss Alps,
and so there are all these people there who are
trying to get cured of their allergies. And so that
leads to this bizarre Telesivalis recorded monologue where somebody was
apparently allergic to chicken and he's he's giving this hypnotic
speech about adote. You remember how I taught you to
love chickens, their taste, their voice.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Oh man, it's been a while since I've seen that one. Yeah,
let's see. He also played a memorable, memorable sinister role
in Mario Bavo's Lisa and the Devil from seventy three.
I say memorable, but I I really couldn't make it
through that picture. Maybe it was just the wrong time
for me to try and watch it.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
I love Mario bava That was one of my least
favorites of his that I've tried to watch.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
He also played El Sleie'zo Tough in nineteen seventy nine
is the Muppet Movie?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Silvalis is one of those guys that, especially as his
career matured, he became like just a staple like celebrity,
you know, he was just He's Telly Savalis, who loves
your baby. He did a lot of action films and
various European productions, though including in nineteen seventy one spaghetti
western titled A Town called Bastard that I've heard good
things about, and on TV. He's best remembered for, of course,

(31:37):
playing police detective and lollipop aficionado Kojak, with a whole
thing being of course that Kojack is quit smoking, so
he's using lollipops all the time to stand in for
cigarettes or what have you, which apparently is what Telly
Savalas himself was doing in real life.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Dentists hate him.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Savallas is apparently a big personality and had a reputation
for if you were his friend, you know, he stood
up for you, he'd help you out, he'd get you
some work. And we'll get to an example of that
here in a bit when we get to the music
for this film.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Oh okay, oh, but hey, hold on, This movie essentially
has a rasputant in it that we've got to talk about.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, what is this character's name again? It's father Pujar
Gardov Yeah, played by the excellent Alberto de Mendoza of
nineteen twenty three through twenty eleven. Sometimes Mendoza's given higher
billing than Savalis, as he should, because he plays a
far more pivotal and I think equally memorable role in

(32:38):
the picture. A resputant esque Eastern Orthodox monk and advisor
to the Count and countest, just a wonderful screen presence,
a real worm tongue who begins starts out devoted to
the mysteries of our Lord, but is ready to instantly
jump ship to Satan or any other power that provides
better evidence of the unseen world.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Is actually a scene earlier in the movie where I
realized upon second viewing this is telegraphed because he presents
himself as a principled man of God who will not
be swayed. And then late, yeah, later he jumpship to Satan.
But early on there's a scene where he's like trying
to convince the Count and Countess not to do something
unseemly or evil, and the Count is like, shut up,

(33:23):
I am the Count, I rule over you, and Father
Pujardov is like, forgive me, Master, I guess.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Wasn't it like she was gonna wear a blue dress
or something.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
She was gonna wear. She was going to wear, I
think a somewhat revealing dress while she goes and makes
an appeal to the Englishman because you know, they know
they can, you can manipulate the Englishman with a bit
of bosom showing, and so that's the idea. And he's like, no, no, no,
you can't do that. And then the count is like,
but I am in charge, and he's like, that's right,

(33:53):
you are in charge.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah. It is a This is such a fun character.
Mendoz is great. He was an Argentine actor who, in
addition to work in Argentine cinema, also crossed over into
numerous spaghetti westerns and European productions for a time. His
many credits include seventy one's Lizard in a Woman's Skin
and the Case of the Scorpion's Tale, as well as
nineteen seventy six is The People Who Own the Dark.

(34:18):
This last one, The People Who Owned the Dark, also
featured Spanish horror icon Paul Nashi in a small role. Incidentally,
I've seen this role of Father PUJARDIV incorrectly credited to
Paul Nashi, including on the current Wikipedia page for Horror Express.
What Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess there's

(34:39):
sort of a reism once there. But as much as
I love Paul Nashi, he is not in this film.
It's Alberto de Mendoza and he's incredible.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
That's funny. I know I looked at that wiki, but
I did not catch that mistake. That's funny, not Paul Nash.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
All right. We mentioned the Countess, Countess Irina Petrowski played
by Silvia torteu So who lived nineteen forty seven through
twenty twenty four. Spanish actress active from sixty four through
at least twenty twenty one, if I remember correctly. We've
discussed her on the show before because she appeared in
Armando Diosario's nineteen seventy three film The Lareles grasp Here.

(35:16):
She's a Russian countess de facto damsel in distress and
wife to the Count Marian Petrowski played by Argentine actor
Jorge Regod who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
She's also quite good in this and has some very
funny scenes where she's trying to butter up the Englishman
being like, oh, you know, we love England. We'll get
more into this later. While she's holding a dog that's
squirming and basically screaming to get out of her arms.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Oh god, that's a great scene because of course the
father of Prijordov is like, he smells death. This train
smells like death.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yes, the dog smells the devil on the strain. But
she's great. But I forgot that Silvia Tortosa was also
in The Luralized Grasp because we have at least two
actors who are in lauralized Grasp. But don't we Helga
Line is in this.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yes, Helgaalnee she played the l in The Lauralis Grasp
and she was also in seventy three's horror Rizes from
the Tomb, part of the Occult Power couple with Paul Mashi.
And in this she plays Natasha, a suspicious character on
the train, a very stylish character who wears this like

(36:29):
green dragon dress. But yeah, she as we've previously discussed,
she you know, stunning German born redhead who played a
lot of a lot of fem fatles but also a
lot of supernatural vixens in both of the films. That
we've covered. She plays some sort of supernatural creature or
being or you know, magic user, and here she's it's

(36:53):
a little less exciting, but she's still it's still always
a treat when she's in a picture, Like, what's she
up to? Probably nothing good. It may not be raising
the dead, but she's got some sort of scheme. You
just know it. And then oh, we have the character
Inspector Mirov played by Julio Pena lived nineteen twelve through
nineteen seventy two, another great role in the picture, a

