Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All right, all aboard, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 2: is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And actually I was just thinking, Rob,
Speaker 3: is this technically our first Weird House Cinema episode of
Speaker 3: the Halloween season? Or are you counting Absurd the movie
Speaker 3: we did last week even though it wasn't October yet.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go ahead and count absurd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, you were jumping the gun a bit, but
Speaker 3: that's okay.
Speaker 2: If Lowe's and Home Depot can do it, then so
Speaker 2: can so can we?
Speaker 3: Have I told you about how my daughter has been
Speaker 3: getting Halloween brained?
Speaker 2: You've told me a little bit about this. I've seen
Speaker 2: some some curious illustrations from your house as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Rachel may have showed you. Okay, So, my
Speaker 3: daughter is almost two years old, and I didn't do
Speaker 3: this on purpose. I don't know how this happened. She
Speaker 3: has become obsessed with skeletons, and so one of her
Speaker 3: favorite activities over the past I don't know, probably two
Speaker 3: or three weeks now, has been demanding that that my
Speaker 3: wife and I draw skeletons for her and extend, you know,
Speaker 3: any friends or family visiting the house. Also, they are
Speaker 3: supposed to draw skeletons. So we have big pieces of
Speaker 3: cardboard on the back porch and she'll she'll like lead
Speaker 3: you out under the porch and say, draw sketon. Draw sketon,
Speaker 3: and so we do, and then she wants another one,
Speaker 3: and another one and another one, and the demand for
Speaker 3: skeletons is unlimited. She will keep asking you to draw
Speaker 3: them until you just say no, I am done, no
Speaker 3: more skeletons. And then she also likes to name them.
Speaker 3: The other day, I think I drew four of them
Speaker 3: and they were named teeth, teeth, big teeth, and teeth,
Speaker 3: and so somehow, I don't know if it's genetic or whatever,
Speaker 3: but she she has got Halloween on the brain.
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. Yeah, you guys got to bust out
Speaker 2: some skeleton based media here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if there are any child friendly
Speaker 3: skeleton movies.
Speaker 2: Now. I haven't watched it in a while, so I
Speaker 2: can't speak to anything that might be inappropriate in it.
Speaker 2: Because this is the case when you get into some
Speaker 2: of these older cartoons. But the nineteen twenty nine Skeleton
Speaker 2: Dance Silly Symphony from Walt Disney Dancing Skeletons. That is
Speaker 2: a lot of fun and pretty tame unless there's something
Speaker 2: that I am not remembering. At the top of my head,
Speaker 2: I think it's on Disney Plus, so maybe that's a
Speaker 2: good sign that maybe it's and there's nothing objectionable in it,
Speaker 2: But I'm not.
Speaker 3: Sure technically, I don't even know if she knows that
Speaker 3: skeletons are supposed to be scary. Maybe just no one
Speaker 3: has communicated to her that this is frightening material.
Speaker 2: Does she know that there's one inside each of us.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this. I don't know if the fact
Speaker 3: has really sunk in, but yeah, we've told her that
Speaker 3: she has a skeleton, and we all have skeletons. They're
Speaker 3: all under the skin.
Speaker 2: Such an exciting time.
Speaker 3: Oh but sorry to divert us along the Baby Looked
Speaker 3: at Me track. Today on Weird House Cinema, we are
Speaker 3: going to be talking about the nineteen seventy two train
Speaker 3: horror thriller Horror Express, Daring, Christ fh Lee, Peter Cushing,
Speaker 3: Sylvia Tortosa, and Telly Sivalis. Now you might automatically think
Speaker 3: based on the cast list, especially the first two names,
Speaker 3: that this is a Hammer Film production, but actually it
Speaker 3: is not. I have no proof of this, but I
Speaker 3: would suspect the filmmakers were consciously trying to get some
Speaker 3: Hammer special sauce on their product by casting both Lee
Speaker 3: and Cushing. That's your classic, you know, Dracula movie or
Speaker 3: Mummy movie, whatever it is. The Hammer Film's pairing. Usually
Speaker 3: Christph Lee is Dracula, Peter Cushing is van Helsing. Here
Speaker 3: they play with formula a little formula a little bit.
Speaker 3: Neither one of them is the villain of the film,
Speaker 3: but you do get both.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, yeah. This was actually a British Spanish
Speaker 2: co production. On the British side of things, we have
Speaker 2: Benmark productions. They would go on to make or they
Speaker 2: made Psychomania, which came out this following year. Wonderful film
Speaker 2: that we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 3: I think about Psychomania all the time. That was one
Speaker 3: of our supernatural biker movies. It is the one where
Speaker 3: the a British biker gang does witchcraft and realizes they
Speaker 3: can come back from the dead. I think, what's the catch?
Speaker 3: They just have to like really believe that it'll work
Speaker 3: or something, and so they get to come back from
Speaker 3: the dead and be undead biker revenants and ride around
Speaker 3: like knocking things over in grocery stores and terrorizing motorists.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a wonderful film with a nice grim sense
Speaker 2: of humor at the heart of everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Ben Mar Productions. On the British side, and
Speaker 2: then on the Spanish side of things, we have Granada Films,
Speaker 2: which I'm not one certain on this, but as best
Speaker 2: I can tell, this is a separate entity from Granada Television,
Speaker 2: which was a British company named after a city in
Speaker 2: Spain that the founder had just visited on holiday. It
Speaker 2: was like Granada, That's that's what I should name my
Speaker 2: television production company. That'll go on to make Trelock Comes
Speaker 2: TV and so forth. This would be a separate Granada
Speaker 2: as far as I understand it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also separate from the Hello Matta, Hello Fata.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, of course. So Horror Express is a film
Speaker 2: we've been looking to do for a while and we
Speaker 2: just kind of wanted to line it up with core
Speaker 2: episodes of stuff to blow your mind that had to
Speaker 2: do with trains. So it finally worked. But This movie
Speaker 2: is a lot of things. It is a splendid looking
Speaker 2: period horror film and the hammer tradition set in Imperial Russia.
Speaker 2: It's a monster movie. It's a murder on a train story.
Speaker 2: It's also a science fiction tale with of the loosest
Speaker 2: and sloppiest sigh ever to back up some thigh but
Speaker 2: it also manages to stir the viewers' thoughts and imagination,
Speaker 2: even as it at times insults your understanding of science.
Speaker 2: It's a film built around the classically trained performances of
Speaker 2: Cushing and Lee, but it's also a showcase for native
Speaker 2: Spanish talent other international talent, and I guess the brasher
Speaker 2: acting style of America's Telly Savalis that's right.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to talk about his role.
Speaker 2: So again, there's a lot of things, but it is delightful, unique,
Speaker 2: and I think often highly effective as well. Like it
Speaker 2: does fill a little sloppy and loose in places, and
Speaker 2: can be a little confusing in places also, but I
Speaker 2: think largely succeeds, and that's why it's developed a cult
Speaker 2: following over the decades.
Speaker 3: It is known as ludicrous, but also I think it's
Speaker 3: super entertaining. The twists just keep coming, and they're very
Speaker 3: I don't know, to my mind at least very fun twists.
Speaker 3: It also, like you're saying, it has this excellent cast
Speaker 3: of unusual characters. I will say a limitation is the
Speaker 3: first time I saw it, my attention was slightly divided
Speaker 3: on first viewing, and I ended up mixing up several
Speaker 3: of the characters in my head and getting extremely confused
Speaker 3: as to who was who. I think I was mixing
Speaker 3: up Inspector Mirov and the engineer who knows about science
Speaker 3: and rockets and gravity, and then I was also mixing
Speaker 3: up Sylvia Tortosa and Helga Line possibly some other characters
Speaker 3: as well. Also, I showed this movie to some good
Speaker 3: friends last night, and I could tell it a couple
Speaker 3: of parts. I think they were confused because they had
Speaker 3: mixed up a couple of characters. Also, so warning it
Speaker 3: is one of those sometimes this happens, especially with older movies.
Speaker 3: But do not let that discourage you. Horror Express is
Speaker 3: just wonderful. Even if you get a few of the
Speaker 3: characters mixed up, it's gonna be okay. Also, despite the
Speaker 3: problems it creates with remembering all the different identities, the
Speaker 3: large cast of characters is useful for the plot because
Speaker 3: the monster really runs through them at a quite efficient pace. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a couple of other acting notes about this. I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this movie made me think about how there
Speaker 3: are really two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls. So
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee, I think you could argue, is the main
Speaker 3: protagonist of this film, though I don't know. It's more
Speaker 3: of an ensemble cast. I would say, but Christph Lee
Speaker 3: is like the person who speaks in the opening narration,
Speaker 3: so we're with him before anyone else. And so the
Speaker 3: two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls are the jolly,
Speaker 3: ironic Christopher Lee and the severe Christopher Lee. And in
Speaker 3: this movie we do get the severe christ fher Lee.
Speaker 3: I would say. The jolly Christopher Lee prototype in my
Speaker 3: mind is the Lord Somerle performance in The Wickerman. And
Speaker 3: there are two very different kinds of presences. And so
Speaker 3: maybe we can talk later on about, you know, what
Speaker 3: the difference in feeling is and why you deploy each one.
Speaker 3: But I thought that was kind of interesting because he's
Speaker 3: also with Peter Cushing in this film, and Peter Cushing
Speaker 3: kind of gets to be the more jolly or ironic
Speaker 3: version of Christopher Lee here Peter Cushing usually I don't know,
Speaker 3: he plays a slightly cheekier, jollier, more enthusiastic character than
Speaker 3: Peter Cushing often does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Peter Cushing and what I saw an
Speaker 2: extra with the director of this film pointed out that
Speaker 2: Peter Cushion could often play a warmer character. Now, at
Speaker 2: the same time, Peter Cushion could also play evil characters
Speaker 2: and could play you know, ridiculous and silly characters. He
Speaker 2: was a highly skilled and professional actor. But yeah, Christopher Lee,
Speaker 2: there's the jolly and there's the stern. Though it is
Speaker 2: clear which one of these two Christopher Lees, you know,
Speaker 2: cash the paychecks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's the.
Speaker 2: Stern Christopher Lee that most people wanted to cast. And
Speaker 2: so there's even a spectrum there where you have like
Speaker 2: the stern hero side of things, like the lead character
Speaker 2: and the devil rides out, Yes, which.
Speaker 3: Simon, I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a character that is at once the hero and
Speaker 2: also so stern as to be thoroughly.
Speaker 3: Unlikable, constantly sending other characters to bed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in this film, we you know, we have a
Speaker 2: stern Christopher Lee. That also has a few wrinkles to
Speaker 2: the character that I think make it a little more
Speaker 2: interesting than that. And then of course there's a whole
Speaker 2: other realm of stern villain Christopher Lee, where you have
Speaker 2: the likes of Dracula and sorrow Man. So yeah, this
Speaker 2: is this is I think one of the more nuanced
Speaker 2: and human Christopher Lee performances we've discussed on the show before.
Speaker 3: Yes, this severe Christopher Lee is very different than the
Speaker 3: one in The Devil Rides Out, the one in The
Speaker 3: Devil Rides Out. This is a good point you make,
Speaker 3: and the Devil Rides Out, he is moralistic and paternalistic,
Speaker 3: and that's not how he is here. Instead, he is
Speaker 3: very a cold and amoral and intellectual until he sort
Speaker 3: of has to have a heroic moment at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is also eventually self aware a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like there's a part where a character asks him if
Speaker 2: he doesn't care about the people that have died so far,
Speaker 2: which at that point was like a thief and a
Speaker 2: man that worked in the baggage car, and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: I don't care, but I should. Like it's an interesting
Speaker 2: wrinkle to the character that he realizes that he's cold
Speaker 2: and insensitive, and he should strive to be better.
