Movie review: Horror Express (1972)

Horror Express (1972), also known as Panic on the Trans-Siberian, is an unbelievably hokey film with plot points that are unclear, character motivations that defy sense, and science that would make your sixth-grade biology teacher weep. Yet I really enjoyed the film, because it’s genuinely creepy and contains a carefully constructed sense of menace. Yes, a lot of it doesn’t make sense upon reflection, but it’s fast paced enough that any story issues don’t jar the audience out of the film’s mood.

Apart from the establishing moments of the film’s beginning, the action takes place entirely onboard a trans-Siberian locomotive. Anthropologist Christopher Lee is a passenger with a mysterious crate — the contents of which have already raised the ire of the film’s mad monk who warns that the deadly hand of Satan is nearby. Helping Lee ignore the predictions of doom is Peter Cushing, an English doctor with a morbid and overwhelming curiosity of Lee’s business.

The contents of the crate, as revealed in the film’s beginning, are the frozen remains of the “missing link” — a two million-year-old half-man, half-ape creature who would represent a fundamental change in the scientific community (if the term “paradigm shift” has been invented at the time, they would have used it). But if you think that this specimen will simply remain a scientific curiosity or won’t, for…