(37:14):
doomed investigator aboard the Horror Express. He was a Spanish
actor with credits going back to nineteen thirty who died
shortly after the completion of this film.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
It's funny we're saying the Horror Express, like that is
the name of the train canonically in the film.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
It is not.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
I don't remember what they call it, but I think
it's supposed to be going on the Trans Siberian Railroad, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I think the Spanish title, the actual original title, translates
to like panic on the Trans Siberian Railway or something,
So nobody calls it the Horror Express, but it's easy
to think of it as like all aboard Horror Express leaving. Yeah,
pack up your possessed apes, it's time to go, all right.
A couple of the small credits here. The baggage man

(37:57):
is very memorable. This is Victor Israel, who lived nineteen
twenty nine through two thousand and nine. Prolific Spanish actor
with something like two hundred and fifteen credits. Very memorable face,
very memorable eyes. He's got a look. He's bald, but
with tremendous mutton chops. Yeah. And then oh, this is
one of those situations where I can't even point out

(38:17):
which role he's playing here, he's just one of the
Russian guards. But it is a Spanish actor, Jose Canalas,
who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty fifteen. He played
the creepy character Murdo in nineteen seventy three's Return of
the Blind Dead that we talked about in the show previously.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Oh, the kind of gravedigger guy.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, the grave digger guy who sells out the town
to undead templars.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, that's right, Okay, looked a bit like Stephen King.
Do I remember that?

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Right? Yep, yep, So you have fun role in that
here he's basically invisible, but he's in there somewhere. And
then finally the composer. It's John Cassavas who lived nineteen
thirty through twenty fourteen. There's a fun interview with him
on as a Blu Ray extra on a couple of
the discs that I referenced earlier American composer who'd previously

(39:08):
worked as an arranger on sixty seven's The Dirty Dozen,
and did I believe the theme song for Pancho Villa.
He'd previously met Telly Savalis in London and the two
became fast friends. So Savalas helped him break into film
scores with this movie. And I have to say it's
a pretty fun score. You got this like haunting little
melody that keeps recurring. And then how would you describe

(39:30):
the electric guitar work in this picture?

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Joe ah Well, full disclosure. Actually just had to pause
recording for a second to go look it up because
I'd forgotten what you were referring to. But yeah, it's
an interesting electric guitar sound. I mean, in some cases
it's almost a bit surf rock. There's a lot of reverb,
it's a kind of echoee vibe, electric guitar sound, some

(39:53):
kind of droning notes, a lot of arpeggios, but then
also yeah, it'll hit a big chord and just.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Bah, I love it. Cassavas composed the scores as well
to nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, various
other pictures, and moved into TV work in Hollywood, working
on a number of mainstream TV series, including of course Kojak.
Because who loves your baby, Tellis Savalis loves you and

(40:19):
can help you get some work. So that's the fun connection.
Back to tell Savalis sticking up for his friends, the Cassavas.
Here in the interview, extra has shares a story about
how he was He met Savalis at a hotel and
Savalas was like, I'm gonna go up and take a nap,
and so Cassavas is waiting downstairs, and like some guy

(40:40):
comes in who had worked with them on a previous picture,
and like Savalas comes down and gives him, you know,
a couple hundred bucks or something. You know, it's just
apparently always doing things like that for people that were
in his good graces.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
All right, are you ready to talk about the plot.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, let's jump right into it.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
All right, A couple of things right at the top
of this section here. First of all, I will say
this movie has a number of twists and reveals in
it that I found mighty pleasing to experience for myself.
They're ludicrous twists, and so I would be really sad
if I spoiled them without warning, so be warned. I

(41:26):
think this movie is a lot of fun to see
without having anything spoiled and to get to experience the
WTF moments for yourself, so please do take that into consideration.
I think this one is really fun to learn the
weird developments in real time as you watch it. But
if you haven't seen it and you want to keep

(41:46):
listening anyway, that is okay. One thing I will do
to kind of preserve some of the surprise later on,
though we are going to talk about some of the
weirdest reveals, is I think we'll get fuzzier in our
description of the plot as we go on, so we
might kind of do a pretty detailed first act description
and then and then zoom out to to focus more

(42:07):
on the on the big movements. Yeah, so the credits
begin with kind of sad, dreamy music. It's this melody
that we will hear repeated many times throughout the film,
sometimes whistled by a mysterious character. You don't know quite
who it is, but the other characters are hearing it,
sometimes played by the Countess on the piano, sometimes just

(42:28):
in the background on the soundtrack, But we get this sad,
dreamy melody. We see the darkness of a tunnel, blinding
headlamps in the distance, and the sound of railcars clattering
over the tracks. The action begins with a long pan
over a chain of black, jagged mountaintops with a starless

(42:49):
blue twilight behind them, and the unmistakable voice of Christopher
Lee comes in narrating. Here's what Christopher Lee says. He says,
the following report to the Royal Geological Society by the
undersigned Alexander Saxton is a true and faithful account of
events that befell the Society's expedition in Manchuria. As the

(43:11):
leader of the expedition, I must accept responsibility for its
ending in disaster, but I leave to the judgment of
the honorable members the decision as to where the blame
for the catastrophe lies. After seeing the whole movie. I
think I know where the blame lies. I'm not that
it seems pretty clear to me. Another thing about the
beginning of this movie is that we are getting constantly

(43:34):
contradictory signals about geographic locations within China. Did you notice this?

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah? Yeah, this is one of the areas where the
film feels a little sloppy.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yeah. Like, so, the monologue says that they're in Manchuria,
but then there's a title on the screen that says
the mountains are in Sichuan Province, which are different places.
And then later when we get to the train station,
there's a title on the screen that says it's in
Pea King, which is Beijing, but the characters are talking
about being in Shanghai.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Anyway, So back to either Sichuan Province or Manchuria, whichever
it's supposed to be. As this monologue unfolds, we see
a team of men dressed in heavy furs tramping through
the remote mountains in the snow, and then they come
upon an icy cavern with Christopher Lee in command. So
he's going into the cavern with an old man as

(44:28):
a guide. And in this role, Christopher Lee, he has
a very I don't know, it's a very pompous kind
of look, even for Christopher Lee. He's sporting a black mustache,
He's wearing a long red scarf and has this tall,
boxy fur hat. I love his look for the outdoor
weather here. But the question is what lies within the cave.