Speaker 3: I would be a better man if I did care. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also on the acting front, I think this movie
Speaker 3: is interesting because it is part of a category of
Speaker 3: films that you might call the third act takeover films,
Speaker 3: in films in which a brand new character shows up
Speaker 3: in the final third of the movie and completely seizes
Speaker 3: command of the screen. I don't know if you would
Speaker 3: agree with me, but that's how I feel. That's what
Speaker 3: I feel Telly Savalis does in this movie. Once Telly
Speaker 3: Savalis shows up, the movie just becomes the Tellisavalis show
Speaker 3: until he is until he is dispatched by the monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I agree. It's interesting too that he
Speaker 2: was clearly prominently featured in the promotional material for this movie,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't show up for an hour, and even
Speaker 2: then it's like he's not really he's not a major character.
Speaker 2: He plays an important role and when he is on
Speaker 2: screen thoroughly captivating. But yeah, definitely a third act takeover.
Speaker 2: I like that terminology.
Speaker 3: Listeners right in with other examples of this. I want
Speaker 3: to start making a list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the chief examples
Speaker 2: would be Kurts and Apocalypse Now another charismatic bald man performance. Yeah, so,
Speaker 2: I don't know how many third act takeovers are by
Speaker 2: charismatic bald men. I would be interested to know. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's just these two listeners. Let us know, all right,
Speaker 2: what's the elevator pitch here, Joe?
Speaker 3: Well, so, the official tagline on the poster is I
Speaker 3: think one of the worst I've ever heard. It says,
Speaker 3: your non stop ride to Hell boards at eight pm?
Speaker 3: Can it be stopped? I don't know. Is it NonStop
Speaker 3: or isn't it? I think that could. That could stand
Speaker 3: a bit of work shopping.
Speaker 2: But I do like that it gets into some of
Speaker 2: the ideas we discussed about train horror fiction on the
Speaker 2: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind this week,
Speaker 2: the idea that the train cannot be stopped, that the
Speaker 2: train is a journey of fate. Yes, and perhaps that
Speaker 2: fate is very much in question. What will happen to
Speaker 2: us at the end of this line?
Speaker 3: M Yeah, that's a good point. But what's our weird
Speaker 3: house cinema elevator pitch? I'm gonna say, climb aboard a
Speaker 3: human being, disembark with butt cheek brain.
Speaker 2: I feel like you're gonna have to go ahead and
Speaker 2: explain butt cheek brain. So people, No, you're not just
Speaker 2: being ann here.
Speaker 3: No, just wait, wait, the listeners will wait. We'll talk
Speaker 3: about it in the plot section.
Speaker 2: All right, it is related to the plot. It is
Speaker 2: related to the plot. All right. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: listen to just a little bit of the trailer audio
Speaker 2: from this picture because it has some fun narration boo.
Speaker 2: For two million years, in these subterranean caves, a creature
Speaker 2: of superhuman evil was entombed in a wall of ice,
Speaker 2: waiting to be free, waiting to live again. Travel with
Speaker 2: us on the journey into a world where nightmare.
Speaker 1: Becomes reality. Are you telling me that, at eight two
Speaker 1: million years ago, got off to that crate, kill the
Speaker 1: baggage man and put.
Speaker 3: Him in there.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am, it's alive.
Speaker 3: It must be. Travel with us if you dare on
Speaker 3: the Horror Express.
Speaker 2: All right, If you would like to go watch Horror
Speaker 2: Express before proceeding with the rest of this episode, we
Speaker 2: encourage it. Go watch it or rewatch it. It is
Speaker 2: widely available. I watched it on the excellent severin Blu Ray,
Speaker 2: rented from Atlanta's own videodrome here. There also seems to
Speaker 2: be an excellent Aero Films Blu ray with many of
Speaker 2: the same special features. I'm not sure which one is
Speaker 2: the most recent release and which one's more easily accessible
Speaker 2: if you're ordering this online, but as usual, we just
Speaker 2: urge you to watch it in the best quality find,
Speaker 2: be that physical or digital, because it's actually a great
Speaker 2: looking film, and I think it long circulated in subpar quality,
Speaker 2: so yeah, get as good of a cut as you
Speaker 2: can find.
Speaker 3: There. I think is a version streaming on Amazon Prime
Speaker 3: that does not look very good, So I don't know
Speaker 3: if there are multiple versions on there. Maybe there's a
Speaker 3: better looking one than the one I initially watched, but
Speaker 3: at least one of them on there is not the best,
Speaker 3: so yeah, seek it out in the good quality. Also,
Speaker 3: you know, we were talking about how the cast list
Speaker 3: seems to be trying to call to mind Hammer films.
Speaker 3: It also looks like a Hammer film, And did you
Speaker 3: notice that the use of the technicolor, the sets, the photography,
Speaker 3: the costumes, it's all. It has an extremely Hammer reminiscent
Speaker 3: visual style.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I think they do a great job of
Speaker 2: creating a like a period look that you completely buy,
Speaker 2: even as the film delves increasingly into speculative and wild territory.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the people involved here, Beginning
Speaker 2: with the director. It's Eugenio Martin, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: five through twenty twenty three, Spanish director, probably best known
Speaker 2: internationally anyway for this film and a handful of other
Speaker 2: horror pictures. Nineteen sixty two's Hypnosis, nineteen seventy one is
Speaker 2: The Fourth Victim starring Carol Baker, nineteen seventy three is
Speaker 2: a Candle for the Devil starring Judy Gleeson, nineteen eighty's
Speaker 2: The House and the Outskirts, and nineteen eighty two's Return
Speaker 2: of the Poltergeist, which features one of the best bits
Speaker 2: of terrible VHS box art ever.
Speaker 3: Is that the one that looks like a like a
Speaker 3: werewolf aerobic exercise tape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's scripping a bowling ball or something. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but it looks pretty wild. He also directed
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty six western The Ugly Ones and the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two film Pancho Villa starring Telly Savas, and
Speaker 2: the film Panchovia is actually a key to understanding this film.
Speaker 2: So that was an Italian Spanish spaghetti western featuring several
Speaker 2: connections to this film, but most notably the train itself,
Speaker 2: which the producers had purchased for the production of Pancho Villa,
Speaker 2: and in order to maximize their investment, they said, well,
Speaker 2: what else can we do with this train? Let's do
Speaker 2: another train movie. Somebody get me another script, and this
Speaker 2: eventually led to the creation of the script for Horror Express,
Speaker 2: reusing the same train, so you know the slash location,
Speaker 2: slash train and presumably the really I thought excellent train model.
Speaker 2: So any of these external, moving wide shots of the
Speaker 2: train in this movie are model shots.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I didn't realize that. I thought some of
Speaker 3: them were real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same here. It wasn't until I went into the
Speaker 2: extras on the disc and there's an interview with the
Speaker 2: director here with Martin, and he's like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun with this train, Like Peter
Speaker 2: Cushion and Christopher Lee were there with me and we
Speaker 2: would just run this train around. But it's like a
Speaker 2: large scale model, so it doesn't look as small. And
Speaker 2: they did a I think a great job with the
Speaker 2: landscapes for it, so excellent model train, Like you don't
Speaker 2: even think about it being a model train until like
Speaker 2: one key scene towards the end of the picture.
Speaker 3: We were talking in our episode about the Green Slime
Speaker 3: about how I love miniature models even when they're bad.
Speaker 3: But these are good. These are like really realistic, solid,
Speaker 3: excellent looking crossing the Siberian landscape.
Speaker 2: All right, Moving on to the riders, we have Arnaud Dussau,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety American playwright and
Speaker 2: B movie screenwriter, The son of noted Silent era screenwriter
Speaker 2: and director Leon do So and actress O'tala Nesmith. Arnault
Speaker 2: here wrote some serio plays. He wrote nineteen forty one's
Speaker 2: Lady Scarface as well as a handful of other projects,
Speaker 2: but his career seems to have been impacted by the
Speaker 2: Hollywood Blacklist in nineteen fifty. He was also a writer
Speaker 2: on nineteen seventy three Psychomania. Likewise, we should mention that
Speaker 2: this film, as with Pancho Villa, was produced by American
Speaker 2: writer producer Bernard Gordon, who was also forced to work
Speaker 2: in exile, mostly in Spain, due to the Hollywood Blacklist.
Speaker 2: His productions include Flesh and Fury from fifty two, Earth
Speaker 2: Versus The Flying Saucers from fifty six, fifty five, Days
Speaker 2: at Pee King from sixty three, and The Day of
Speaker 2: the Triffids nineteen sixty three. On some films he ended
Speaker 2: up working like uncredited due to his blacklisted status.
Speaker 3: Mmmm. Oh but wait, So with Dusseau here, it's not
Speaker 3: just the same production company on the British side as Psychomania,
Speaker 3: but literally one of the same writers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, two very different films. Like they don't
Speaker 2: feel like spiritual siblings, but in a sense they are.
Speaker 2: I guess, can dgin.
Speaker 3: If Christopher Lee had been in Psychomania, how good it
Speaker 3: would be?
Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah, yeah, I mean there was a role
Speaker 2: for him there, but yeah, it would have been a yeah,
Speaker 2: it would have been a different trajectory for that picture.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, if you get a name like
Speaker 2: Lee in there. Let's see, there's another writer credit, and
Speaker 2: that's Julian Zimmett, who lived nineteen nineteen through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: American born writer whose other screenwriting credits include Pancho Villa
Speaker 2: and Psychomania.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now getting into the cast here, we have a number
Speaker 2: of repeat performers for weird house. So as usual for
Speaker 2: names like this, we're not going to go add deep
Speaker 2: into their filmographies. We're just going to maybe try and
Speaker 2: put them in the context of this production. Starting at
Speaker 2: the top top build, we have of course Christopher Lee
Speaker 2: playing Professor Sir Alexander Saxton. Lee lived nineteen twenty two
Speaker 2: through twenty fifteen, British horror legend. I here cast as
Speaker 2: as we said, essentially the good guy scientist. He's, you know,
Speaker 2: but it's also again it's interesting because he's a bit cold,
Speaker 2: but he's he acknowledges that he's a bit too cold
Speaker 2: and unfeeling. He's also the guy who unleashes a murderous
Speaker 2: monster on everyone. And he's also I thought I enjoyed
Speaker 2: some of the details about him being a bit naive
Speaker 2: about the realities of international travel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. When he first shows up at the train
Speaker 3: station at the beginning of the movie, you know, he
Speaker 3: can't get aboard the train and he's like, but I
Speaker 3: have arranged I have arranged passage, and they're like, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 3: you're not on the books. And then Peter Cushing just
Speaker 3: walks in. He's like, you're supposed to pay them a bribe. Look,
Speaker 3: here's the here's how you do the bribe, and Lee
Speaker 3: is like, I refuse and instead just like throws all
Speaker 3: the guy's stuff off his desk and bullies him into
Speaker 3: getting him on the train. So, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's what's the morally superior act there to participate in
Speaker 3: a corrupt system and give a bribe or to or
Speaker 3: to bully the station master until they let you on
Speaker 3: the train.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess there's maybe a case to be
Speaker 2: made that they're both they're both examples of some sort
Speaker 2: of British ideal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, So this film came out the same year as
Speaker 2: Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, and also alongside the London
Speaker 2: underground cannibal film Deathline, as well as there's a Spanish
Speaker 2: absurdist movie that has Lee in it from the same
Speaker 2: year as well, umbrackel Oom Broussel. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 2: how to say this, but a less known absurdist film.
