Tag: film

Friday the 13th: A Halloween Journey

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

When I first made The Horror Doctor, I was fascinated with the idea of Strains and Mutations. By no means I have been particularly exhaustive when exploring what could have been in the horror genre – specifically the cinematic, which is where my Blog tends to go – but I feel that there is a somewhat healthy medium between looking at what happened, and speculating on what could have been in a genre as mutable as horror. 

Halloween has come and gone, both the holiday and the series. And yes, I know that the day and franchise themselves will return – like all undead creatures or slasher killers tend to do. But consider the following.

Most horror fans probably know that John Carpenter and Debra Hill wanted to expand the Halloween series beyond The Shape – beyond Michael Myers. In 1982, Halloween III: The Season of the Witch came out. Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis were both presumably dead, destroyed in a hospital fire a year before, leaving Laurie Strode to recover from her trauma, and the terror of Silver Shamrock and its Halloween products for children and adults alike would make humanity fear Samhain again. But audiences wanted their clear-cut avatar of darkness. They wanted Michael back.

But just as Halloween returns, so does Friday the 13th. Again, most fanatics know that Sean Cunningham wanted to emulate the story beats of Halloween, and after the story of The Shape was seemingly over, he and writer Victor Miller introduced the world to the idea of Jason Voorhees in 1980. Interestingly enough, both Halloween and Friday the 13th came as their third films in 1982, but what is fascinating is that after the first Friday the 13th, the film series gained another producer in the person of Frank Mancuso Jr.

And it seems as though the creators of the second Friday the 13th film, director Steven Miner and writer Ron Kurz, also wanted to make the film series an anthology and changed their minds, perhaps the decision also had something to do with Frank Mancuso Jr.  Mancuso Jr. not only produced Parts Two and Three of Friday the 13th, but he also helped create another series. Originally called The 13th Hour, this television series made by Mancuso Jr. and Larry B. Williams was renamed Friday the 13th because Mancuso Jr. believed it would attract more viewers. And while Mancuso Jr. said that it was still a play on the idea of a dark and unlucky day, it can’t be denied that the title itself would bring in fans of a certain other franchise of the same name. But Friday the 13th: The Series is a different beast from its film namesake. Jason Voorhees never appears, or is even referenced in the show, unlike Michael Myers who actually exists as a fictional character in his own first Halloween film shown in Season of the Witch.

Friday the 13th: The Series is a television series released in 1987, after Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, where two adolescents named Micki Foster and Ryan Dallion inherit an antique store filled with cursed artifacts given to their late, and aptly named, Uncle Lewis Vendredi by the Devil. This framework allows them to keep having some kind of new evil to combat every episode while also granting the opportunity to have antagonists, and allies that recur whenever the plot needs them. The series itself ran until 1990, and while it isn’t perfect – sometimes the various plot points grow contrived, awkward, and flat-out ridiculous – Friday the 13th: The Series functions as something of an assortment of different candies all wrapped up in the same grab-bag. I especially love the fact that the series not only starts off during Halloween, much like its how its spiritual namesake was inspired from another Halloween, the cousins even have the assistance of a former stage magician and occultist – a more benevolent Uncle Jack Marshak to help them deal with the cursed artifacts that they need to collect and from which to protect the lives of others.

Fittingly enough, at least from my perspective, what Halloween failed to do in film as an anthological series, Friday the 13th almost succeeded in accomplishing as a television serial. Perhaps if Laurie Strode had continued in other films unrelated to Michael Myers, or if The Shape had never truly been vanquished from the first film and recurred as a background character in others, or as a revenant that could potentially return in other settings even with Haddonfield as a determinator, both John Carpenter and Debra Hill might have almost achieved what they originally sought. It might also be possible that had Miner, Kurz, or even Mancuso Jr. kept Crystal Lake as a location, they could have built a larger world and referenced it in relation to another bit of folklore they could have built upon. I mean, look at Jason Voorhees himself and his transformation from a waterlogged deformed child, to an imitation of the Moonlight Killer, to the iconic hockey masked fiend we all know and fear.

Horror is a mythology and a process. Monstrosities, and their stories, do not come up ready made and whole. They are a messy process. And who knows if it might have been possible to lean into that development, into that dark and bloody journey of figuring out what something horrible is, and how it can be faced, and encourage audiences to want to follow along. Imagine it as another dark road not traveled. It’s awesome where we have already been, but these creative nightmares are always something fun on which to speculate. 

Red Lips in the Castle of Blood

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

“I loathe that portrait.” Julia Alert says, her elbow locked with her companion’s, her nose upturned, the scowl on her perfect face all too clear.

Valerie looks up at the framed painting on the wall, inclining her white blonde hair slowly, glacially, in deliberate consideration. “It is a beautiful piece of art. The artist captured, at least, the surface feeling of you. Your forbidding look. Your tempestuousness. Your passion.”