(44:51):
Why it's a humanoid figure frozen solid in ice. So
it's a toothy, waxy dude, a bit skeletal and a
bit resinous, with sunken eyes and missing the cartilage part
of the nose. And of course we get a dramatic
music cue and a zoom in on the skeleton when
they find it. Or is it a skeleton? I guess
it does have flesh on it.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
We're getting into one of the big questions of the
picture here, and that is what is a fossil because
the movie Share as Hell doesn't seem to know it.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Does a stone robbed? A fossil means a stone.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yes, But then also it can thaw out and move around.
It's like there's, yeah, there's some inconsistency regarding the condition
of this specimen.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, so we see later that this fossil quote unquote
has you know, a frozen body slash fossil has been
locked inside a large crate wrapped in a canvas cloth
and chains with a padlock, and Saxton's companions are hauling
the box down the mountain side. So they eventually arrive

(45:58):
at a train station. Again the confusion because the thing
on the screen says it's in Peaking, and then characters
start talking about being in Shanghai. It's possible I'm just
missing something or confused here, but it really it looks
to me like a goof on the filmmaker's part. But anyway,
either way, Saxton is here at the train station looking
to transport his great find back to Europe by way

(46:21):
of the Trans Siberian Railroad. And here's where we get
to the drama about Saxton having booked passage on this
train weeks in advance, but when he arrives, the station
master is like, yeah, sorry, nothing, Yeah, I don't have
any record of this, and so he's supposed to be
paying a bribe, but eventually he just kind of muscles
his way onto the train by throwing the station masters

(46:44):
all the contents of his desk on the floor. I
think he also gets some backup because some British soldiers
arrive and they're like, station master, do what Christopher Lee
says and they're like, okay, I will anyway. Here at
the train station, Saxton runs into a couple of other characters.
We meet another scientist. I think he's supposed to be
a friendly professional rival, but either way, he's known to

(47:07):
Saxon and his name is doctor Wells. This is the
character played by Peter Cushing. Did you interpret him as
a professional rival, like they sort of know each other,
but they're working at odds against one another in a way.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yes, we don't really learn a lot regarding Wells's activities,
like why exactly he's out this far and he seems
reluctant to really engage in his profession. Like there's a
great scene earlier where they're like, doctor, we need you,
and he's like, well, can it wait till I finish
my meal? You know, he's not eager to get to work.

(47:40):
He's like, I'm just going to enjoy this train ride.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
They're clearly both members of the Royal Society, because Wells
is very curious about what Saxton has discovered and Saxton
is like, you will find out about it when I
present to the Royal Society.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
I guess there is some evidence there for if they're
not rivals. He he's very curious to the point of
paying somebody to mess with the crate. Yeah, so not
quite sabotage his work, but like, if you need to
remove some screws on this, great, if you need to
drill a few holes and it, go for it. Yeah,
here's here's a twenty.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
Yes, but within the context of this plot. Once again,
Christopher Lee's character is very rigid and brittle and serious,
and Doctor Wells is a little more. He goes with
the flow. Yeah. Also, we meet doctor wells assistant, a
bacteriologist named Miss Jones, played by Alice Reinhardt, and I
love her.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her. She lived nineteen ten
through nineteen ninety three, and this was one of her
last films, but it came off a lot of TV
and radio work. I think she was like a staple
in TV soap operas for a very long time. I'm sorry,
radio soap operas, but possibly TV soap operas as well,
but definitely radio soap operas.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Ah, Okay, well, yeah, I like her. She makes it.
She makes like some cheeky jokes. Yeah, and you know so.
Wells describes Saxon to Miss Jones by saying he dabbles
in fossils and bones. I think a little bit of
ribbing there no pun intended, but anyway, they are going
to be aboard the train where Saxton is looking to

(49:15):
get a spot. Now, as the two scientists are catching
up out on the platform, Saxton's crate is waiting to
be loaded in with the rest of the freight, and
a thief comes along. A thief in a very well
dressed thief in like a brand new hat comes along
and picks the lock on the box or on the
chains holding the box shut. He wants to get what's inside.

(49:38):
But shock when we cut back to the crate a
few moments later, a local man finds there's like a
body sprawled out on the ground on the platform, and
the local man pulls the sheet from over the body
and reveals that it is a dead man. It is
the thief, and he's dead and only the whites of
his eyes are showing pure white. Also, the viewing slot

(50:01):
on the crate is hanging mysteriously open.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
It's a shame that this nameless thief played here by
Hiroshi Kitatawa is really the only Asian character in the film,
despite a clear Asian setting and numerous background Asian characters
throughout the picture. So I would say missed opportunity here.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yep, yep. So the thief is lying dead on the ground,
and then a strange monk comes out of nowhere or
actually so, I don't know exactly about all the offices
and hierarchies of the Russian Orthodox Church, but I don't know.
But I think this guy is presented as a monk,
but people are also calling him father, which in my knowledge,

(50:40):
which would mostly come from Catholicism, I think would be
a priest and not a monk. I think a monk
would be brother. But I don't know. Maybe I don't
know what I'm talking about there. Anyway, they call somebody
calls him a monk, but he's also called father. He
is some kind of religious official. He's in all black.
He kneels next to the thief's body and he begins
to chant. And this is father Poojardov. Again. He has

(51:03):
notes of Rasputant, a tangled, greasy, black beard, haunted eyes.
I think they put like dark makeup under his eyes
to make him look look kind of unwell in some way.
He looks like a man who has obsessions and who
is maybe just like not doing so hot.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of a lot of worm telling
energy to this character. Again, I love him anytime he's
on the screen. Yeah, he's a treat.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
Now we meet another character as well. This is Inspector Mirov,
who is a guy who has sideburns connecting to a
mustache with no beard. So that's a good look. He
arrives on the platform and says that he knew the
dead man. He was a locksmith who operated as a
thief on the side. Or he calls him a locksmith.
I don't know if maybe that just means like he's