Speaker 2: I don't know that Lee even has a big role
Speaker 2: in it, but he is credited.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about that. Are we going to
Speaker 3: talk about Deathline one day?
Speaker 2: I hope. So that is a film about underground Cannibals.
Speaker 2: It has Christopher Lee in a very typical Christopher Lee role,
Speaker 2: but then it has Donald Pleasance in a wonderfully atypical
Speaker 2: casting as a blue collar police inspector. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun, but the monsters just kind of like gross.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Cannibal's in the tube. I think we talked
Speaker 3: about this movie not in a weird house, but we
Speaker 3: talked about it in passing. In a core episode we
Speaker 3: did about the London underground mosquitoes.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's right, that's right. Peter Cushing, of course, is
Speaker 2: in this plays Doctor Wells. He lived nineteen thirteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, legendary horror icon frequently co star, and
Speaker 2: Cushing's character has elements of his often type cast role
Speaker 2: as a relatable elder scientist or investigator, though again with
Speaker 2: a few added touches of a proper British scoundrel that
Speaker 2: I liked. You know, he knows how to bribe local officials.
Speaker 2: He seems to be maybe a bit of a flirt.
Speaker 3: He's got a bit more of a twinkle in his
Speaker 3: eye in this movie than he does in a lot
Speaker 3: of his roles. More often, he plays a very straight forward.
Speaker 3: Good guy here. He's a bit of a rascal, and
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: This film is notable in Cushing's careers. It occurs, as
Speaker 2: a number of other films do in this period, directly
Speaker 2: following the death of his wife Violet, which orally had
Speaker 2: it just a devastating effect on him, to the point
Speaker 2: that he initially expressed his desire to just not do
Speaker 2: this film. He apparently like flew out to meet the
Speaker 2: director and was like, look, I wanted to tell you
Speaker 2: this in person, but I don't think I can do this.
Speaker 2: And it was Christopher Lee, who was not only his
Speaker 2: frequent co star but a close friend, who convinced him
Speaker 2: to press on, you know, to keep working and supported
Speaker 2: him through the production. And Cushing seems to have, yeah,
Speaker 2: really thrown himself into work during this period, because there
Speaker 2: are six different films from this year featuring Cushing. There's
Speaker 2: Tales from the Crypt, Dracula eighty nineteen seventy two, Doctor
Speaker 2: Five's Rises Again, Asylum, Fear the Night, and Horror Express.
Speaker 2: And really, I mean, Cushing is always such a consummate
Speaker 2: professional and so great on screen. You know. I see
Speaker 2: people review these films and discuss ways in which they
Speaker 2: can see this effect on his performance, but I've never
Speaker 2: been able to see that. I feel like like Cushing
Speaker 2: is still the consummate pro. He's still great at embodying
Speaker 2: a character on screen. I don't, for my money, I
Speaker 2: would not notice this inner suffering that may have been
Speaker 2: going on at a time. Again, it's a fun role
Speaker 2: and not you know, sometimes he would play, even in
Speaker 2: films from around this time period, a more haunted character,
Speaker 2: which I guess might reflect what he was going through more.
Speaker 2: But this is this is not a haunted character. This
Speaker 2: is a guy who's I think, mostly having a good
Speaker 2: time as he travels across the continent. M all right,
Speaker 2: we mentioned Telly Savalas. This is the first time we've
Speaker 2: talked about a film with Telly Savalis. He plays a
Speaker 2: Cossack by the name of Captain Kazan, who, again, as
Speaker 2: you said, shows up an hour into the picture in
Speaker 2: the third act.
Speaker 3: If you've only seen the movie once a long time ago,
Speaker 3: you will probably misremember him as being there throughout the
Speaker 3: entire movie because he makes such an impression when he
Speaker 3: shows up. As we said earlier, he just takes over
Speaker 3: once he arrives, and it's his movie until he's gone, yeah.
Speaker 2: Plus, I mean it is the kind of character he plays.
Speaker 2: It's a yeah, a belligerent captain who is tyrannical to
Speaker 2: everybody except for the you know, the count of the Countess.
Speaker 2: So yeah. Savalis lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: Third build on this and often a key part of
Speaker 2: the promotion for the film, even though he doesn't appear
Speaker 2: till later. It's a very memorable role. He believes it
Speaker 2: brings a lot of chaotic energy, you know, a different
Speaker 2: acting style. Martin and the extras talked about how with
Speaker 2: Cushing and Lee you got pretty much the same, the
Speaker 2: same thing every take because they, you know, they had
Speaker 2: everything down in their head and they knew exactly how
Speaker 2: they were going to play it, and they'd give you
Speaker 2: the same thing again. But Savalis had just a different
Speaker 2: operating method in place, Like he might try radically different things.
Speaker 2: He'd want to mix it up, he'd want other things
Speaker 2: to be different so that he could like act off
Speaker 2: of them. And I think you see that in some
Speaker 2: of these when he's a board, he's like he's take
Speaker 2: a shot of vodka and just throwing the shot glass,
Speaker 2: you know, across the train car. Things like that do
Speaker 2: feel wild, and he has essentially taken the whole train
Speaker 2: hostage during the sequence as well, so it makes sense.
Speaker 3: What would you say the alignment of this character is.
Speaker 3: I feel like he vacillates between sort of chaotic neutral,
Speaker 3: lawful evil and then chaotic evil.
Speaker 2: I think, so, yeah, there's a waffling there. He's there
Speaker 2: to just impose his will as much as actually solve anything.
Speaker 2: But we'll get more into the details of his arrival
Speaker 2: when we get to it in the plot. But you
Speaker 2: know American actor here, who's TV credits date back to
Speaker 2: the late nineteen fifties. He came up in radio and
Speaker 2: then television insteadily got more and more into TV acting
Speaker 2: and then film. But everything apparently changed for him when
Speaker 2: he finally shaved that beautiful head of his for the
Speaker 2: role of Pontia's Pilot and the Greatest Story Ever told
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty five, a look that he's stuck with
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life. He obviously had a
Speaker 2: great nag for playing tough guys, heavies, villains, and characters
Speaker 2: of dubious moral character, which of course culminates in such
Speaker 2: roles as Blofeld in nineteen sixty Nine's On Her Majesty's
Speaker 2: Secret Service.
Speaker 3: That's a James Bond movie that kind of stands out
Speaker 3: because it was the only film to feature George Lazenby
Speaker 3: in the role of James Bond. But it also stands
Speaker 3: out for a number of reasons. A lot of people
Speaker 3: rank it as like one of the best or the
Speaker 3: best of the series. I really love it because it
Speaker 3: has Diana Rigg as the character of Teresa, who James
Speaker 3: Bond gets married to. People forget that James Bond gets
Speaker 3: married in one of these movies. Yeah, she locked him
Speaker 3: down briefly. Unfortunately the movie ends tragically with her death,
Speaker 3: but yeah, Telly Sabalis is the villain in this one.
Speaker 3: He plays Blofeld, a Blofeld who is oddly concerned with
Speaker 3: trying to get a claim to being part of some
Speaker 3: kind of kind of British nobility verified by some kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know, a house that like verifies your
Speaker 3: heraldry or something. So that's like James Bond's in into
Speaker 3: Blofeld's organization in this movie. He pretends to be somebody
Speaker 3: who like verifies that somebody is part of a British
Speaker 3: aristoocratic line, and so Blofeld is doing that, and he's
Speaker 3: running an allergy clinic I think in the Swiss Alps,
Speaker 3: and so there are all these people there who are
Speaker 3: trying to get cured of their allergies. And so that
Speaker 3: leads to this bizarre Telesivalis recorded monologue where somebody was
Speaker 3: apparently allergic to chicken and he's he's giving this hypnotic
Speaker 3: speech about adote. You remember how I taught you to
Speaker 3: love chickens, their taste, their voice.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's been a while since I've seen that one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's see. He also played a memorable, memorable sinister role
Speaker 2: in Mario Bavo's Lisa and the Devil from seventy three.
Speaker 2: I say memorable, but I I really couldn't make it
Speaker 2: through that picture. Maybe it was just the wrong time
Speaker 2: for me to try and watch it.
Speaker 3: I love Mario bava That was one of my least
Speaker 3: favorites of his that I've tried to watch.
Speaker 2: He also played El Sleie'zo Tough in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: is the Muppet Movie?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Silvalis is one of those guys that, especially as his
Speaker 2: career matured, he became like just a staple like celebrity,
Speaker 2: you know, he was just He's Telly Savalis, who loves
Speaker 2: your baby. He did a lot of action films and
Speaker 2: various European productions, though including in nineteen seventy one spaghetti
Speaker 2: western titled A Town called Bastard that I've heard good
Speaker 2: things about, and on TV. He's best remembered for, of course,
Speaker 2: playing police detective and lollipop aficionado Kojak, with a whole
Speaker 2: thing being of course that Kojack is quit smoking, so
Speaker 2: he's using lollipops all the time to stand in for
Speaker 2: cigarettes or what have you, which apparently is what Telly
Speaker 2: Savalas himself was doing in real life.
Speaker 3: Dentists hate him.
Speaker 2: Savallas is apparently a big personality and had a reputation
Speaker 2: for if you were his friend, you know, he stood
Speaker 2: up for you, he'd help you out, he'd get you
Speaker 2: some work. And we'll get to an example of that
Speaker 2: here in a bit when we get to the music
Speaker 2: for this film.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, oh, but hey, hold on, This movie essentially
Speaker 3: has a rasputant in it that we've got to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is this character's name again? It's father Pujar
Speaker 2: Gardov Yeah, played by the excellent Alberto de Mendoza of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three through twenty eleven. Sometimes Mendoza's given higher
Speaker 2: billing than Savalis, as he should, because he plays a
Speaker 2: far more pivotal and I think equally memorable role in
Speaker 2: the picture. A resputant esque Eastern Orthodox monk and advisor
Speaker 2: to the Count and countest, just a wonderful screen presence,
Speaker 2: a real worm tongue who begins starts out devoted to
Speaker 2: the mysteries of our Lord, but is ready to instantly
Speaker 2: jump ship to Satan or any other power that provides
Speaker 2: better evidence of the unseen world.
Speaker 3: Is actually a scene earlier in the movie where I
Speaker 3: realized upon second viewing this is telegraphed because he presents
Speaker 3: himself as a principled man of God who will not
Speaker 3: be swayed. And then late, yeah, later he jumpship to Satan.
Speaker 3: But early on there's a scene where he's like trying
Speaker 3: to convince the Count and Countess not to do something
Speaker 3: unseemly or evil, and the Count is like, shut up,
Speaker 3: I am the Count, I rule over you, and Father
Speaker 3: Pujardov is like, forgive me, Master, I guess.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it like she was gonna wear a blue dress
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 3: She was gonna wear. She was going to wear, I
Speaker 3: think a somewhat revealing dress while she goes and makes
Speaker 3: an appeal to the Englishman because you know, they know
Speaker 3: they can, you can manipulate the Englishman with a bit
Speaker 3: of bosom showing, and so that's the idea. And he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that. And then the count is like,
Speaker 3: but I am in charge, and he's like, that's right,
Speaker 3: you are in charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is a This is such a fun character.