Both women wear fine lace gowns, low cut, their skirts billowing out at the ground like flowers. Julia’s dress is made from a fine black material, while Valerie’s is white. Julia regards her companion, and her dark eyes seem to smoulder almost as much as that of her likeness in her painting. “Flattery.” She pats Valerie’s hand. “I’ll admit,” her eyes narrow, “that is the first time someone had assumed that this was my portrait, and not that of an ancestor’s.” Her eyes narrow. “Or an ancestor of Elisabeth’s.”

A faint smile forms on Valerie’s lips. “Interesting. It seems as though we have been both defined by an Elizabeth in our lives.”

Valerie’s pronunciation of the name comes out as a drawl, a dactyl vanishing in the shadows of the torchlit castle hall. Julia inclines her head, a resigned but amused smile acknowledging the other woman, as though noting that detail as well. She runs a hand through her dark golden hair as she turns back to look at the painting. “Do not misunderstand, Valerie. I used to love this portrait. It is well done. It has lasted years. Even decades. It was made to capture my beauty. To celebrate it. That is what they tell me.”

“But it is just so still. So … static.”

Julia stares, directly. The latter woman, for her part, keeps her eyes on the painting above them both, looking down at them all. “Yes. Precisely.” She regards her companion with as much intensity and focus as Valerie had the painting, before looking back at her facsimile and shaking her head. “I am tired. Of being here. Of being stuck here. In this place. In that time. Never changing. Never moving. A pretty good little thing to entertain, but that is all the meaning there will ever be. Just a bauble to be admired in an old house always having the same parties.”

Valerie takes Julia’s arm more firmly, inclining them away from the painting. They start to walk. Slowly. Languidly. It’s as though their gown hems are gliding on air. Julia takes one last look at her picture before moving full step, side by side, with Valerie. “I’m sorry.” She says, after a time. “I used to enjoy these ballroom parties. These celebrations. But I forget myself. There is nothing that can be changed. That is what I said. That is what I told her –” She sighs, and looks down for a moment, a rueful quirk forming on the corners of her mouth.

“You mean, to your Elisabeth.”

“Every time.” Julia says, without hesitation, caught in her own inner momentum as Valerie steers them onward. They move through the corridors, away from the music, away from the conversation, the sounds becoming more distant, ethereal, lost to time. “But it seems, at times, as though I’ve trouble heeding my own advice.”

Valerie moves her head, slowly back and forth, a bemused expression on her face. “If only our portraits could rot from our excesses and debauches, showing the marks of our years and experience, while we celebrate our lives, young and whole, eternally.” She sees the blank look on her companion’s face. “I believe that came from the work of an Irish author, of your Commonwealth?”

Julia rolls her eyes. “Probably after our time. Though it does sound familiar. Perhaps one of our other guests mentioned it in passing.”

“And imprisoned as well. Broken by it, at the end.” Valerie looks out into the darkness around them. “Perhaps you can only celebrate, only flout life, so many times before the walls of your bower become your fortress, become your jail, and then your only company. Your tomb.” Valerie stops, suddenly, her white dress standing out in the gloom. She places both hands on Julia’s shoulders, leaning in, conspiratorial, smirking. “And so, you continue. You defy that end. You escape those walls. That fate. A coward dies a thousand deaths, but a traveler lives a thousand more.”

There is a sour look, almost a pout on Julia’s face as she stares into Valerie’s, though it does not match the fire in her eyes. “You almost sound like Elisabeth’s journalist companion, misquoting the Bard at me.”

Valerie smiles, pushing back a strand of hair from Julia’s face. “My friends will be at the ball for a while?”

Julia leans her own face into Valerie’s, running her hand through her soft hair the colour of platinum. “You mean the young couple you brought with you?”

Valerie nods, resting her forehead against Julia’s. “I know that, especially to this fine … how do you say … Victorian -themed ball of yours, it is customary when visiting another’s home to bring gifts. A part of guest right.”

“It is very Continental. Or Old World as the Americans say.” Julia’s arms wrap around Valerie’s waist. “But it is also the duty of a hostess to provide party favours.”

“Well, Lady Alert.” Valerie’s lips brush the other’s, the ghost of a kiss. “I have enjoyed these appetizers. Shall we come to the main course?”

“Mes chambres.” Julia’s stringent tones have become quiet, husky. “Elles ne sont pas loin. Les autres seront occupés avec leurs nouveaux… millésimes de bourgogne.”1

“Bon.” The two of them regard each other for a long moment, with a whole other kind of hunger before separating, and holding arms again. “J’ai vraiment hâte de goûter au mien, ma chère.”2

“De même.”3 Julia replies, before inclining her head and her body towards another direction, another set of stairs. “But before my chambers, another detour. There is something else. Before midnight.” Her eyes are deep. “Something that I would like to show you.”

