Best Fiends:
The friendship between horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing
Horror Express (1972)
Directed by Eugenio Martin
Written by Arnaud d’Usseau, Julian Zimet
Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Telly Savalas
Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes
Rated R for moderate violence, consumption of adult beverages, intense and frightening scenes
Currently streaming on Shudder, Night Flight, Kanopy, Tubi, Roku, AMC+, others
By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar
Appearing together in twenty-four films across a thirty-five year span, undisputed horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing elevated genre films and deepened a friendship that would endure throughout their lives. Despite being the nineteenth film to feature the pair, Horror Express marked the only film in which they appeared together onscreen as allies.
They’re not exactly playing best buds in Horror Express, more like frenemies; professional rivals in their Geological Society. Christopher Lee is Professor Saxton, an anthropologist returning from an adventure via the Trans-Siberian Express with the frozen remains of a creature he believes to be the Missing Link. Peter Cushing plays Dr. Wells who just happens to be traveling on the same train for unrelated reasons. The differences between these two men are underlined in their first scene together: having come all this way with an enormous crate containing his specimen, Saxton is told that despite his attempt to reserve passage, there’s no room left on the train. His attempts to argue with the ticket master are falling upon deaf ears when Wells appears in the doorway. After greeting Saxton with a snarky “Well, well. Look who’s here…”, Wells simply bribes the man, instantly securing his tickets. “They call it ‘push’ in China. ‘Know how’ in America.” he taunts. Saxton responds “In Britain we call it bribery and corruption!” before attempting to just intimidate the ticket agent, clearing his desk with one sweep of his walking stick.
Saxton is a man of action; a tough adventurer exploring the world searching for its secrets, while Wells is a somewhat stuffy intellectual who would prefer not to get his hands dirty metaphorically. This dichotomy is representative of the two actors’ personas in general. Lee famously thought that Cushing brought gravitas and intelligence to the various films he appeared in; to film itself, while Lee viewed himself more as a physical actor. After finally meeting on 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein (though this was their 4th shared feature, they’d never shared scenes or met in person before) they instantly clicked due to these perceived differences in their performance styles. When a scene required Cushing’s intelligent air of dignity, Lee had no trouble allowing his fast friend the spotlight knowing that when a scene inevitably called for his eye-catching theatricality, Cushing would return the favor.
When the time came to put Horror Express together, Cushing was Lee’s first suggestion for the gently antagonistic yet ultimately convivial Wells, not only for the benefit of the film but for Cushing’s benefit also. In early 1971 Helen, Cushing’s wife of nearly 30 years, had passed away from emphysema and according to his own autobiography, Cushing was so devastated that he attempted to give himself a heart attack by running up and down the stairs of his home. In the intervening months Cushing had fallen into despair, suffering from night terrors and lacking in all enjoyment. The thing about Cushing was that he was a consummate professional who would show up on set having committed not only the dialogue for his character to memory, but the dialogue of all of his co-stars as well. Lee believed that Cushing’s commitment to his craft could be the thing to keep his mind off of his grief, and finally managed to convince Cushing to take the role. For the most part Lee was right, though when not actively working, Cushing was still very depressed and in fact his night terrors were so bad that Lee took to sleeping in bed with him so that he never woke up in a strange location alone.
That kind of friendship is legitimately beautiful and that it manifested in this film where the two were finally on the same side of a conflict has a wonderful sense of symmetry to it. It honestly feels almost in poor taste to pivot to discussing the film itself, and if it was a worse movie, it might actually be too much, but Horror Express is actually quite good. A very slow burn, the story of Horror Express (based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s story “Who Goes There?”, the same source material as 1951’s The Thing From Another World, and thus also John Carpenter’s 1982 remake) unfolds with subtlety that you might miss on the first viewing. I enjoyed my second go-round even more than the first.
My initial thoughts as the story began to unspool itself before me was that we might get something a bit like the Creepshow segment “The Crate” where the creature in the box might not just be perfectly preserved, but still alive and might then run rampant on the train. But while Saxton & Wells (Lee & Cushing respectively, remember) are hashing out their travel accommodations, a thief attempts to pick the lock on the crate only to have the creature inside kill him instantly using era-appropriate 1970s red lightbulb death eyes. This draws the attention of Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza) an Eastern Orthodox monk who proclaims whatever is inside the box to be the work of Satan! Saxton of course dismisses the claim as superstitious poppycock and still, no one knows the creature is actually alive.
Intrigued, Wells bribes a porter to investigate the contents of the crate once everything has been loaded onto the train and the unlucky porter is killed when the creature itself picks the lock in the manner the thief was attempting to. Though it won’t be expressly (no pun intended) stated until a little further along in the run time, the thing that fascinated me pretty quickly was that the creature seemed to have learned a skill via the same psychic (?) supernatural (?) ability that allowed it to kill with just a look. Think of it as some kind of deadly two-way Vulcan mind-meld. That in and of itself would make for a very interesting contained thriller: the creature absorbing the knowledge and skills of its victims, but Horror Express throws one more major monkey wrench into reasonable horror movie expectations by killing the creature about halfway through!
Via some autopsies of the victims, which reveal eyes that were boiled white and brains rendered completely smooth, we come to find that the creature is not what we initially thought it was, or what it was shown to be. The creature has no true form and is a presence; some kind of energy or spirit which allows for the two-way thought transfer and also allows it to inhabit chosen bodies meaning that what we initially thought of as “the creature” (a charmingly janky-looking gorilla fursuit with a leathery neolithic skull face) was just a host. After the creature is shot down by a police inspector (Julio Peña), it possesses his body. The only telltale signs are a monstrous right hand (for some reason) and his glowing red lightbulb death eyes which are only visible in the dark. So while Saxton, Wells, and Wells’ associate, virologist Miss Jones (Alice Reinheart) are attempting to make sense of what’s been going on, the beast in his new form is still on the loose!
I won’t give the whole thing away here, as I personally loved watching it roll out before my eyes. It’s not so much that I think this can be spoiled - it’s a well-known story after all - but rather the way in which everything plays out in the latter half is just so much fun to experience. Since the film is set in the beginning of the 20th century, the screenplay has some fun with scientific knowledge and opinion at that time by referencing the belief that the last thing one sees before death is imprinted on the eye which was almost cutting edge for a film set in 1906. And I haven’t even mentioned Telly Savalas, who gives a wild, swaggering performance as Cossack officer Kazan while doing nothing to hide his New Yawk accent!
Yet as much as I enjoyed it overall, the story of the friendship behind the scenes is what really makes this film most notable for me. So as we here at MovieJawn celebrate the life of the inimitable Christopher Lee by observing his May 27th birthday, let us also spare a thought for his fast friend and lifelong pal Peter Cushing - born May 26th - whom Lee referred to as “...the most gentle and generous of men”. After Cushing’s passing in 1994, Lee remarked “I have often said he died because he was too good for this world”. I hope that wherever they and their shared pal and collaborator the great Vincent Price - also born on May 27th! - have ended up, that they know how much they mean to so many of us. Happy birthday gentlemen, and thank you.
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