Speaker 2: Mendoz is great. He was an Argentine actor who, in
Speaker 2: addition to work in Argentine cinema, also crossed over into
Speaker 2: numerous spaghetti westerns and European productions for a time. His
Speaker 2: many credits include seventy one's Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Speaker 2: and the Case of the Scorpion's Tale, as well as
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six is The People Who Own the Dark.
Speaker 2: This last one, The People Who Owned the Dark, also
Speaker 2: featured Spanish horror icon Paul Nashi in a small role. Incidentally,
Speaker 2: I've seen this role of Father PUJARDIV incorrectly credited to
Speaker 2: Paul Nashi, including on the current Wikipedia page for Horror Express.
Speaker 2: What Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess there's
Speaker 2: sort of a reism once there. But as much as
Speaker 2: I love Paul Nashi, he is not in this film.
Speaker 2: It's Alberto de Mendoza and he's incredible.
Speaker 3: That's funny. I know I looked at that wiki, but
Speaker 3: I did not catch that mistake. That's funny, not Paul Nash.
Speaker 2: All right. We mentioned the Countess, Countess Irina Petrowski played
Speaker 2: by Silvia torteu So who lived nineteen forty seven through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Spanish actress active from sixty four through
Speaker 2: at least twenty twenty one, if I remember correctly. We've
Speaker 2: discussed her on the show before because she appeared in
Speaker 2: Armando Diosario's nineteen seventy three film The Lareles grasp Here.
Speaker 2: She's a Russian countess de facto damsel in distress and
Speaker 2: wife to the Count Marian Petrowski played by Argentine actor
Speaker 2: Jorge Regod who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: She's also quite good in this and has some very
Speaker 3: funny scenes where she's trying to butter up the Englishman
Speaker 3: being like, oh, you know, we love England. We'll get
Speaker 3: more into this later. While she's holding a dog that's
Speaker 3: squirming and basically screaming to get out of her arms.
Speaker 2: Oh god, that's a great scene because of course the
Speaker 2: father of Prijordov is like, he smells death. This train
Speaker 2: smells like death.
Speaker 3: Yes, the dog smells the devil on the strain. But
Speaker 3: she's great. But I forgot that Silvia Tortosa was also
Speaker 3: in The Luralized Grasp because we have at least two
Speaker 3: actors who are in lauralized Grasp. But don't we Helga
Speaker 3: Line is in this.
Speaker 2: Yes, Helgaalnee she played the l in The Lauralis Grasp
Speaker 2: and she was also in seventy three's horror Rizes from
Speaker 2: the Tomb, part of the Occult Power couple with Paul Mashi.
Speaker 2: And in this she plays Natasha, a suspicious character on
Speaker 2: the train, a very stylish character who wears this like
Speaker 2: green dragon dress. But yeah, she as we've previously discussed,
Speaker 2: she you know, stunning German born redhead who played a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of fem fatles but also a
Speaker 2: lot of supernatural vixens in both of the films. That
Speaker 2: we've covered. She plays some sort of supernatural creature or
Speaker 2: being or you know, magic user, and here she's it's
Speaker 2: a little less exciting, but she's still it's still always
Speaker 2: a treat when she's in a picture, Like, what's she
Speaker 2: up to? Probably nothing good. It may not be raising
Speaker 2: the dead, but she's got some sort of scheme. You
Speaker 2: just know it. And then oh, we have the character
Speaker 2: Inspector Mirov played by Julio Pena lived nineteen twelve through
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two, another great role in the picture, a
Speaker 2: doomed investigator aboard the Horror Express. He was a Spanish
Speaker 2: actor with credits going back to nineteen thirty who died
Speaker 2: shortly after the completion of this film.
Speaker 3: It's funny we're saying the Horror Express, like that is
Speaker 3: the name of the train canonically in the film.
Speaker 2: It is not.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what they call it, but I think
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be going on the Trans Siberian Railroad, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the Spanish title, the actual original title, translates
Speaker 2: to like panic on the Trans Siberian Railway or something,
Speaker 2: So nobody calls it the Horror Express, but it's easy
Speaker 2: to think of it as like all aboard Horror Express leaving. Yeah,
Speaker 2: pack up your possessed apes, it's time to go, all right.
Speaker 2: A couple of the small credits here. The baggage man
Speaker 2: is very memorable. This is Victor Israel, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine through two thousand and nine. Prolific Spanish actor
Speaker 2: with something like two hundred and fifteen credits. Very memorable face,
Speaker 2: very memorable eyes. He's got a look. He's bald, but
Speaker 2: with tremendous mutton chops. Yeah. And then oh, this is
Speaker 2: one of those situations where I can't even point out
Speaker 2: which role he's playing here, he's just one of the
Speaker 2: Russian guards. But it is a Spanish actor, Jose Canalas,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty fifteen. He played
Speaker 2: the creepy character Murdo in nineteen seventy three's Return of
Speaker 2: the Blind Dead that we talked about in the show previously.
Speaker 3: Oh, the kind of gravedigger guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the grave digger guy who sells out the town
Speaker 2: to undead templars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Okay, looked a bit like Stephen King.
Speaker 3: Do I remember that?
Speaker 2: Right? Yep, yep, So you have fun role in that
Speaker 2: here he's basically invisible, but he's in there somewhere. And
Speaker 2: then finally the composer. It's John Cassavas who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty through twenty fourteen. There's a fun interview with him
Speaker 2: on as a Blu Ray extra on a couple of
Speaker 2: the discs that I referenced earlier American composer who'd previously
Speaker 2: worked as an arranger on sixty seven's The Dirty Dozen,
Speaker 2: and did I believe the theme song for Pancho Villa.
Speaker 2: He'd previously met Telly Savalis in London and the two
Speaker 2: became fast friends. So Savalas helped him break into film
Speaker 2: scores with this movie. And I have to say it's
Speaker 2: a pretty fun score. You got this like haunting little
Speaker 2: melody that keeps recurring. And then how would you describe
Speaker 2: the electric guitar work in this picture?
Speaker 3: Joe ah Well, full disclosure. Actually just had to pause
Speaker 3: recording for a second to go look it up because
Speaker 3: I'd forgotten what you were referring to. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: an interesting electric guitar sound. I mean, in some cases
Speaker 3: it's almost a bit surf rock. There's a lot of reverb,
Speaker 3: it's a kind of echoee vibe, electric guitar sound, some
Speaker 3: kind of droning notes, a lot of arpeggios, but then
Speaker 3: also yeah, it'll hit a big chord and just.
Speaker 2: Bah, I love it. Cassavas composed the scores as well
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, various
Speaker 2: other pictures, and moved into TV work in Hollywood, working
Speaker 2: on a number of mainstream TV series, including of course Kojak.
Speaker 2: Because who loves your baby, Tellis Savalis loves you and
Speaker 2: can help you get some work. So that's the fun connection.
Speaker 2: Back to tell Savalis sticking up for his friends, the Cassavas.
Speaker 2: Here in the interview, extra has shares a story about
Speaker 2: how he was He met Savalis at a hotel and
Speaker 2: Savalas was like, I'm gonna go up and take a nap,
Speaker 2: and so Cassavas is waiting downstairs, and like some guy
Speaker 2: comes in who had worked with them on a previous picture,
Speaker 2: and like Savalas comes down and gives him, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple hundred bucks or something. You know, it's just
Speaker 2: apparently always doing things like that for people that were
Speaker 2: in his good graces.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's jump right into it.
Speaker 3: All right, A couple of things right at the top
Speaker 3: of this section here. First of all, I will say
Speaker 3: this movie has a number of twists and reveals in
Speaker 3: it that I found mighty pleasing to experience for myself.
Speaker 3: They're ludicrous twists, and so I would be really sad
Speaker 3: if I spoiled them without warning, so be warned. I
Speaker 3: think this movie is a lot of fun to see
Speaker 3: without having anything spoiled and to get to experience the
Speaker 3: WTF moments for yourself, so please do take that into consideration.
Speaker 3: I think this one is really fun to learn the
Speaker 3: weird developments in real time as you watch it. But
Speaker 3: if you haven't seen it and you want to keep
Speaker 3: listening anyway, that is okay. One thing I will do
Speaker 3: to kind of preserve some of the surprise later on,
Speaker 3: though we are going to talk about some of the
Speaker 3: weirdest reveals, is I think we'll get fuzzier in our
Speaker 3: description of the plot as we go on, so we
Speaker 3: might kind of do a pretty detailed first act description
Speaker 3: and then and then zoom out to to focus more
Speaker 3: on the on the big movements. Yeah, so the credits
Speaker 3: begin with kind of sad, dreamy music. It's this melody
Speaker 3: that we will hear repeated many times throughout the film,
Speaker 3: sometimes whistled by a mysterious character. You don't know quite
Speaker 3: who it is, but the other characters are hearing it,
Speaker 3: sometimes played by the Countess on the piano, sometimes just
Speaker 3: in the background on the soundtrack, But we get this sad,
Speaker 3: dreamy melody. We see the darkness of a tunnel, blinding
Speaker 3: headlamps in the distance, and the sound of railcars clattering
Speaker 3: over the tracks. The action begins with a long pan
Speaker 3: over a chain of black, jagged mountaintops with a starless
Speaker 3: blue twilight behind them, and the unmistakable voice of Christopher
Speaker 3: Lee comes in narrating. Here's what Christopher Lee says. He says,
Speaker 3: the following report to the Royal Geological Society by the
Speaker 3: undersigned Alexander Saxton is a true and faithful account of
Speaker 3: events that befell the Society's expedition in Manchuria. As the
Speaker 3: leader of the expedition, I must accept responsibility for its
Speaker 3: ending in disaster, but I leave to the judgment of
Speaker 3: the honorable members the decision as to where the blame
Speaker 3: for the catastrophe lies. After seeing the whole movie. I
Speaker 3: think I know where the blame lies. I'm not that
Speaker 3: it seems pretty clear to me. Another thing about the
Speaker 3: beginning of this movie is that we are getting constantly
Speaker 3: contradictory signals about geographic locations within China. Did you notice this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, this is one of the areas where the
Speaker 2: film feels a little sloppy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like, so, the monologue says that they're in Manchuria,
Speaker 3: but then there's a title on the screen that says
Speaker 3: the mountains are in Sichuan Province, which are different places.
Speaker 3: And then later when we get to the train station,
Speaker 3: there's a title on the screen that says it's in
Speaker 3: Pea King, which is Beijing, but the characters are talking
Speaker 3: about being in Shanghai.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So back to either Sichuan Province or Manchuria, whichever
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be. As this monologue unfolds, we see
Speaker 3: a team of men dressed in heavy furs tramping through
Speaker 3: the remote mountains in the snow, and then they come
Speaker 3: upon an icy cavern with Christopher Lee in command. So
Speaker 3: he's going into the cavern with an old man as
Speaker 3: a guide. And in this role, Christopher Lee, he has
Speaker 3: a very I don't know, it's a very pompous kind
Speaker 3: of look, even for Christopher Lee. He's sporting a black mustache,
Speaker 3: He's wearing a long red scarf and has this tall,
Speaker 3: boxy fur hat. I love his look for the outdoor
Speaker 3: weather here. But the question is what lies within the cave.
