7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.8 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.1 |
An English anthropologist has discovered a frozen monster in the frozen wastes of Manchuria which he believes may be the Missing Link. He brings the creature back to Europe aboard a trans-Siberian express, but during the trip the monster thaws out and starts to butcher the passengers one by one.
Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly Savalas, Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia TortosaHorror | 100% |
Foreign | 29% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Castilian Spanish.
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 2.0 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
By the 1970s, gothic horror B-movies—popularized in the U.K. by Hammer Horror Productions’ Dracula and Frankenstein films, and in
the U.S. by Roger Corman’s Edger Allan Poe adaptations—were beginning to go out of style. The horror genre was evolving and branching into separate
stems, producing violent new social commentaries like Night of the Living Dead and modern psychological thrillers like Rosemary’s
Baby. Audiences no longer seemed as interested in fusty Victorian-era tales of mouldering graves, fog-enshrouded castles, and corpses reanimated
by mad scientists.
But like the undead, gothic horror continued to shamble onward, mostly outside of the Hollywood and British systems. In Italy, Dario Argento
transplanted gothic aesthetics to the giallo, and the murderous Knights Templar revenants of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series
kept the traditions of the genre alive—so to speak—in Spain. And then there’s Spanish director Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express, a film so
inspired by Hammer Films that—in an ingenious casting coup by producer Bernard Gordon—it features Hammer’s two biggest stars, Peter Cushing and
Christopher Lee, in one of their final movie appearances together. Horror Express has long been a cult favorite for fans of sub-mainstream
gothic horror, and for good reason—the two leads are brilliant together, and the general atmosphere of the film is creepy, old-fashioned, sometimes
over-the-top fun.
Cushing and Lee
Horror Express falls in the public domain, so over the years it's been treated—like Night of the Living Dead—to numerous shoddy VHS and DVD editions. There was a semi-decent DVD release of the movie by Image Entertainment several years ago, but this Blu-ray disc by Severin is now the definitive home video version of the film, for better or worse. The picture here is watchable, and probably the best the film has ever looked on video, but the presentation is seriously flawed. Severin has supposedly gone back to the film's original 35mm negatives for an all-new remaster, resulting in a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's one step forwards and two steps back. The source materials aren't perfect, and you'll notice a range of minor print damage—specks and small scratches throughout, some slight color fluctuations and occasional brightness flickering—but the film looks decent considering its age and budget. In terms of clarity, the transfer is more than adequately defined; remastering the movie in high definition has yielded never-before-seen details in facial texture, costuming, and monster make-up. Color is satisfyingly dense and balanced nicely too—from skin tones to the blue Cassock uniforms to the glowing red eyes—and black levels are as deep as they need to be while mostly preserving shadow detail. But it all goes wrong in the last stage of the transfer—the encode itself. Where this disc falters—and falters hard—is in the unholy amount of compression visible here, from buzzing noise to full-on macroblocking. If you've got a smaller screen you might not notice it as much, but on anything larger than a 40" you'll spot errant video errors galore. It's definitely distracting, and it gives the picture a strange digital glitchiness. It's a shame the film's presentation was crippled in the final step.
The disc includes the Spanish and English versions of the film, but unfortunately both are lossy, the former in Dolby Digital Stereo and the latter in Dolby Digital Mono. The English mix is the default, and it's the one you'll probably want to stick with, since it features the voices of Cushing and Lee. The tracks are listenable, and about what you'd expect for a low-budget horror movie from the early 1970s, but they could definitely sound better with a little love, attention, and digital remastering. John Cacavas' score is truly memorable—it has a whistled theme that'll probably be whistling yourself for days—but the high-end here is a bit brash, and even peaks and crackles occasionally. You'll also hear this in certain sound effects, like wind. The dubbed voices are synced quite well, but you will notice that some of the dialogue has a somewhat muffled, hollow quality. This is almost certainly due to the original recording techniques, and it never gets to the point of unintelligibility, but it is worth noting. You might also hear a quiet hiss from time to time in the background if you listen closely. There are no subtitle options available.
I just can't resist any murder mystery or horror film that takes place on a train. (Well, besides Midnight Meat Train.) It's the perfect place for the macabre—confined and claustrophobia-inducing, moving relentlessly forward while the characters are stuck together inside. Horror Express is low-budget, B-movie goodness through and through, with a cleverly written sci-fi monster, a great science vs. faith subplot of sorts, and the always welcome pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, the two gothic horror greats. Unfortunately, Severin's Blu-ray treatment of the film is severely compromised by compression, with a lossy audio track and an encode that has more artifacts than an ancient Egyptian tomb. The film is great, but I can't find it in myself to recommend this Blu-ray release.
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