Weirdhouse Cinema: Horror Express

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

All right, all aboard, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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.

I'm gonna go ahead and count absurd.

Yeah, Okay, you were jumping the gun a bit, but that's okay.

If Lowe's and Home Depot can do it, then so can so can we?

Have I told you about how my daughter has been getting Halloween brained?

You've told me a little bit about this. I've seen some some curious illustrations from your house as well.

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 wife and I draw skeletons for her and extend, you know, any friends or family visiting the house. Also, they are

Oh that's awesome. Yeah, you guys got to bust out some skeleton based media here.

Yeah. I don't know if there are any child friendly skeleton movies.

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

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.

Does she know that there's one inside each of us.

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.

Such an exciting time.

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 based on the cast list, especially the first two names, that this is a Hammer Film production, but actually it

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.

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 the dead and be undead biker revenants and ride around like knocking things over in grocery stores and terrorizing motorists.

Yeah. It's a wonderful film with a nice grim sense of humor at the heart of everything.

Yeah.

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 television production company. That'll go on to make Trelock Comes

Yeah, and also separate from the Hello Matta, Hello Fata.

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. It's a monster movie. It's a murder on a train story.

I'm excited to talk about his role.

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.

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 on first viewing, and I ended up mixing up several of the characters in my head and getting extremely confused

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, 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.

Yeah, Yeah, it's the.

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.

Simon, I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic.

Yeah, a character that is at once the hero and also so stern as to be thoroughly.

Unlikable, constantly sending other characters to bed. Yeah.

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 and human Christopher Lee performances we've discussed on the show before.

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.

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 wrinkle to the character that he realizes that he's cold and insensitive, and he should strive to be better.

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 command of the screen. I don't know if you would agree with me, but that's how I feel. That's what

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. I like that terminology.

Listeners right in with other examples of this. I want to start making a list.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

No, just wait, wait, the listeners will wait. We'll talk about it in the plot section.

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, waiting to be free, waiting to live again. Travel with us on the journey into a world where nightmare.

Becomes reality. Are you telling me that, at eight two million years ago, got off to that crate, kill the baggage man and put.

Him in there.

Yes, I am, it's alive.

It must be. Travel with us if you dare on the Horror Express.

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

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.

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. 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

Is that the one that looks like a like a werewolf aerobic exercise tape.

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.

Oh wow, I didn't realize that. I thought some of them were real.

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

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.

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 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

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.

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.

If Christopher Lee had been in Psychomania, how good it would be?

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.

Wow.

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 through twenty fifteen, British horror legend. I here cast as

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 the guy's stuff off his desk and bullies him into

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.

Yeah.

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 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.

I don't know anything about that. Are we going to talk about Deathline one day?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 this in person, but I don't think I can do this.

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.

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 till later. It's a very memorable role. He believes it brings a lot of chaotic energy, you know, a different

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.

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

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 married in one of these movies. Yeah, she locked him

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.

I love Mario bava That was one of my least favorites of his that I've tried to watch.

He also played El Sleie'zo Tough in nineteen seventy nine is the Muppet Movie?

You know.

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

Dentists hate him.

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.

Oh okay, oh, but hey, hold on, This movie essentially has a rasputant in it that we've got to talk about.

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

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, I am the Count, I rule over you, and Father Pujardov is like, forgive me, Master, I guess.

Wasn't it like she was gonna wear a blue dress or something.

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, you are in charge.

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. This last one, The People Who Owned the Dark, also

That's funny. I know I looked at that wiki, but I did not catch that mistake. That's funny, not Paul Nash.

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.

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.

Oh god, that's a great scene because of course the father of Prijordov is like, he smells death. This train smells like death.

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.

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 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

It's funny we're saying the Horror Express, like that is the name of the train canonically in the film.

It is not.

I don't remember what they call it, but I think it's supposed to be going on the Trans Siberian Railroad, right, Yeah.

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 is very memorable. This is Victor Israel, who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and nine. Prolific Spanish actor

Oh, the kind of gravedigger guy.

Yeah, the grave digger guy who sells out the town to undead templars.

Yeah, that's right, Okay, looked a bit like Stephen King. Do I remember that?

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 worked as an arranger on sixty seven's The Dirty Dozen, and did I believe the theme song for Pancho Villa.

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

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 can help you get some work. So that's the fun connection. Back to tell Savalis sticking up for his friends, the Cassavas.

All right, are you ready to talk about the plot.

Yes, let's jump right into it.

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 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.

Yeah? Yeah, this is one of the areas where the film feels a little sloppy.

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.

Yeah.

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 a guide. And in this role, Christopher Lee, he has a very I don't know, it's a very pompous kind

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.

Does a stone robbed? A fossil means a stone.

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.

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 at a train station. Again the confusion because the thing on the screen says it's in Peaking, and then characters

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. He's like, I'm just going to enjoy this train ride.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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, 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

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.

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.

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

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.

So you should be able to at least start the cross and not finish it exactly.

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.

You draw the cross upside down, Satan's okay with it. But then you flip the crate.

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.

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.

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. But Wells has questions. He's like, you know, ooh, I want to know, you know, what's in the crate. And

Yeah, they have. There are a few gags thrown in here at times between these two, and sometimes they land, sometimes they don't.

I feel like that one could have used another few minutes in the writer's room.

There's a good one coming up though.

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 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.

So maybe they didn't go with an actor dog. They went with just somebody's untrained pet.

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 this crate that would interest a Linka, And then the

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.

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.

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.

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.

The power of yoga can can definitely keep you from marking on things with chalk.

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 have to get out of Shanghai, but I don't have

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.

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 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.

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.

Sort of red eyed skeleton yetti.

Yeah.

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 around the crate and picks the lock.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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 fan furniture, drapes, embroidered drapes and so forth, and Pujardov is like, there's a stink of hell on this train.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 Professor Saxton in his room while they're all dining, you know.

Yeah, sounds evil or something. Yeah. It's like like no, no, no, no.

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,

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 know that the lighting's really nice. But we get some weird take homes from these autopsies and necropsies.

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

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.

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 by killing them, it gains all of their knowledge.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Until it's shot and seemingly killed dead.

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 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

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 up it was like cutting edge forensic info that was used in a lot of fiction of the time period

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.

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, because here is clear medical evidence that it once saw a brontosaurus in the wild.

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 is not true of any hominid human ancestor, you know,

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.

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.

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,

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 seems that the creature has created a copy of itself through sort of backwards eyeball hypnosis, so it can steal

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.

Yeah, I don't. It just kind of grows that way once you transfer the soul through the eyes. I think.

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.

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 to escape Earth's gravity? Yeah, which would be kind of a strange question coming from just a Russian imperial investigator.

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 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

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 goal is when he gets on the train, I think he's just like something is going wrong on the train

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, regional tyrant, and it is endangering everything.

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.

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.

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 men do and so what's gonna happen? Oh, the creature

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.

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.

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.

Good enough.

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 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.

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.

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 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,

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 one hundred years.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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. Sometimes you just got to run trains off of a cliff.

Can you imagine if we had had christ Perlee saying he learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature.

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 everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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.

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.