Speaker 3: Why it's a humanoid figure frozen solid in ice. So
Speaker 3: it's a toothy, waxy dude, a bit skeletal and a
Speaker 3: bit resinous, with sunken eyes and missing the cartilage part
Speaker 3: of the nose. And of course we get a dramatic
Speaker 3: music cue and a zoom in on the skeleton when
Speaker 3: they find it. Or is it a skeleton? I guess
Speaker 3: it does have flesh on it.
Speaker 2: We're getting into one of the big questions of the
Speaker 2: picture here, and that is what is a fossil because
Speaker 2: the movie Share as Hell doesn't seem to know it.
Speaker 3: Does a stone robbed? A fossil means a stone.
Speaker 2: Yes, But then also it can thaw out and move around.
Speaker 2: It's like there's, yeah, there's some inconsistency regarding the condition
Speaker 2: of this specimen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we see later that this fossil quote unquote
Speaker 3: has you know, a frozen body slash fossil has been
Speaker 3: locked inside a large crate wrapped in a canvas cloth
Speaker 3: and chains with a padlock, and Saxton's companions are hauling
Speaker 3: the box down the mountain side. So they eventually arrive
Speaker 3: at a train station. Again the confusion because the thing
Speaker 3: on the screen says it's in Peaking, and then characters
Speaker 3: start talking about being in Shanghai. It's possible I'm just
Speaker 3: missing something or confused here, but it really it looks
Speaker 3: to me like a goof on the filmmaker's part. But anyway,
Speaker 3: either way, Saxton is here at the train station looking
Speaker 3: to transport his great find back to Europe by way
Speaker 3: of the Trans Siberian Railroad. And here's where we get
Speaker 3: to the drama about Saxton having booked passage on this
Speaker 3: train weeks in advance, but when he arrives, the station
Speaker 3: master is like, yeah, sorry, nothing, Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 3: any record of this, and so he's supposed to be
Speaker 3: paying a bribe, but eventually he just kind of muscles
Speaker 3: his way onto the train by throwing the station masters
Speaker 3: all the contents of his desk on the floor. I
Speaker 3: think he also gets some backup because some British soldiers
Speaker 3: arrive and they're like, station master, do what Christopher Lee
Speaker 3: says and they're like, okay, I will anyway. Here at
Speaker 3: the train station, Saxton runs into a couple of other characters.
Speaker 3: We meet another scientist. I think he's supposed to be
Speaker 3: a friendly professional rival, but either way, he's known to
Speaker 3: Saxon and his name is doctor Wells. This is the
Speaker 3: character played by Peter Cushing. Did you interpret him as
Speaker 3: a professional rival, like they sort of know each other,
Speaker 3: but they're working at odds against one another in a way.
Speaker 2: Yes, we don't really learn a lot regarding Wells's activities,
Speaker 2: like why exactly he's out this far and he seems
Speaker 2: reluctant to really engage in his profession. Like there's a
Speaker 2: great scene earlier where they're like, doctor, we need you,
Speaker 2: and he's like, well, can it wait till I finish
Speaker 2: my meal? You know, he's not eager to get to work.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm just going to enjoy this train ride.
Speaker 3: They're clearly both members of the Royal Society, because Wells
Speaker 3: is very curious about what Saxton has discovered and Saxton
Speaker 3: is like, you will find out about it when I
Speaker 3: present to the Royal Society.
Speaker 2: I guess there is some evidence there for if they're
Speaker 2: not rivals. He he's very curious to the point of
Speaker 2: paying somebody to mess with the crate. Yeah, so not
Speaker 2: quite sabotage his work, but like, if you need to
Speaker 2: remove some screws on this, great, if you need to
Speaker 2: drill a few holes and it, go for it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: here's here's a twenty.
Speaker 3: Yes, but within the context of this plot. Once again,
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee's character is very rigid and brittle and serious,
Speaker 3: and Doctor Wells is a little more. He goes with
Speaker 3: the flow. Yeah. Also, we meet doctor wells assistant, a
Speaker 3: bacteriologist named Miss Jones, played by Alice Reinhardt, and I
Speaker 3: love her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her. She lived nineteen ten
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety three, and this was one of her
Speaker 2: last films, but it came off a lot of TV
Speaker 2: and radio work. I think she was like a staple
Speaker 2: in TV soap operas for a very long time. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: radio soap operas, but possibly TV soap operas as well,
Speaker 2: but definitely radio soap operas.
Speaker 3: Ah, Okay, well, yeah, I like her. She makes it.
Speaker 3: She makes like some cheeky jokes. Yeah, and you know so.
Speaker 3: Wells describes Saxon to Miss Jones by saying he dabbles
Speaker 3: in fossils and bones. I think a little bit of
Speaker 3: ribbing there no pun intended, but anyway, they are going
Speaker 3: to be aboard the train where Saxton is looking to
Speaker 3: get a spot. Now, as the two scientists are catching
Speaker 3: up out on the platform, Saxton's crate is waiting to
Speaker 3: be loaded in with the rest of the freight, and
Speaker 3: a thief comes along. A thief in a very well
Speaker 3: dressed thief in like a brand new hat comes along
Speaker 3: and picks the lock on the box or on the
Speaker 3: chains holding the box shut. He wants to get what's inside.
Speaker 3: But shock when we cut back to the crate a
Speaker 3: few moments later, a local man finds there's like a
Speaker 3: body sprawled out on the ground on the platform, and
Speaker 3: the local man pulls the sheet from over the body
Speaker 3: and reveals that it is a dead man. It is
Speaker 3: the thief, and he's dead and only the whites of
Speaker 3: his eyes are showing pure white. Also, the viewing slot
Speaker 3: on the crate is hanging mysteriously open.
Speaker 2: It's a shame that this nameless thief played here by
Speaker 2: Hiroshi Kitatawa is really the only Asian character in the film,
Speaker 2: despite a clear Asian setting and numerous background Asian characters
Speaker 2: throughout the picture. So I would say missed opportunity here.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. So the thief is lying dead on the ground,
Speaker 3: and then a strange monk comes out of nowhere or
Speaker 3: actually so, I don't know exactly about all the offices
Speaker 3: and hierarchies of the Russian Orthodox Church, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: But I think this guy is presented as a monk,
Speaker 3: but people are also calling him father, which in my knowledge,
Speaker 3: which would mostly come from Catholicism, I think would be
Speaker 3: a priest and not a monk. I think a monk
Speaker 3: would be brother. But I don't know. Maybe I don't
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about there. Anyway, they call somebody
Speaker 3: calls him a monk, but he's also called father. He
Speaker 3: is some kind of religious official. He's in all black.
Speaker 3: He kneels next to the thief's body and he begins
Speaker 3: to chant. And this is father Poojardov. Again. He has
Speaker 3: notes of Rasputant, a tangled, greasy, black beard, haunted eyes.
Speaker 3: I think they put like dark makeup under his eyes
Speaker 3: to make him look look kind of unwell in some way.
Speaker 3: He looks like a man who has obsessions and who
Speaker 3: is maybe just like not doing so hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a lot of a lot of worm telling
Speaker 2: energy to this character. Again, I love him anytime he's
Speaker 2: on the screen. Yeah, he's a treat.
Speaker 3: Now we meet another character as well. This is Inspector Mirov,
Speaker 3: who is a guy who has sideburns connecting to a
Speaker 3: mustache with no beard. So that's a good look. He
Speaker 3: arrives on the platform and says that he knew the
Speaker 3: dead man. He was a locksmith who operated as a
Speaker 3: thief on the side. Or he calls him a locksmith.
Speaker 3: I don't know if maybe that just means like he's
Speaker 3: a thief who was good at picking locks, but anyway,
Speaker 3: he says that he could open any lock with a hairpin,
Speaker 3: and then father Poojardov says, but wait a minute, how
Speaker 3: could this guy be a thief because he is blind
Speaker 3: and they show his face again referring to the all
Speaker 3: white eyes, and Inspector Mirov is shocked to see this
Speaker 3: and he says, like, my god, implying he was not
Speaker 3: like this before. So he's previously known to this policeman,
Speaker 3: but was not always like this, So something has happened
Speaker 3: to him, and Pujardov starts to get really amped up
Speaker 3: here he says that it's the work of the devil,
Speaker 3: and then he turns his attention to the crate. He
Speaker 3: runs over to the crate starts shaking it to pry
Speaker 3: it open, but he is interrupted by Saxton. So Christopher
Speaker 3: Lee comes out wearing this tall black what do you
Speaker 3: call this kind of hat? I don't know, It's like
Speaker 3: the sort of cylindrical black Russian hat, and he says,
Speaker 3: can I be of any assistance father, And Poujardov says,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever you've got in this crate here is
Speaker 3: unholy and it must be destroyed. And Saxton explains to
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov that the death could not have been caused
Speaker 3: by the contents of the crate because the crate contains
Speaker 3: only fossils. And here is where we get the explanation.
Speaker 3: Mirov is like, what is a fossil? I've never heard
Speaker 3: of that, and Saxton explains that a fossil is a stone. Now,
Speaker 3: for some reason, Poojardov is not calmed by this. He's
Speaker 3: like stones, And then we get a chiming of an
Speaker 3: ominous bell, which at first I thought was on the soundtrack,
Speaker 3: but I think it's actually the train. It's a you know,
Speaker 3: diegetic sound effect of the train. And then Father Poujardov
Speaker 3: goes on to explain, quote, where there is God, there
Speaker 3: is always a place for the cross, even on this
Speaker 3: stone floor. Just so. So he pulls out a piece
Speaker 3: of chalk and he draws across on the train platform,
Speaker 3: and then he says, but Satan is evil, and where
Speaker 3: there is evil, there is no place for the cross.
Speaker 3: And then he tries to draw across on the canvas
Speaker 3: on the side of the crate, and the chalk won't
Speaker 3: leave a mark. I have questions about this. Does chalk
Speaker 3: normally draw well on canvash this?
Speaker 2: This is ludicrous, you know, It's like this seems like
Speaker 2: a place for something that's a little more ambiguous, like
Speaker 2: birds will not light on this crate, which means there's
Speaker 2: something on holy in it, or you know, a common
Speaker 2: thing is oh well, cats hiss at it, dogs bark
Speaker 2: at it, that sort of thing. But you can't draw
Speaker 2: on it with chalk. It's a little harder to buy,
Speaker 2: like you probably can. And if you can't, the answer
Speaker 2: is entirely material. It's not based on like holiness.
Speaker 3: Well, it's even more than that. So it's not just
Speaker 3: that you can't draw on it. It's that you can't
Speaker 3: draw a cross.
Speaker 2: So you should be able to at least start the
Speaker 2: cross and not finish it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should be able to draw like one line,
Speaker 3: but I don't know. The second line wouldn't work or something.
Speaker 3: Satan will tolerate a line, but if.
Speaker 2: You draw the cross upside down, Satan's okay with it.
Speaker 2: But then you flip the crate.
Speaker 3: What happened. Satan must know that you're planning on drawing
Speaker 3: across before you start, and that's why he won't even
Speaker 3: let you get the one line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at any rate, this is how it goes down.
Speaker 2: And of course the non religious types present don't buy it.
Speaker 2: They're like, this is some sort of a trick.
Speaker 3: Or whatever exactly. Saxton says, rubbish, a conjuous trick. Anyway,
Speaker 3: they take the body of the locksmith away. They load
Speaker 3: the fossil crate into the train and the baggage car.