(51:50):
a thief who was good at picking locks, but anyway,
he says that he could open any lock with a hairpin,
and then father Poojardov says, but wait a minute, how
could this guy be a thief because he is blind
and they show his face again referring to the all
white eyes, and Inspector Mirov is shocked to see this
and he says, like, my god, implying he was not

(52:11):
like this before. So he's previously known to this policeman,
but was not always like this, So something has happened
to him, and Pujardov starts to get really amped up
here he says that it's the work of the devil,
and then he turns his attention to the crate. He
runs over to the crate starts shaking it to pry
it open, but he is interrupted by Saxton. So Christopher

(52:34):
Lee comes out wearing this tall black what do you
call this kind of hat? I don't know, It's like
the sort of cylindrical black Russian hat, and he says,
can I be of any assistance father, And Poujardov says,
you know, whatever you've got in this crate here is
unholy and it must be destroyed. And Saxton explains to

(52:54):
Inspector Mirov that the death could not have been caused
by the contents of the crate because the crate contains
only fossils. And here is where we get the explanation.
Mirov is like, what is a fossil? I've never heard
of that, and Saxton explains that a fossil is a stone. Now,
for some reason, Poojardov is not calmed by this. He's

(53:17):
like stones, And then we get a chiming of an
ominous bell, which at first I thought was on the soundtrack,
but I think it's actually the train. It's a you know,
diegetic sound effect of the train. And then Father Poujardov
goes on to explain, quote, where there is God, there
is always a place for the cross, even on this
stone floor. Just so. So he pulls out a piece

(53:40):
of chalk and he draws across on the train platform,
and then he says, but Satan is evil, and where
there is evil, there is no place for the cross.
And then he tries to draw across on the canvas
on the side of the crate, and the chalk won't
leave a mark. I have questions about this. Does chalk

(54:00):
normally draw well on canvash this?

Speaker 2 (54:05):
This is ludicrous, you know, It's like this seems like
a place for something that's a little more ambiguous, like
birds will not light on this crate, which means there's
something on holy in it, or you know, a common
thing is oh well, cats hiss at it, dogs bark
at it, that sort of thing. But you can't draw
on it with chalk. It's a little harder to buy,

(54:27):
like you probably can. And if you can't, the answer
is entirely material. It's not based on like holiness.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Well, it's even more than that. So it's not just
that you can't draw on it. It's that you can't
draw a cross.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
So you should be able to at least start the
cross and not finish it exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yeah, you should be able to draw like one line,
but I don't know. The second line wouldn't work or something.
Satan will tolerate a line, but if.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
You draw the cross upside down, Satan's okay with it.
But then you flip the crate.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
What happened. Satan must know that you're planning on drawing
across before you start, and that's why he won't even
let you get the one line.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Yeah, at any rate, this is how it goes down.
And of course the non religious types present don't buy it.
They're like, this is some sort of a trick.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
Or whatever exactly. Saxton says, rubbish, a conjuous trick. Anyway,
they take the body of the locksmith away. They load
the fossil crate into the train and the baggage car.
Somewhere in here, there's a moment where Saxton and Wells
are standing next to the crate and the crate kind
of groans, and then Saxton checks inside but nothing seems amiss.

(55:39):
But Wells has questions. He's like, you know, ooh, I
want to know, you know, what's in the crate. And
Saxon isn't gonna tell him anything. He's like, you can
read about it in the Society's annual report. You know,
it's just a fossil. But Wells is not buying it.
He's like, you heard it's making sounds. There is something
alive in there, and Saxton is like, nope, nope, nothing

(55:59):
a lot there. And there's some joke that really I
think does not land very well. Wells says, you won't
need to feed it then, and Saxton says the occupant
hasn't eaten in two million years, and Wells says, that's
one way to economize on food bills.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yeah, they have. There are a few gags thrown in
here at times between these two, and sometimes they land,
sometimes they don't.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
I feel like that one could have used another few
minutes in the writer's room.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
There's a good one coming up though.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Now. As the train leaves the station for the Trans
Siberian Railroad, we start to meet more of the characters.
We meet the character of Countess Irena. This is Silvia Tortosa.
She comes into the baggage car with a dog in
her arms, and so, I don't know how you interpreted this.
The dog is supposed to be freaking out because it

(57:00):
doesn't like whatever's in the crate. But it looked to
me like this dog was just not into filming this scene.
It's like squirming trying to get out of her arms.
It does not want to be in this movie.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
So maybe they didn't go with an actor dog. They
went with just somebody's untrained pet.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
They got what they could get anyway. The countess is
here to drop off a valuable parcel to be stored
in the safe in the baggage car. She hands it
off to the baggage man. But she also gets to
meet our English heroes. So her intro is to come
up to Christopher Lee and she's like, a Linka is
afraid of whatever you have in that crate. The dog's
name is a Linka, and he responds there's nothing in

(57:40):
this crate that would interest a Linka, And then the
conversation gets weird. The countess says, normally she likes englishmen
all we polls do oh yes, England Queen Victoria crumpets Shakespeare. Okay,
Saxton says, I admire Poland I believe there is a

(58:01):
bond between our two countries. And then the Countess says,
my husband, the count Petrowski says that in the fifteenth century,
your king Henry betrayed us to the Russians. Mmmm, and
Saxton's like, well, I apologize, And the whole time the
dog is going nuts. Eventually, Saxton and the Countess leave

(58:21):
to go back to the passenger carriage. He escorts her
back to her car, but on the way we get
to meet another character. He actually says, I think that
he's an engineer, but he is our scientist character. This
is Yev Tushenko, and Saxton stops along the way and
leans into his compartment because he I don't know. I

