Wednesday

How to derail the Horror Express? Send in Kojak!

been a bit lax folks I know, but to be fair that's what happens when you relocate to a horrid southern locale ridden with crime, horrible police forces, terrible food, and the worst weather ever. did i mention NO DRIVE IN!? seriously!? i could/should have been spending more time catching up the dedictated reader(s) i have on some titles i've taken in instead of making a nice comfy grip on the non business end of a louisville slugger so's i don't get a blister when i cave in the skull of the very next mongrel criminal i find walking around near the backyard after sundown. trust me folks it won't take long for one to show up. gah....the south, anywhere but Texas!

you guys remember the show Kojak right? ugh, probably not, but Kojak was this bad-butt teevee cop played by renown bad-butt baldy Telly Savalas. here's every episode of the show ok? ole' Koj would land a case, usually murder or if youre Kojak, "mur-dah", then he'd put on a floor length mink coat, suck a dozen lollipops, kick down six doors, bust three heads, solve one case and then say "who loves ya' baby?" roll credits! i bring up this small screen nonsense only because Telly shows up in the third reel of our movie this time out...chugga chugga toot toot, Horror Express.

Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly and guess what it's not a Hammer production folks. i'm not gonna take the time to research it but i'm gonna say this was an Italian backed movie about two Englishmen, sixty Russians, and one mad monkey looking missing link man thing with glowing red eyes and a temper because he's been thawed out and has some sorta alien being inhabiting his Chewbacca like bod. back it up you say? uhh no sir.. full steam ahead!

so Lee plays an archeologist who finds a possible missing link creature frozen in the Himalayas. well hell doc let's box him up and load him on a train and get the plot moving shall we? once on the train, Lee and Cushing do a lot of yammering with the aristocratic passengers while our crate creature wakes up and starts having red eyed staring contests with baggage handlers and other non essential characters and the end result is them ending up white eyed and dead. bodies start to pile, our two main men Cushing and Lee catch on and i guess because it was in the effects budget, autopsies start happening. after turning a few dead peoples skulls into flip lid convertibles with a hacksaw and poking a few eyeballs (in close-up thank you) with some syringes our docs discover that the walking throw rug monster man is only a host organism for an ancient alien being that's been around since the dinosaurs. what? yeah, so this thing's running amok on the train and turning people into white eyed corpses and then thankfully it gets shot full of holes and falls over dead. the end? you wish! we still have a train to wreck off a cliff here folks. for what? well because before fur-foot kicks the lunch bucket the alien thing jumps into another body. this time a dodgey policeman who comes with a freaky fur hand to match. then that guy gets shot down and then the alien jumps into a mad and butt butt butt ugly monk who we're introduced to back in reel one but he's got the kinda face you just wanna forget for the whole movie and you hope to god he got off at an earlier stop. sigh, he doesn't, and the next thing you know he's the one sporting the evil red eyes and goin' on about satan and what not. remember Kojak? then all the sudden he gets on the train with a bunch of sword swinging Cossacks and they start stabbing fools and taking names. action upon action here in the late going right? so funky monk alien man then is able to resurrect all the dead white eyes that have been piling up and all the sudden it's the full on zombie express with the throttle pinned to the WTF? setting. so quick thinking Lee and Cushing get anyone who isn't a mangled monk alien or a zombie onto the caboose, unhitch the locomotive and that thing model railroads right into a miniature ravine taking all the zombie cars along with it. el Kaboomy blam-O!! roll 'em Smokey!

not a bad movie this Horror Express, decent effects for the 70s. they include gross out close-up eyeball prodding, skull sawing, blood squirting eyes, shish kebab sword play, evil alien infested chewbacca, the best worst looking annoying mad monk ever, and one model train explosion. worth your 86 minutes. the trailer is in German here but that figures when your'e dealing with an Italian movie staring iconic Brits and a bunch of other Italians playing Russians. points for Telly Savalas showing up in the final half hour to show that Kojak don't play.

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