Speaker 3: Somewhere in here, there's a moment where Saxton and Wells
Speaker 3: are standing next to the crate and the crate kind
Speaker 3: of groans, and then Saxton checks inside but nothing seems amiss.
Speaker 3: But Wells has questions. He's like, you know, ooh, I
Speaker 3: want to know, you know, what's in the crate. And
Speaker 3: Saxon isn't gonna tell him anything. He's like, you can
Speaker 3: read about it in the Society's annual report. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just a fossil. But Wells is not buying it.
Speaker 3: He's like, you heard it's making sounds. There is something
Speaker 3: alive in there, and Saxton is like, nope, nope, nothing
Speaker 3: a lot there. And there's some joke that really I
Speaker 3: think does not land very well. Wells says, you won't
Speaker 3: need to feed it then, and Saxton says the occupant
Speaker 3: hasn't eaten in two million years, and Wells says, that's
Speaker 3: one way to economize on food bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have. There are a few gags thrown in
Speaker 2: here at times between these two, and sometimes they land,
Speaker 2: sometimes they don't.
Speaker 3: I feel like that one could have used another few
Speaker 3: minutes in the writer's room.
Speaker 2: There's a good one coming up though.
Speaker 3: Now. As the train leaves the station for the Trans
Speaker 3: Siberian Railroad, we start to meet more of the characters.
Speaker 3: We meet the character of Countess Irena. This is Silvia Tortosa.
Speaker 3: She comes into the baggage car with a dog in
Speaker 3: her arms, and so, I don't know how you interpreted this.
Speaker 3: The dog is supposed to be freaking out because it
Speaker 3: doesn't like whatever's in the crate. But it looked to
Speaker 3: me like this dog was just not into filming this scene.
Speaker 3: It's like squirming trying to get out of her arms.
Speaker 3: It does not want to be in this movie.
Speaker 2: So maybe they didn't go with an actor dog. They
Speaker 2: went with just somebody's untrained pet.
Speaker 3: They got what they could get anyway. The countess is
Speaker 3: here to drop off a valuable parcel to be stored
Speaker 3: in the safe in the baggage car. She hands it
Speaker 3: off to the baggage man. But she also gets to
Speaker 3: meet our English heroes. So her intro is to come
Speaker 3: up to Christopher Lee and she's like, a Linka is
Speaker 3: afraid of whatever you have in that crate. The dog's
Speaker 3: name is a Linka, and he responds there's nothing in
Speaker 3: this crate that would interest a Linka, And then the
Speaker 3: conversation gets weird. The countess says, normally she likes englishmen
Speaker 3: all we polls do oh yes, England Queen Victoria crumpets Shakespeare. Okay,
Speaker 3: Saxton says, I admire Poland I believe there is a
Speaker 3: bond between our two countries. And then the Countess says,
Speaker 3: my husband, the count Petrowski says that in the fifteenth century,
Speaker 3: your king Henry betrayed us to the Russians. Mmmm, and
Speaker 3: Saxton's like, well, I apologize, And the whole time the
Speaker 3: dog is going nuts. Eventually, Saxton and the Countess leave
Speaker 3: to go back to the passenger carriage. He escorts her
Speaker 3: back to her car, but on the way we get
Speaker 3: to meet another character. He actually says, I think that
Speaker 3: he's an engineer, but he is our scientist character. This
Speaker 3: is Yev Tushenko, and Saxton stops along the way and
Speaker 3: leans into his compartment because he I don't know. I
Speaker 3: think he's dropped something or oh, yeah, it's a chess
Speaker 3: piece or something like that. No, no, no, well wait
Speaker 3: is it a chess piece or is it a piece
Speaker 3: of chalk? Because the scene involves a piece of chalk.
Speaker 2: Is so he is furiously playing chess with himself. The
Speaker 2: whole time we see pretty much, but this scene he
Speaker 2: does have the piece of chalk, because he's like, the
Speaker 2: piece of chalk that would not write on the crate.
Speaker 2: I collected it and I analyzed it, and it is
Speaker 2: just normal chalk bump bump.
Speaker 3: Bum, Right. I am an engineer, a scientist, and this
Speaker 3: is ordinary chalk. But I don't know how do you
Speaker 3: determine that. Are you a specialist in chalk? I'm I'm
Speaker 3: a I have a degree in chalk studies.
Speaker 2: I guess. Or then it also raises the question, It's like,
Speaker 2: like you could never just use mundane chalk to pull
Speaker 2: off some sort of a scam or a trick.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, that's right, So you have two Shanko
Speaker 3: is like, because I'm a scientist, I can verify that
Speaker 3: this should have written on the canvas on the side
Speaker 3: of the crate. Why did it not write on the crate?
Speaker 3: And Saxton says, hypnosis yoga. These mystics can be terribly convincing.
Speaker 3: They can even hypnotize themselves. It doesn't seem like an answer.
Speaker 2: The power of yoga can can definitely keep you from
Speaker 2: marking on things with chalk.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Cushing is back in the baggage car and this
Speaker 3: is where he's offering a bribe to the baggage man
Speaker 3: to drill a hole in Saxony box and take a
Speaker 3: look at what's inside. Wells is really interested in this,
Speaker 3: he really wants to know. Later, we meet another character.
Speaker 3: We meet Helga Line as Natasha. She is in the
Speaker 3: compartment with Wells and she's like, I'm in trouble. I
Speaker 3: have to get out of Shanghai, but I don't have
Speaker 3: a ticket. I need to stay in your compartment. Oh
Speaker 3: and for some reason, also, Wells and Saxton are bunk
Speaker 3: mates on the train. It's just sort of an odd
Speaker 3: couple thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are parents, all three of them are staying
Speaker 2: in this one cabin somehow. Yes, so they're making it work,
Speaker 2: you know, but I'm not sure where everybody's sleeping here.
Speaker 3: Anyway. This is all working up to the very first
Speaker 3: murder on board the train. So we did have one
Speaker 3: murder at the station, but now something is on the
Speaker 3: train itself. So the baggage man, this is the bald
Speaker 3: guy with the tremendous mutton chops. He has been paid
Speaker 3: off by Wells to peek inside Saxton's crate and see
Speaker 3: what's in there. So in the night he drills a
Speaker 3: hole in the wood and he peeps in to see
Speaker 3: what's inside, and then he steps away for a minute.
Speaker 3: And while he has stepped away, we see a hairy
Speaker 3: fossil hand reaching out from the crate and ooh, it's good.
Speaker 3: It's a good hand. I was thinking of it as
Speaker 3: a were wolf hand. I know the creature is not
Speaker 3: a were wolf, but we see a lot of its
Speaker 3: body without seeing its face in the movie, and every
Speaker 3: time you see its hand or something, it's were wolf.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess. It's like it's technically supposed to be
Speaker 2: some sort of an ape creature, I guess, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't like straight up look like an ape creature. It's
Speaker 2: really if we see more and more of it, I
Speaker 2: think it's a pretty quality monster. A costume it like,
Speaker 2: it doesn't read just undead gorilla. It doesn't read were wolf.
Speaker 2: It feels unique unto itself.
Speaker 3: Sort of red eyed skeleton yetti.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, what does this wolfhand do? Well, it reaches out
Speaker 3: of out of the hole in the crate, and it
Speaker 3: feels around in its environment, and it finds a nail,
Speaker 3: and it picks up the nail and it bends the
Speaker 3: tip of the nail and then inserts the tip of
Speaker 3: the nail into the lock, the padlock on the chains
Speaker 3: around the crate and picks the lock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is it seems pretty astounding at this point.
Speaker 2: Usually you don't think about your crate dwellers being capable
Speaker 2: of creating an impromptu lock pick and dealing with a
Speaker 2: mechanism like this. Certainly the crate dweller in Stephen King's
Speaker 2: creep Show wouldn't have pulled this off, that's right. But
Speaker 2: it'll all make sense as we proceed.
Speaker 3: That's right. This creature has powers that the crate dweller
Speaker 3: does not. So the baggage man returns, and when he does,
Speaker 3: we get our first image of what happens. What the
Speaker 3: creature in this movie does to people. It is the
Speaker 3: eye beam lock. Wait, I guess that's kind of confusing
Speaker 3: because an i beam is actually something used in construction.
Speaker 3: But can we describe what it does? It looks out
Speaker 3: with red eyes into the eyes of its victim, and
Speaker 3: a type of fatal hypnosis begins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with I think a single red eye, like it
Speaker 2: only has one functional eyeball anymore, but it glows red
Speaker 2: and it instantly like captivates you and then has a
Speaker 2: fatal effect on you, leaving you with like boiled egg,
Speaker 2: white eyes, blood coming out of your pores and your face,
Speaker 2: and you are of course dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, pingpong ball eyes, blood coming out of
Speaker 3: the eyes, blood coming out of the nose, dead on
Speaker 3: the floor. And what happens after that, who knows. So anyway,
Speaker 3: elsewhere on the train, we go to the private car
Speaker 3: of Countess Irena, Father Poojardov, and a new character, Count Petrowski,
Speaker 3: IRENA's husband. So it's a luxurious first class cabin with
Speaker 3: fan furniture, drapes, embroidered drapes and so forth, and Pujardov
Speaker 3: is like, there's a stink of hell on this train.
Speaker 3: Even the dog knows it. And the Count and the
Speaker 3: Countess are discussing what dress the Countess should wear to
Speaker 3: best manipulate the Englishman, and Pujardov disapproves of this conversation.
Speaker 3: He's like, you're making a mockery, you're jesting with her
Speaker 3: immortal soul. And the count says, that's why we keep you, Pujardov.
Speaker 3: Our immortal souls are your concerns. So they're outsourcing holiness.
Speaker 3: And then after he has chastened Father Pujardov says, forgive
Speaker 3: me your excellency and my concern for the spiritual welfare
Speaker 3: of the Countess. I forgot myself. I will pray for humility,
Speaker 3: and the count says, pray hard, Poojardov, or you will
Speaker 3: find yourself praying for a job too. So Pujardov. You
Speaker 3: know he fancies himself this this unshakable principled man of God.
Speaker 3: But really he's a craven worshiper of power and he
Speaker 3: wants that paycheck.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love how he's like, you know, or else
Speaker 2: you'll find yourself praying for a job. But you know what,
Speaker 2: but Jordov is already shopping around. He's been updating his
Speaker 2: spiritual LinkedIn profile. He's ready to go.
Speaker 3: Oh. Also in the scene, it's notable that they the
Speaker 3: characters in this carriage, they hear the repeatedly whistled melody,
Speaker 3: you know, the melody that we heard in the opening credits,
Speaker 3: and the Countess tries to like play along on the piano.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have no idea how I was supposed to
Speaker 2: interpret that is, this is the fossil beast whistling somewhere
Speaker 2: on the train and they're overhearing it. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but still it's such a great little creepy ditty. I'm
Speaker 2: happy to hear it every time they play it.
Speaker 3: Anyway, there is a confrontation after the baggage man goes missing.
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov is sort of the police presence for this
Speaker 3: portion of the film, and he questioned Saxton on the crate.
Speaker 3: He's like, what exactly have you got in that crate?
Speaker 3: I need you to open it, And at one point
Speaker 3: he has his soldiers threatened. Threatened Saxton say give me
Speaker 3: the key to the padlock or or you know, or else.
Speaker 3: I guess we're gonna hit you with the butt of
Speaker 3: the s gun. And Saxton is very brittle as usual.