(58:43):
think he's dropped something or oh, yeah, it's a chess
piece or something like that. No, no, no, well wait
is it a chess piece or is it a piece
of chalk? Because the scene involves a piece of chalk.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Is so he is furiously playing chess with himself. The
whole time we see pretty much, but this scene he
does have the piece of chalk, because he's like, the
piece of chalk that would not write on the crate.
I collected it and I analyzed it, and it is
just normal chalk bump bump.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Bum, Right. I am an engineer, a scientist, and this
is ordinary chalk. But I don't know how do you
determine that. Are you a specialist in chalk? I'm I'm
a I have a degree in chalk studies.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
I guess. Or then it also raises the question, It's like,
like you could never just use mundane chalk to pull
off some sort of a scam or a trick.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
Right, yeah, yeah, that's right, So you have two Shanko
is like, because I'm a scientist, I can verify that
this should have written on the canvas on the side
of the crate. Why did it not write on the crate?
And Saxton says, hypnosis yoga. These mystics can be terribly convincing.
They can even hypnotize themselves. It doesn't seem like an answer.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
The power of yoga can can definitely keep you from
marking on things with chalk.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Meanwhile, Cushing is back in the baggage car and this
is where he's offering a bribe to the baggage man
to drill a hole in Saxony box and take a
look at what's inside. Wells is really interested in this,
he really wants to know. Later, we meet another character.
We meet Helga Line as Natasha. She is in the
compartment with Wells and she's like, I'm in trouble. I

(01:00:17):
have to get out of Shanghai, but I don't have
a ticket. I need to stay in your compartment. Oh
and for some reason, also, Wells and Saxton are bunk
mates on the train. It's just sort of an odd
couple thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Yeah, there are parents, all three of them are staying
in this one cabin somehow. Yes, so they're making it work,
you know, but I'm not sure where everybody's sleeping here.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Anyway. This is all working up to the very first
murder on board the train. So we did have one
murder at the station, but now something is on the
train itself. So the baggage man, this is the bald
guy with the tremendous mutton chops. He has been paid
off by Wells to peek inside Saxton's crate and see

(01:01:01):
what's in there. So in the night he drills a
hole in the wood and he peeps in to see
what's inside, and then he steps away for a minute.
And while he has stepped away, we see a hairy
fossil hand reaching out from the crate and ooh, it's good.
It's a good hand. I was thinking of it as

(01:01:23):
a were wolf hand. I know the creature is not
a were wolf, but we see a lot of its
body without seeing its face in the movie, and every
time you see its hand or something, it's were wolf.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Yeah. I guess. It's like it's technically supposed to be
some sort of an ape creature, I guess, but it
doesn't like straight up look like an ape creature. It's
really if we see more and more of it, I
think it's a pretty quality monster. A costume it like,
it doesn't read just undead gorilla. It doesn't read were wolf.
It feels unique unto itself.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Sort of red eyed skeleton yetti.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Anyway, what does this wolfhand do? Well, it reaches out
of out of the hole in the crate, and it
feels around in its environment, and it finds a nail,
and it picks up the nail and it bends the
tip of the nail and then inserts the tip of
the nail into the lock, the padlock on the chains

(01:02:20):
around the crate and picks the lock.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Yeah, which is it seems pretty astounding at this point.
Usually you don't think about your crate dwellers being capable
of creating an impromptu lock pick and dealing with a
mechanism like this. Certainly the crate dweller in Stephen King's
creep Show wouldn't have pulled this off, that's right. But
it'll all make sense as we proceed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
That's right. This creature has powers that the crate dweller
does not. So the baggage man returns, and when he does,
we get our first image of what happens. What the
creature in this movie does to people. It is the
eye beam lock. Wait, I guess that's kind of confusing
because an i beam is actually something used in construction.

(01:03:04):
But can we describe what it does? It looks out
with red eyes into the eyes of its victim, and
a type of fatal hypnosis begins.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Yeah, with I think a single red eye, like it
only has one functional eyeball anymore, but it glows red
and it instantly like captivates you and then has a
fatal effect on you, leaving you with like boiled egg,
white eyes, blood coming out of your pores and your face,
and you are of course dead.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Yeah, that's right, pingpong ball eyes, blood coming out of
the eyes, blood coming out of the nose, dead on
the floor. And what happens after that, who knows. So anyway,
elsewhere on the train, we go to the private car
of Countess Irena, Father Poojardov, and a new character, Count Petrowski,
IRENA's husband. So it's a luxurious first class cabin with

(01:03:59):
fan furniture, drapes, embroidered drapes and so forth, and Pujardov
is like, there's a stink of hell on this train.
Even the dog knows it. And the Count and the
Countess are discussing what dress the Countess should wear to
best manipulate the Englishman, and Pujardov disapproves of this conversation.

(01:04:20):
He's like, you're making a mockery, you're jesting with her
immortal soul. And the count says, that's why we keep you, Pujardov.
Our immortal souls are your concerns. So they're outsourcing holiness.
And then after he has chastened Father Pujardov says, forgive
me your excellency and my concern for the spiritual welfare
of the Countess. I forgot myself. I will pray for humility,

(01:04:44):
and the count says, pray hard, Poojardov, or you will
find yourself praying for a job too. So Pujardov. You
know he fancies himself this this unshakable principled man of God.
But really he's a craven worshiper of power and he
wants that paycheck.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yeah. I love how he's like, you know, or else
you'll find yourself praying for a job. But you know what,
but Jordov is already shopping around. He's been updating his
spiritual LinkedIn profile. He's ready to go.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
Oh. Also in the scene, it's notable that they the
characters in this carriage, they hear the repeatedly whistled melody,
you know, the melody that we heard in the opening credits,
and the Countess tries to like play along on the piano.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Yeah. I have no idea how I was supposed to
interpret that is, this is the fossil beast whistling somewhere
on the train and they're overhearing it. I'm not sure,
but still it's such a great little creepy ditty. I'm
happy to hear it every time they play it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Anyway, there is a confrontation after the baggage man goes missing.
Inspector Mirov is sort of the police presence for this
portion of the film, and he questioned Saxton on the crate.
He's like, what exactly have you got in that crate?
I need you to open it, And at one point
he has his soldiers threatened. Threatened Saxton say give me

(01:06:02):
the key to the padlock or or you know, or else.
I guess we're gonna hit you with the butt of
the s gun. And Saxton is very brittle as usual.
He's like no, and he throws the key out the
window of the moving train. That's how how protective he
is of his quote fossil. But they get it open anyway.
I think they just get a guy with an axe too.

