7 - Horror Express

Horror Express - or Pánico en el Transiberiano translated as Panic on the Trans-Siberian, is an English language Spanish science fiction horror film loosely based on the novella Who Goes There? (also a basis for the Thing From Another World, which was in turn was remade as the classic The Thing by John Carpenter.) 

The film stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, with Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia Tortosa, Julio Peña, George Rigaud and Ángel del Pozo in supporting roles, and Telly Savalas in a guest appearance.

In 1906, Professor Sir Alexander Saxton, a renowned British anthropologist, played by Lee, is returning to Europe by the Trans-Siberian Express from Shanghai to Moscow. With him is a crate containing the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature that he discovered in a cave in Manchuria. 

Before the train departs Shanghai, a thief is found dead on the platform. His eyes are completely white, without irises or pupils. 

Later the humanoid is reanimated, roaming the moving train, leaving bodies with the same opaque, white eyes in it’s wake. Autopsies suggest that the brains of the victims are being drained of memories and knowledge. 

When the humanoid is gunned down by police Inspector Mirov, the threat seems to have been eliminated… But the murders continue.

Like all Italian and Spanish films of the period, Horror Express was filmed mostly without sound, with effects and voices dubbed into the film later. Lee, Cushing and Savalas all provided their own voices for the English market, with a certain Roger Delgado providing the voice for Inspector Mirov. 

According to Director Eugenio Martín, the film was made because a producer obtained a train set from the production of Nicholas and Alexandra. "He came up with the idea of writing a script just so he would be able to use this prop,"

Horror Express was filmed in Madrid between 1971 and 1972 and produced on a low budget of $300,000 and released a few months after the topic of our very first podcast episode, Dracula AD 1972.

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