Speaker 3: He's like no, and he throws the key out the
Speaker 3: window of the moving train. That's how how protective he
Speaker 3: is of his quote fossil. But they get it open anyway.
Speaker 3: I think they just get a guy with an axe too.
Speaker 3: This is I remember, one of the least convincing looking
Speaker 3: effects shots in the movie is the guy using the
Speaker 3: axe to open the crate because he's just kind of going.
Speaker 3: But they get it open, and what do they find inside?
Speaker 3: Is it the fossil? No, it is the baggage man
Speaker 3: with the hard boiled egg eyes and the blood running
Speaker 3: down his face, and thus the murder mystery begins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not only did the fossil beasts pick the lock
Speaker 2: and climb out, but killed the man, put him back
Speaker 2: in in in his place inside the crate, and then
Speaker 2: locked it up.
Speaker 3: Okay, from here on I think we should we should
Speaker 3: go in a little bit less by scene detail and
Speaker 3: instead talk in some of the broad strokes. But there
Speaker 3: is a lot of good stuff left to discuss. One
Speaker 3: of the things is, oh, you remember there's this there's
Speaker 3: this great scene where some of the scientific themes of
Speaker 3: the movie are articulated. So the Countess comes to visit
Speaker 3: Professor Saxton in his room while they're all dining, you know.
Speaker 3: So there's a shot in the dining car where Professor
Speaker 3: Wells and I believe Natasha are having dinner and Wells
Speaker 3: ends up seeing a boiled fish and its eyeball is
Speaker 3: entirely white, and he's like, look, the eyeball is white,
Speaker 3: and yet yet Vushenko, oh yev Tushenko, I think is
Speaker 3: his name, he's there and he's like, oh, yes, of
Speaker 3: course it's white. It's a boiled fish, and this is
Speaker 3: a reveal for some reason. But we also get the
Speaker 3: scene with Saxton and the Countess in his compartment where
Speaker 3: he's dining alone and she joins him, and she asks
Speaker 3: him about what it was in the crate, the importance
Speaker 3: of this fossil, and he says, well, well, this fossil
Speaker 3: is very important. It could change our entire understanding of
Speaker 3: science because it could prove correct the theory of evolution.
Speaker 3: And she's like, oh, no, evolution, that's immoral.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds evil or something. Yeah. It's like like no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: But I think that's how we're supposed to understand Professor Saxton.
Speaker 3: He's just very much devoted to the advancement of science
Speaker 3: and knowledge, to the point that, you know, if murders happen,
Speaker 3: that's just none of my business. Eventually, there are some
Speaker 3: more murders, and we get more scenes of characters becoming isolated,
Speaker 3: and when they get isolated, something comes up behind them
Speaker 3: and looks at them with red eyes, and then they
Speaker 3: too are left with the hard boiled egg eyes and
Speaker 3: the blood running out of them, and are eventually discovered.
Speaker 3: So there are there are multiple deaths by red eye
Speaker 3: hypnosis eventually leading up to a scene where there's sort
Speaker 3: of a false resolution of the conflict because there is
Speaker 3: a scene where Inspector Mirov catches the fossil creature, the
Speaker 3: sort of prehistoric ape creature with the red eye, in
Speaker 3: the act of doing a murder and then shoots it
Speaker 3: and it seems to fall down dead. The movie's over, right, So.
Speaker 2: At this point, as we've just got we've had bodies
Speaker 2: piling up, and then we also get the creature itself
Speaker 2: seemingly dead. We're gonna have to have some autopsies. We
Speaker 2: have like numerous autopsy scenes in this film, and they're
Speaker 2: all pretty great in that they're nice and gory and
Speaker 2: feel you feel like they're actually cutting into something. You
Speaker 2: know that the lighting's really nice. But we get some
Speaker 2: weird take homes from these autopsies and necropsies.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, do we ever. So yeah, there are a
Speaker 3: couple of different autopsies that reveal different things. One of
Speaker 3: them is the dissection of the victims of the prehistoric
Speaker 3: ape creature. So you know they're looking at them like, wow,
Speaker 3: the eyes are all messed up. But then for some
Speaker 3: reason doctor Wells is like, well, let's just saw this
Speaker 3: cranium open, get a look at that brain. I want
Speaker 3: to see the brain. So, you know, they cut the
Speaker 3: head open and they look at the brain and what
Speaker 3: do you know, there is not a wrinkle on it.
Speaker 3: There's a line involving one of my least favorite cliches
Speaker 3: in the English language. Miss Jones is looking at the
Speaker 3: dead guy's brain and she goes, smooth, it is a
Speaker 3: baby's bottom. And they show it and you know what,
Speaker 3: it's exactly right. There are no wrinkles. The brain just
Speaker 3: looks like it's like a butt. It's like a you know,
Speaker 3: it's got the line the hemisphere line down the middle,
Speaker 3: but it's like two butt cheeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Whatever this creature is doing to people, it is
Speaker 2: completely smoothing out their brain and turning it into just
Speaker 2: a big mass of smoothed out silly putty.
Speaker 3: Now, these scientists in the movie begin to explain what's
Speaker 3: going on there. They're like, well, you know, all the
Speaker 3: wrinkles in the brain represent all of your knowledge and memories.
Speaker 3: So if this creature is stealing the wrinkles out of
Speaker 3: people's brains and leaving the brain smooth as a baby's bottom,
Speaker 3: that means it is stealing all of their memories, so
Speaker 3: by killing them, it gains all of their knowledge.
Speaker 2: Okay, So at this point we can safely reveal that
Speaker 2: whatever this creature is, it keeps absorbing people's memories, absorbing
Speaker 2: their minds and moving forward through the train, through the
Speaker 2: plot with enhanced mental capabilities.
Speaker 3: That's right. And so it knows things like remember when
Speaker 3: we saw it bend to the nail and know how
Speaker 3: to pick a lock. One of the people it had
Speaker 3: already killed was the lock picker. Yeah, and so who
Speaker 3: all has it killed at this point? Wow, it really
Speaker 3: starts to get all kinds of knowledge. I think it
Speaker 3: gets the knowledge of because it kills Hellga Lina and
Speaker 3: she is revealed to be a spy, is that right?
Speaker 2: It had or a jewel thief, a jewel thief and
Speaker 2: or a spy. Okay, But because I think it gets
Speaker 2: her while she's stealing some jewels that are locked up
Speaker 2: in a safe.
Speaker 3: So it gets her kind of knowledge as a spy
Speaker 3: or a thief. It already has some thief knowledge about
Speaker 3: picking locks. It has the knowledge of the baggage man,
Speaker 3: which I guess is knowledge about like how the train
Speaker 3: works and everything. So it's just becoming more and more
Speaker 3: intellectually powerful as it piles up victims.
Speaker 2: Until it's shot and seemingly killed dead.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right. But once the ape creature is shot,
Speaker 3: they oh my god. Then begins another different type of
Speaker 3: dead body dissection, which is even better than the last one.
Speaker 3: So last time we learned about butt cheek brains. This
Speaker 3: time we're going to learn about how eyes work and
Speaker 3: the way eyes work in this movie. This is science
Speaker 3: is that if you stick a needle into an eyeball
Speaker 3: and extract some of the liquid inside it. I think
Speaker 3: in reality that's called aqueous humor or vitreous humor. The
Speaker 3: humor is inside the eyeball. You extract some of that
Speaker 3: in a needle, You squirt it out on a plate,
Speaker 3: and you put it under a magnifying glass. You can
Speaker 3: look into the liquid and see. At first, they say
Speaker 3: the last thing that the dead person saw before they died.
Speaker 3: And this actually does correspond to a pseudo scientific belief
Speaker 3: that people used to have what's this called retinal optography.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is something I remember discussing this with
Speaker 2: Christian at one point back on an older episode of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And yeah, it was the
Speaker 2: idea that you could that you could, as a forensic
Speaker 2: technique look at a person's eye and get an image
Speaker 2: of the last thing they saw, And so it ended
Speaker 2: up it was like cutting edge forensic info that was
Speaker 2: used in a lot of fiction of the time period
Speaker 2: of late nineteenth early twentieth century. So you know, by
Speaker 2: the time this movie is written and produced, it is
Speaker 2: very outdated and it's definitely been debunked. So it's but
Speaker 2: it is also kind of an interesting curio to throw in.
Speaker 2: It is always really stood out as just another like
Speaker 2: ludicrous aspect of this plot, along with discussions of what
Speaker 2: is and isn't a fossil and so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, well, no, it gets weirder because so I think
Speaker 3: the idea of that is you would look at the retina,
Speaker 3: you would like project through the retina and look on it,
Speaker 3: and you'd be able to see the last thing the
Speaker 3: person saw when they died, which is not correct, but
Speaker 3: this is like they're extracting little droplets of liquid from
Speaker 3: inside the eye.
Speaker 2: Right, they take it one step beyond, Like initially they
Speaker 2: pull up an image of the inspector shooting the monster. Okay,
Speaker 2: fair enough within the confines of the fiction of optography.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. But then they pull out an image
Speaker 2: of a dinosaur and they're looking at it on the microscope.
Speaker 2: It's like, look, this creature existed in the time of dinosaurs,
Speaker 2: because here is clear medical evidence that it once saw
Speaker 2: a brontosaurus in the wild.
Speaker 3: Right. It's looking at a Encyclopedia illustration from nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven of a brontosaurus, and it's just beautiful. This might
Speaker 3: have been my favorite moment of the whole movie when
Speaker 3: they got to the dinosaur. Yes. Oh, And it doesn't
Speaker 3: stop at the dinosaur because they're like, okay, so this
Speaker 3: thing was alive at the same time as dinosaurs, which
Speaker 3: is not true of any hominid human ancestor, you know,
Speaker 3: mammals at the time, there were no hominids. Yet then
Speaker 3: it gets weirder because they're like, okay, what's the next
Speaker 3: thing we can extract. They pull some more jelly out
Speaker 3: and they put it on another plate and they're looking
Speaker 3: at it and they're like, what's that. Oh, it's not
Speaker 3: a map. This is a picture of the Earth as
Speaker 3: seen from space. I was actually, I think this is
Speaker 3: a good scientific question. I don't know the answer right now.
Speaker 3: Maybe we can come back to this in listener mail
Speaker 3: or something. I was like, would somebody at the supposed
Speaker 3: time of this movie be able to recognize a picture
Speaker 3: of Earth from space? Obviously they never had a photograph
Speaker 3: of Earth's but would they have enough sort of ability
Speaker 3: to simulate what that would look like that they would
Speaker 3: recognize a real image.
Speaker 2: Of it, Well, especially if the imagery is lo fi,
Speaker 2: as seems to be the case here. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 2: like there maybe would be more room to misinterpret it
Speaker 2: as something else.
Speaker 3: But they immediately know what it is. They're like, this
Speaker 3: is the Earth from space, which means bomb, bumb bomb.
Speaker 3: This creature is not only from the time of the
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and able to absorb people's memories through its eyes,
Speaker 3: it also is an alien from outer space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the point where it's worth mentioning
Speaker 2: that some people say, well, this is obviously drawing a
Speaker 2: bit on the nineteen thirty eight sci fi horror novella
Speaker 2: by John W. Campbell, Who Goes There, which of course
Speaker 2: was the basis for the Thing from Another World John
Speaker 2: Carpenter's The Thing and so forth, Right, And you know,
Speaker 2: there are some parallels there. I don't know to what
Speaker 2: extent they you know, actually direct we based the plot
Speaker 2: of this film on who goes there, but you know,
Speaker 2: undeniable similarities.