(01:06:24):
This is I remember, one of the least convincing looking
effects shots in the movie is the guy using the
axe to open the crate because he's just kind of going.
But they get it open, and what do they find inside?
Is it the fossil? No, it is the baggage man
with the hard boiled egg eyes and the blood running
down his face, and thus the murder mystery begins.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Yeah, not only did the fossil beasts pick the lock
and climb out, but killed the man, put him back
in in in his place inside the crate, and then
locked it up.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
Okay, from here on I think we should we should
go in a little bit less by scene detail and
instead talk in some of the broad strokes. But there
is a lot of good stuff left to discuss. One
of the things is, oh, you remember there's this there's
this great scene where some of the scientific themes of
the movie are articulated. So the Countess comes to visit

(01:07:17):
Professor Saxton in his room while they're all dining, you know.
So there's a shot in the dining car where Professor
Wells and I believe Natasha are having dinner and Wells
ends up seeing a boiled fish and its eyeball is
entirely white, and he's like, look, the eyeball is white,
and yet yet Vushenko, oh yev Tushenko, I think is

(01:07:40):
his name, he's there and he's like, oh, yes, of
course it's white. It's a boiled fish, and this is
a reveal for some reason. But we also get the
scene with Saxton and the Countess in his compartment where
he's dining alone and she joins him, and she asks
him about what it was in the crate, the importance
of this fossil, and he says, well, well, this fossil

(01:08:01):
is very important. It could change our entire understanding of
science because it could prove correct the theory of evolution.
And she's like, oh, no, evolution, that's immoral.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Yeah, sounds evil or something. Yeah. It's like like no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
But I think that's how we're supposed to understand Professor Saxton.
He's just very much devoted to the advancement of science
and knowledge, to the point that, you know, if murders happen,
that's just none of my business. Eventually, there are some
more murders, and we get more scenes of characters becoming isolated,
and when they get isolated, something comes up behind them

(01:08:42):
and looks at them with red eyes, and then they
too are left with the hard boiled egg eyes and
the blood running out of them, and are eventually discovered.
So there are there are multiple deaths by red eye
hypnosis eventually leading up to a scene where there's sort
of a false resolution of the conflict because there is
a scene where Inspector Mirov catches the fossil creature, the

(01:09:08):
sort of prehistoric ape creature with the red eye, in
the act of doing a murder and then shoots it
and it seems to fall down dead. The movie's over, right, So.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
At this point, as we've just got we've had bodies
piling up, and then we also get the creature itself
seemingly dead. We're gonna have to have some autopsies. We
have like numerous autopsy scenes in this film, and they're
all pretty great in that they're nice and gory and
feel you feel like they're actually cutting into something. You

(01:09:40):
know that the lighting's really nice. But we get some
weird take homes from these autopsies and necropsies.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
Oh boy, do we ever. So yeah, there are a
couple of different autopsies that reveal different things. One of
them is the dissection of the victims of the prehistoric
ape creature. So you know they're looking at them like, wow,
the eyes are all messed up. But then for some
reason doctor Wells is like, well, let's just saw this
cranium open, get a look at that brain. I want
to see the brain. So, you know, they cut the

(01:10:08):
head open and they look at the brain and what
do you know, there is not a wrinkle on it.
There's a line involving one of my least favorite cliches
in the English language. Miss Jones is looking at the
dead guy's brain and she goes, smooth, it is a
baby's bottom. And they show it and you know what,
it's exactly right. There are no wrinkles. The brain just

(01:10:29):
looks like it's like a butt. It's like a you know,
it's got the line the hemisphere line down the middle,
but it's like two butt cheeks.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Yeah. Whatever this creature is doing to people, it is
completely smoothing out their brain and turning it into just
a big mass of smoothed out silly putty.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Now, these scientists in the movie begin to explain what's
going on there. They're like, well, you know, all the
wrinkles in the brain represent all of your knowledge and memories.
So if this creature is stealing the wrinkles out of
people's brains and leaving the brain smooth as a baby's bottom,
that means it is stealing all of their memories, so

(01:11:09):
by killing them, it gains all of their knowledge.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Okay, So at this point we can safely reveal that
whatever this creature is, it keeps absorbing people's memories, absorbing
their minds and moving forward through the train, through the
plot with enhanced mental capabilities.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
That's right. And so it knows things like remember when
we saw it bend to the nail and know how
to pick a lock. One of the people it had
already killed was the lock picker. Yeah, and so who
all has it killed at this point? Wow, it really
starts to get all kinds of knowledge. I think it
gets the knowledge of because it kills Hellga Lina and
she is revealed to be a spy, is that right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
It had or a jewel thief, a jewel thief and
or a spy. Okay, But because I think it gets
her while she's stealing some jewels that are locked up
in a safe.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
So it gets her kind of knowledge as a spy
or a thief. It already has some thief knowledge about
picking locks. It has the knowledge of the baggage man,
which I guess is knowledge about like how the train
works and everything. So it's just becoming more and more
intellectually powerful as it piles up victims.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Until it's shot and seemingly killed dead.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Right, that's right. But once the ape creature is shot,
they oh my god. Then begins another different type of
dead body dissection, which is even better than the last one.
So last time we learned about butt cheek brains. This
time we're going to learn about how eyes work and
the way eyes work in this movie. This is science

(01:12:41):
is that if you stick a needle into an eyeball
and extract some of the liquid inside it. I think
in reality that's called aqueous humor or vitreous humor. The
humor is inside the eyeball. You extract some of that
in a needle, You squirt it out on a plate,
and you put it under a magnifying glass. You can

(01:13:02):
look into the liquid and see. At first, they say
the last thing that the dead person saw before they died.
And this actually does correspond to a pseudo scientific belief
that people used to have what's this called retinal optography.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Yeah, yeah, this is something I remember discussing this with
Christian at one point back on an older episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And yeah, it was the
idea that you could that you could, as a forensic
technique look at a person's eye and get an image
of the last thing they saw, And so it ended

(01:13:42):
up it was like cutting edge forensic info that was
used in a lot of fiction of the time period
of late nineteenth early twentieth century. So you know, by
the time this movie is written and produced, it is
very outdated and it's definitely been debunked. So it's but
it is also kind of an interesting curio to throw in.

