Horror Express is one of those public-domain horror films that comes up a lot in collections, but I think is sadly overlooked in favor of films that kicked off a genre, like Night of the Living Dead, or The Last Man On Earth and Vincent Price’s performance in that film. This is a damn shame – as Horror Express has Sir Christopher Lee and Sir Peter Cushing sharing a tremendous amount of screen time, with the two actors getting to play off each other in a way that they never got to with Hammer, and rarely got to with Amicus.

Horror Express is a very loose adaptation of “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell – moving the story from a remote Antarctic outpost to a train on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with the time period also moved to the 1800s. All of this does a ton to change up the general feel of the story and lets it become its own thing. In this case in particular, we have two archeologists, Dr. Saxon (played by Lee), and Dr. Wells (Cushing) on the train together – the two have a friendly rivalry, but aren’t actively antagonistic, and when the crap hits the fan they are willing and able to collaborate. The monster itself is a mummified prehistoric human excavated by Saxon in China, and being brought west for study – only to thaw out in transit and start wreaking havoc upon the train. Additionally, rather than the monster being a shapeshifter, with their ability being based around changing its form and creating more of itself – instead it’s able to body-swap, along with being able to just kill people and drain their knowledge from them – leaving their brain completely smooth.

Yet, with all those changes – Horror Express recognizes the core principal of what makes “Who Goes There” work. It’s a story about a bunch of people in a remote claustrophobic environment, with a monster that could be anyone, and a significant part of the conflict being figuring out who to trust. It makes the whole execution of the story tremendous.

Even better, when the movie does the thing that none of the other more well-known adaptations of “Who Goes There” does and introduces a bunch of outsiders seemingly coming to the rescue – in the form of a group of Cossacks lead by Captain Kazan (played with a glorious no-scenery-left-unchewed performance by Telly Savalas), it’s played the way it should – as a liability for our protagonists. Kazan doesn’t know about what’s going on, as an arrogant Tsarist nationalist with contempt for foreigners has no desire to listen to Saxon and Wells – and probably wouldn’t believe them even if he was inclined to listen to them. So instead this adds a whole bunch of heavily armed people (one of whom has power and authority over everyone) who the monster can take over.

In all, I really think Horror Express is an underrated gem, and is definitely worth taking the time to watch.

Horror Express, being in the public domain, is available to stream pretty much everywhere. However, it’s gotten a Blu-Ray release from Arrow Video (Amazon Affiliate Link), so if you like your media physical – that’s a good release to pick up.

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