Speaker 3: So we are learning all this, but roughly the same time,
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie, you think that the
Speaker 3: monster has been killed, but strangely, we're seeing some kind
Speaker 3: of other creature whose face is not revealed, sneaking around
Speaker 3: on the train with another werewolf hand. It's got the claws,
Speaker 3: it's got the fingers. What's going on here, Well, it
Speaker 3: seems that the creature has created a copy of itself
Speaker 3: through sort of backwards eyeball hypnosis, so it can steal
Speaker 3: other people's minds by staring into their eyes. But we
Speaker 3: learn it can also transmit its own soul with all
Speaker 3: of its memories, out of its eyes, so it can
Speaker 3: upload or download into somebody else's brain, and it has
Speaker 3: done that with Inspector Mirror. Bumb bumb boom, yet another twist.
Speaker 2: It makes sense though, because like the Missing Link was
Speaker 2: not its original form, it's just a form it occupied,
Speaker 2: and now it has a new host, but the whole
Speaker 2: monster hand, like now Mirov has the monster hand. And
Speaker 2: when I first saw that in my recent rewatch of it,
Speaker 2: I was like, did I miss something? How did has
Speaker 2: he get the monster hand on his body? There's no
Speaker 2: explanation for that, as I recall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. It just kind of grows that way
Speaker 3: once you transfer the soul through the eyes. I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love the results. It's a great monster
Speaker 2: hand and it adds to the creepiness of the host
Speaker 2: character here. But I never understood why this was supposed
Speaker 2: to happen. It doesn't seem to happen in subsequent transfers,
Speaker 2: just this one.
Speaker 3: Now, it's interesting that in this section of the movie,
Speaker 3: Mirov becomes a little bit while the monster is in Mirov.
Speaker 3: You get a little bit of sympathy for the monster
Speaker 3: because Mirov like goes to you have Tushenko, the scienceist,
Speaker 3: and he's like, hey, you're a scientist, right, you know
Speaker 3: things about gravity? Right? Do you know of any way
Speaker 3: to escape Earth's gravity? Yeah, which would be kind of
Speaker 3: a strange question coming from just a Russian imperial investigator.
Speaker 3: But the scientist is like, oh, yes, actually, my mentor
Speaker 3: was the inventor of rockets. We can discuss rockets. And
Speaker 3: Mirov's like, no need to discuss, and then he hypnotdes
Speaker 3: him in the eyes kills him, steals all of his
Speaker 3: rocket knowledge. So this this creature just wants to get home.
Speaker 3: I think it wants to build a rocket and escape Earth.
Speaker 2: I think the other interesting thing to look at with
Speaker 2: this character, the being from another world here is that
Speaker 2: as it absorbs information from each victim, that alters its
Speaker 2: identity to some extent. And so in a way, by
Speaker 2: absorbing rational characters and even you know character with not
Speaker 2: only rationable but maybe you know, you know, other sensibilities,
Speaker 2: these end up changing its own cognitive state. And so
Speaker 2: you know, it is more relatable at this point because
Speaker 2: of who it is killed and absorbed. But if it
Speaker 2: makes some missteps in who it kills and absorbs, well
Speaker 2: things could change, and we do see that change coming up.
Speaker 3: That's right. So all this middle of the movie Intrigue
Speaker 3: goes on for a while, there are more murders, more
Speaker 3: plotting by the being in the guise of Mirov. But
Speaker 3: eventually a big sort of shift occurs because the train
Speaker 3: is stopped along the way and the authorities intervene, and
Speaker 3: that authority is in the form of Tellisivalis Now. I
Speaker 3: gotta be honest, I don't even remember what Telly Sivalis's
Speaker 3: goal is when he gets on the train, I think
Speaker 3: he's just like something is going wrong on the train
Speaker 3: and he's intervening for some reason. But he shows up
Speaker 3: and just starts barking orders at Everybody's like everyone on
Speaker 3: this train is under arrest, all under arrest.
Speaker 2: Basically, he's a drunken regional tyrant. Yes, and he is
Speaker 2: totally going to enact his will on the train. And
Speaker 2: his whole thing is like, you've got some sort of
Speaker 2: murders going on here. Well, I think we just need
Speaker 2: to like apply beatings to everybody until we get the truth. Yes,
Speaker 2: and he's not. He's just into the beatings as he
Speaker 2: is into finding the truth, if not more into the beatings. Again,
Speaker 2: regional tyrant, and it is endangering everything.
Speaker 3: There's also a whole subplot here where like I think
Speaker 3: the Count is trying to transport some special kind of steel.
Speaker 3: There's like a like a technology spy caper going on.
Speaker 3: You remember this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems seems a little much for the duration
Speaker 2: of the picture to have this as an added B
Speaker 2: or C plot, but okay, we haven't.
Speaker 3: That's I think that's just yet another thing that the
Speaker 3: alien kills somebody to absorb. He's like, tell me about
Speaker 3: this steel hypnotade. And then eventually what happens, though, is
Speaker 3: that teleisivalis after giving this eight monologue scene where he's
Speaker 3: just bullying everybody around on the train, there is a
Speaker 3: violent confrontation and he mortally wounds Merov. He and his
Speaker 3: men do and so what's gonna happen? Oh, the creature
Speaker 3: is trapped in there. Well, meanwhile, we've seen some developments
Speaker 3: in Father Pooh Jardov, who is I don't know, not
Speaker 3: quite so committed to the Christian God anymore.
Speaker 2: He sees clear evidence that the Inspector is possessed, and
Speaker 2: he believes it to be Satan. He's like, like, Satan,
Speaker 2: let me serve you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like Satan. Satan is where it's at, you know.
Speaker 3: He's if you can't be with the one you love,
Speaker 3: love the one you're with, and it's Satan. So he
Speaker 3: thinks it's Satan, and he's like, Satan, come in to me,
Speaker 3: come in to me, and so the Satan does.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if he actually explains this, but it
Speaker 2: maybe becomes a little clear that I'm not actually Satan.
Speaker 2: I'm an alien from another world. Who's been trapped in
Speaker 2: life forms throughout Earth's history.
Speaker 3: Good enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was like works for me over, let's do it.
Speaker 2: But he's he's like, he's like, come into me, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't want you. There's nothing in your
Speaker 2: mind I need, which is you know him kind of
Speaker 2: you know, as a slam. But it's also it implies
Speaker 2: like it knows that if I absorbed this man's consciousness
Speaker 2: and thoughts, it is going to perhaps be a detriment
Speaker 2: to my mission and my attempt to escape here because
Speaker 2: this is an unhinged individual with a lot of dangerous
Speaker 2: ideas and values in his head.
Speaker 3: Yes, uh, yeah, so I love this relationship. Actually it's
Speaker 3: it's funny and it's weird and all that. But he
Speaker 3: does end up going into the body of the monk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this leads into our big showdown where a
Speaker 2: number of things are happening at once. There's the raising
Speaker 2: of the dead, like all the people that have been
Speaker 2: killed thus far are brought back as red eyed zombies. Uh.
Speaker 2: There's an attempt to to to get the survivor into
Speaker 2: the baggage car and then detach it because at the
Speaker 2: same time, the authorities have received a signal that oh, well,
Speaker 2: we need to send this train off the side of
Speaker 2: a cliff because there's something terrible on it. And they're like,
Speaker 2: why would we have to do that. I mean, it
Speaker 2: must be something related to war, so we got to
Speaker 2: do it. So a number of things here coming to
Speaker 2: a head. And we also get a big final showdown
Speaker 2: between Christopher Lee's character Saxton and the alien that is
Speaker 2: possessing now Father poojardiv's body, and we get some nice
Speaker 2: discussion about their goals.
Speaker 3: I think the alien tries to tempt Saxton into helping
Speaker 3: it by offering him knowledge, you know. Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is what Saxton was saying earlier on. Saxton was like,
Speaker 3: I don't really care about the people who have died.
Speaker 3: I only care about advancing scientific knowledge. And then what
Speaker 3: do you know, at the end of the aliens like, look,
Speaker 3: just let me kill all these people and I'll give
Speaker 3: you great technology and knowledge. You can advance science by
Speaker 3: one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So it's you know, it's it's a legitimate temptation.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, here is someone who has or
Speaker 2: something that has existed, you know, through for large expanses
Speaker 2: of Earth's history, and also has knowledge of worlds beyond
Speaker 2: the earth and technologies beyond earth capabilities. But is it
Speaker 2: worth all of this death and perhaps future death and madness?
Speaker 2: And ultimately, Christopher Lee's character says no, I don't want
Speaker 2: any part of that.
Speaker 3: Saxton refuses, and in the end, the heroes work together
Speaker 3: to uncouple the what is it the break car something
Speaker 3: want one of the cars from the rest of the
Speaker 3: train so that it can separate, while the rest of
Speaker 3: the train is sent off the edge of a cliff
Speaker 3: with all of the with the alien and all of
Speaker 3: the zombies it has created within it. Wait, I can't
Speaker 3: did you already say it resurrects zombies.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, resurrected a bunch of red eyed zombies. So
Speaker 2: even like undead Telly Savalis is walking around. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: I like the commitment because these look like very uncomfortable
Speaker 2: contacts that everyone is wearing. Yes, and I'm kind of
Speaker 2: I'm kind of glad that even the bigger build stars
Speaker 2: also had to wear them. But yeah, the train goes
Speaker 2: off a cliff, blows up, and this is the first
Speaker 2: time we really or at least I really realized, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a model train, mainly because you know, they're
Speaker 2: not going to send an actual train, multiple train cars
Speaker 2: off of a cliff. But it still looks pretty good,
Speaker 2: still looks it's a pretty good model.
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, And do I remember right that we get no
Speaker 3: comment whatsoever from our heroes at the end of the film.
Speaker 3: It's just the car goes the train goes off the tracks, explodes,
Speaker 3: and that's the end.
Speaker 2: There's no closing monologue. I think you know it's the
Speaker 2: it's the seventies at this point. You know, the preachiness
Speaker 2: of the fifties and sixties is over. In the seventies,
Speaker 2: it's more of a gosh, what can I tell you?
Speaker 2: There's ancient evil out there in the world, and the
Speaker 2: future is uncertain. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just got to run trains off of a cliff.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if we had had christ Perlee saying
Speaker 3: he learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature.
Speaker 2: It would have sort of worked, you know, all right?
Speaker 2: So that's horror express it sure is. Again, this is
Speaker 2: a super fun one. I highly recommend seeking it out
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it, and if you have seen it, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a fun one to revisit, you'll always find
Speaker 2: something new, a lot of fun plot elements, a lot
Speaker 2: of fun performances, a real treat. Just a reminder to
Speaker 2: everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: This week they were both train related, related to Haunted
Speaker 2: Trains and ghost Trains, so check those out if you
Speaker 2: haven't already. But on Fridays we set aside most series
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film, such as
Speaker 2: this one on Weird House Cinema. If you want a
Speaker 2: full list of all the movies we've covered on Weird
Speaker 2: House over the years, and even a peek ahead at
Speaker 2: what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot com. It's
Speaker 2: L E T T E R B O x D
Speaker 2: dot com and our user name there is weird House.
Speaker 2: That's what you'll find.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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