(01:14:04):
It is always really stood out as just another like
ludicrous aspect of this plot, along with discussions of what
is and isn't a fossil and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:14:13):
Right, well, no, it gets weirder because so I think
the idea of that is you would look at the retina,
you would like project through the retina and look on it,
and you'd be able to see the last thing the
person saw when they died, which is not correct, but
this is like they're extracting little droplets of liquid from
inside the eye.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
Right, they take it one step beyond, Like initially they
pull up an image of the inspector shooting the monster. Okay,
fair enough within the confines of the fiction of optography.
That makes sense. But then they pull out an image
of a dinosaur and they're looking at it on the microscope.
It's like, look, this creature existed in the time of dinosaurs,

(01:14:52):
because here is clear medical evidence that it once saw
a brontosaurus in the wild.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Right. It's looking at a Encyclopedia illustration from nineteen sixty
seven of a brontosaurus, and it's just beautiful. This might
have been my favorite moment of the whole movie when
they got to the dinosaur. Yes. Oh, And it doesn't
stop at the dinosaur because they're like, okay, so this
thing was alive at the same time as dinosaurs, which

(01:15:19):
is not true of any hominid human ancestor, you know,
mammals at the time, there were no hominids. Yet then
it gets weirder because they're like, okay, what's the next
thing we can extract. They pull some more jelly out
and they put it on another plate and they're looking
at it and they're like, what's that. Oh, it's not
a map. This is a picture of the Earth as

(01:15:40):
seen from space. I was actually, I think this is
a good scientific question. I don't know the answer right now.
Maybe we can come back to this in listener mail
or something. I was like, would somebody at the supposed
time of this movie be able to recognize a picture
of Earth from space? Obviously they never had a photograph
of Earth's but would they have enough sort of ability

(01:16:05):
to simulate what that would look like that they would
recognize a real image.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Of it, Well, especially if the imagery is lo fi,
as seems to be the case here. Yeah, it seems
like there maybe would be more room to misinterpret it
as something else.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
But they immediately know what it is. They're like, this
is the Earth from space, which means bomb, bumb bomb.
This creature is not only from the time of the
dinosaurs and able to absorb people's memories through its eyes,
it also is an alien from outer space.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah, and this is the point where it's worth mentioning
that some people say, well, this is obviously drawing a
bit on the nineteen thirty eight sci fi horror novella
by John W. Campbell, Who Goes There, which of course
was the basis for the Thing from Another World John
Carpenter's The Thing and so forth, Right, And you know,
there are some parallels there. I don't know to what

(01:16:57):
extent they you know, actually direct we based the plot
of this film on who goes there, but you know,
undeniable similarities.

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
So we are learning all this, but roughly the same time,
in the middle of the movie, you think that the
monster has been killed, but strangely, we're seeing some kind
of other creature whose face is not revealed, sneaking around
on the train with another werewolf hand. It's got the claws,
it's got the fingers. What's going on here, Well, it

(01:17:31):
seems that the creature has created a copy of itself
through sort of backwards eyeball hypnosis, so it can steal
other people's minds by staring into their eyes. But we
learn it can also transmit its own soul with all
of its memories, out of its eyes, so it can
upload or download into somebody else's brain, and it has

(01:17:52):
done that with Inspector Mirror. Bumb bumb boom, yet another twist.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
It makes sense though, because like the Missing Link was
not its original form, it's just a form it occupied,
and now it has a new host, but the whole
monster hand, like now Mirov has the monster hand. And
when I first saw that in my recent rewatch of it,
I was like, did I miss something? How did has
he get the monster hand on his body? There's no
explanation for that, as I recall.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
Yeah, I don't. It just kind of grows that way
once you transfer the soul through the eyes. I think.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
I mean, I love the results. It's a great monster
hand and it adds to the creepiness of the host
character here. But I never understood why this was supposed
to happen. It doesn't seem to happen in subsequent transfers,
just this one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
Now, it's interesting that in this section of the movie,
Mirov becomes a little bit while the monster is in Mirov.
You get a little bit of sympathy for the monster
because Mirov like goes to you have Tushenko, the scienceist,
and he's like, hey, you're a scientist, right, you know
things about gravity? Right? Do you know of any way

(01:19:08):
to escape Earth's gravity? Yeah, which would be kind of
a strange question coming from just a Russian imperial investigator.
But the scientist is like, oh, yes, actually, my mentor
was the inventor of rockets. We can discuss rockets. And
Mirov's like, no need to discuss, and then he hypnotdes
him in the eyes kills him, steals all of his

(01:19:30):
rocket knowledge. So this this creature just wants to get home.
I think it wants to build a rocket and escape Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
I think the other interesting thing to look at with
this character, the being from another world here is that
as it absorbs information from each victim, that alters its
identity to some extent. And so in a way, by
absorbing rational characters and even you know character with not

(01:20:00):
only rationable but maybe you know, you know, other sensibilities,
these end up changing its own cognitive state. And so
you know, it is more relatable at this point because
of who it is killed and absorbed. But if it
makes some missteps in who it kills and absorbs, well

(01:20:21):
things could change, and we do see that change coming up.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
That's right. So all this middle of the movie Intrigue
goes on for a while, there are more murders, more
plotting by the being in the guise of Mirov. But
eventually a big sort of shift occurs because the train
is stopped along the way and the authorities intervene, and
that authority is in the form of Tellisivalis Now. I
gotta be honest, I don't even remember what Telly Sivalis's

