What I’m watching: a return to movies made for the drive-in

Date: 1/30/2019

What I’m watching: it’s a return to movies made for the drive-in.

On Blu-ray: Horror Express

Arrow Video has done something financially risky: they have done a wonderful restoration of the film that is the public domain. Normally this does not happen, as a video producer wants to be sure the film they are presenting is exclusive from them.

I’m thrilled that Arrow took the risk because “Horror Express” is one of the most enjoyable “drive-in” films from the 1970s. The disk contains special features that had been shot for a release by Severin Films in 2011.

A key to the success of low budget filmmaking is writing a script that exploits strengths of the production. In some cases, it’s the cast. In other cases it access to special effects or it’s a location.

For this film it was a detailed model train that was made for the film “Pancho Villa” also made by Bernard Gordon, producer of “Horror Express.”

Director and co-writer Eugenio Martin helped craft a film around this sumptuous prop, as well as two well-appointed turn of the 20th century train car sets. The result is a stylish film that looked more expensive than it was.

Coupling the look of the film with a clever script. Christopher Lee is a scientist who has found frozen in a cave in China the remains of a humanoid creature that he believes may be the missing link between ape and man.

He is transporting this fossil back to Great Britain on the Trans-Siberian train from Peking to Moscow. On the same train is Doctor Wells (Peter Cushing) a friend of sorts and fellow scientist. Saxon’s secrecy about his discovery only piques Wells’ curiosity. He bribes the baggage car attendant to open the sealed crate to catch a glimpse of what’s inside.

The baggage car man winds up dead, the “fossil” is missing and other people on the train are turning up dead as well in am inexplicable way.

“Horror Express” has many admirable qualities. The script is original in its setting and ideas. Some historians have noted the script may have been inspired by Joseph W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” that was also inspiration for “The Thing.”

The sets are richly decorated and the film moves along at nice pace, establishing characters and situations quickly. There are some bloody moments, typical for a film of its time, but nothing extreme.

And there is the pleasure of seeing Lee and Cushing, frequent co-stars and off-screen close friends, in roles that were atypical of what they normally played at Hammer Studios.

In the last act, Telly Savalas turns up as a Cossack policeman. Savalas chews the scenery in a delightful way, providing a stylistic counter-point to the more subtle performances from lee and Cushing

All in all, a fun film that is well-worth discovering or re-discovering in a pristine form.

On Blu-ray: The Children

As much as “Horror Express” shows what can be done with a low budget “The Children”  (1980) is an example of when a filmmaker overreaches.

My buddy Stephen Bissette sent me a copy of this limited edition release from our friends at Vinegar Syndrome because it was shot in Western Massachusetts, specifically the Berkshires communities of Sheffield and Great Barrington.    

I hadn’t heard of it and was immediately interested.

The plot is slim: a group of school children in a small new England town are coming home on their school bus when it is driven through a cloud of radioactive vapors. The children are changed into some sort of zombie and when they hug their loved ones, they burn to death.  The sheriff and what family members in the town who are still alive must figure out a way to stop them.

There are some pretty laughable ways, but I stayed with it to see the Berkshire countryside.  The performances are over the top and the end of the film is telegraphed and is totally predictable.

At best it’s an oddity for those of us who like to keep track of movies that are made here.