(01:20:47):
goal is when he gets on the train, I think
he's just like something is going wrong on the train
and he's intervening for some reason. But he shows up
and just starts barking orders at Everybody's like everyone on
this train is under arrest, all under arrest.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
Basically, he's a drunken regional tyrant. Yes, and he is
totally going to enact his will on the train. And
his whole thing is like, you've got some sort of
murders going on here. Well, I think we just need
to like apply beatings to everybody until we get the truth. Yes,
and he's not. He's just into the beatings as he
is into finding the truth, if not more into the beatings. Again,

(01:21:23):
regional tyrant, and it is endangering everything.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
There's also a whole subplot here where like I think
the Count is trying to transport some special kind of steel.
There's like a like a technology spy caper going on.
You remember this.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Yeah, it seems seems a little much for the duration
of the picture to have this as an added B
or C plot, but okay, we haven't.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
That's I think that's just yet another thing that the
alien kills somebody to absorb. He's like, tell me about
this steel hypnotade. And then eventually what happens, though, is
that teleisivalis after giving this eight monologue scene where he's
just bullying everybody around on the train, there is a
violent confrontation and he mortally wounds Merov. He and his

(01:22:08):
men do and so what's gonna happen? Oh, the creature
is trapped in there. Well, meanwhile, we've seen some developments
in Father Pooh Jardov, who is I don't know, not
quite so committed to the Christian God anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
He sees clear evidence that the Inspector is possessed, and
he believes it to be Satan. He's like, like, Satan,
let me serve you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Yeah, it's like Satan. Satan is where it's at, you know.
He's if you can't be with the one you love,
love the one you're with, and it's Satan. So he
thinks it's Satan, and he's like, Satan, come in to me,
come in to me, and so the Satan does.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
I can't remember if he actually explains this, but it
maybe becomes a little clear that I'm not actually Satan.
I'm an alien from another world. Who's been trapped in
life forms throughout Earth's history.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Good enough.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Yeah, was like works for me over, let's do it.
But he's he's like, he's like, come into me, and
he's like, I don't want you. There's nothing in your
mind I need, which is you know him kind of
you know, as a slam. But it's also it implies
like it knows that if I absorbed this man's consciousness
and thoughts, it is going to perhaps be a detriment

(01:23:20):
to my mission and my attempt to escape here because
this is an unhinged individual with a lot of dangerous
ideas and values in his head.

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
Yes, uh, yeah, so I love this relationship. Actually it's
it's funny and it's weird and all that. But he
does end up going into the body of the monk.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Yeah. And this leads into our big showdown where a
number of things are happening at once. There's the raising
of the dead, like all the people that have been
killed thus far are brought back as red eyed zombies. Uh.
There's an attempt to to to get the survivor into

(01:24:00):
the baggage car and then detach it because at the
same time, the authorities have received a signal that oh, well,
we need to send this train off the side of
a cliff because there's something terrible on it. And they're like,
why would we have to do that. I mean, it
must be something related to war, so we got to
do it. So a number of things here coming to
a head. And we also get a big final showdown

(01:24:24):
between Christopher Lee's character Saxton and the alien that is
possessing now Father poojardiv's body, and we get some nice
discussion about their goals.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
I think the alien tries to tempt Saxton into helping
it by offering him knowledge, you know. Yeah, and this
is what Saxton was saying earlier on. Saxton was like,
I don't really care about the people who have died.
I only care about advancing scientific knowledge. And then what
do you know, at the end of the aliens like, look,
just let me kill all these people and I'll give
you great technology and knowledge. You can advance science by

(01:25:00):
one hundred years.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's you know, it's it's a legitimate temptation.
I think, you know, here is someone who has or
something that has existed, you know, through for large expanses
of Earth's history, and also has knowledge of worlds beyond
the earth and technologies beyond earth capabilities. But is it

(01:25:23):
worth all of this death and perhaps future death and madness?
And ultimately, Christopher Lee's character says no, I don't want
any part of that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
Saxton refuses, and in the end, the heroes work together
to uncouple the what is it the break car something
want one of the cars from the rest of the
train so that it can separate, while the rest of
the train is sent off the edge of a cliff
with all of the with the alien and all of
the zombies it has created within it. Wait, I can't
did you already say it resurrects zombies.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
It's yeah, resurrected a bunch of red eyed zombies. So
even like undead Telly Savalis is walking around. Yeah, So
I like the commitment because these look like very uncomfortable
contacts that everyone is wearing. Yes, and I'm kind of
I'm kind of glad that even the bigger build stars
also had to wear them. But yeah, the train goes
off a cliff, blows up, and this is the first

(01:26:14):
time we really or at least I really realized, oh,
this is a model train, mainly because you know, they're
not going to send an actual train, multiple train cars
off of a cliff. But it still looks pretty good,
still looks it's a pretty good model.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
Nonetheless, And do I remember right that we get no
comment whatsoever from our heroes at the end of the film.
It's just the car goes the train goes off the tracks, explodes,
and that's the end.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
There's no closing monologue. I think you know it's the
it's the seventies at this point. You know, the preachiness
of the fifties and sixties is over. In the seventies,
it's more of a gosh, what can I tell you?
There's ancient evil out there in the world, and the
future is uncertain. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you.

(01:26:57):
Sometimes you just got to run trains off of a cliff.

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Can you imagine if we had had christ Perlee saying
he learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
It would have sort of worked, you know, all right?
So that's horror express it sure is. Again, this is
a super fun one. I highly recommend seeking it out
if you haven't seen it, and if you have seen it, hey,
this is a fun one to revisit, you'll always find
something new, a lot of fun plot elements, a lot
of fun performances, a real treat. Just a reminder to

(01:27:30):
everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
This week they were both train related, related to Haunted
Trains and ghost Trains, so check those out if you
haven't already. But on Fridays we set aside most series
concerns to just talk about a weird film, such as
this one on Weird House Cinema. If you want a
full list of all the movies we've covered on Weird
House over the years, and even a peek ahead at

(01:27:51):
what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot com. It's
L E T T E R B O x D
dot com and our user name there is weird House.
That's what you'll find.

Speaker 3 (01:28:01):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:28:22):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.