*

They lie together under the drapes of the canopy bed. The room is a gentle, but pervasive red. Valerie traces a finger tip down Julia’s exposed neck, a lazy, amused smile forming. “I cannot hear your heartbeat.”

Julia lies on the mattress, her hair, once neatly in a bun now completely down but not hiding her one thousand yard stare into the shadows made by the candles in her room. Finally, she turns towards Valerie on their pillow and smiles back. “Then you have done your job, Lady Chilton?”

Valerie laughs. A crystalline tinkling sound. “What fire. I am glad that it remains. I hope that we can appreciate this night. We have survived the time between the commemoration of Saints, and the place of all lost souls.”

“Your hair, gliding across my chest, my skin …” Julia strokes Valerie’s collarbone absently, “it certainly elevated me from any Purgatory where I might have been. I can understand, even remember now, why Elisabeth seeks such solace in the sensual. The ultimate escape. I would, and I will, do anything for that.”

“For you.” Valerie gets up, and begins to put on her dress, red this time, and a long, feathery white boa.

“Red becomes you.” Julia drawls, resting her chin on the palms of her hands, her elbows in the pillows.

“And you have become the red you were always meant to be, long ago.” Valerie straightens her garb. She smiles down at the other woman. “Are you ready?”

“Aren’t you scared?” Julia inclines her face. There is a defiance there, but her eyes are distant.

“My dear.” Valerie leans forward, and holds her face in her hands. “Look at me. A letter-opener, a book-knife in the heart. I have seen death more times than you can imagine. You are more than just art for men to admire, and for your Elisabeth to disdain and take for granted. This is an opportunity. Death is the first part of the greater journey. I am honoured to have seen the start of yours. Now is the time for new cycles. New dances. New stories.”

“Of course, Lady Chilton.” There is a reverence and, perhaps, a bit of playful mockery in Julia’s tone as she gets up to get dressed herself. “You know, having known the Blackwoods and the other families, I must confess that you do not look like a Chilton.”

“Only by marriage.” Valerie shakes her head. “Or so I thought.” She smiles at Julia’s questioning glance. “Let us just say that my husband was a bad little boy, titillated by young blood spilled in Bruges, but too cowardly to take anything in Ostend, or in your Mother Country. The Elizabeth I knew, she was the real thing. Far more than the ‘Mother’ that he left behind. So no, my dear Julia, I might be a Chilton, but in name only. And not in deed. If anything, I come more from a Countess ‘ line than from where I had ever been solely with him.” She straightens out her shoulders. “Now then, the hour is late. It is almost morning. Come, Julia. I will take you from this place, and we will continue our journey together.”

Valerie holds out one hand, waiting for Julia to take it. There is a wistful smile on her face, but an imperious mien to her gesture. Julia laughs, bowing her head, slightly but visibly.  She takes the other’s hand, letting her come to her feet. “You have a lot of confidence, my Lady.”

“Only in you.” Valerie responds. “You know the way out. I have only secured it. For the both of us.”

“And the others?”

Valerie looks lost in thought for a moment, her blood red fingernail tapping at her lip. “My friends are already permanent guests by now, yes.” Julia doesn’t answer, but that is a reply in and of itself. “I am sure they will remain entertained, and for entertainment. As for your friends, well you know the wager.”

“The reason you are here at all, yes.”

“The attorney made it clear to me.” Valerie and Julia step towards the doors. “One night. A … carriage, or conveyance will be waiting for us. This place, your prison, will become mine. My property. And I will raze it, to the ground, on your behalf. No more exhausting dances. No more deaths. No more men to compete with. No more Elisabeth. Just as I escaped from the shadow of mine, so you will yours. Only the voyage. Only the limits of Oceanus. Only the Night, for the two of us.”

Julia takes this in, and she smiles. “Yes.” Her face twists into a grimace of hatred for a few moments. “They have made their choices.” She turns back to Valerie, her benefactor, and so much more. “Now, we can make new ones.”

*

The castle walls and passageways warp and shift. But Julia, obediently, leads Valerie onward, knowing the way, seeking their final destination out of this place. Julia opens the passage in the wall, directing them both into the darkest chamber. They descend deeper, and deeper down until they finally come to the basement.

“Just a little further, my Lady.” Julia intones. She guides them, through boxes and tables. Mists, swirling at the edges of the chamber, begin to grow, obscuring the visibility of everything else in their way. Her cloak, the one she brought with her to the castle in the beginning, settles around her shoulders. There is something … familiar about some of the objects that they pass. This place, it looks like catacombs, older than the castle itself. She closes her hand over something in her cloth that she took with her as they move farther inward.

“What is this place?” Valerie murmurs. “They remind me of a family crypt … I sense much death here.”

“I believe,” Julia says, her own tone absent, “that Elisabeth’s grandfather, the first Lord Blackwood, meant it to be a family plot. But for some reason, his family never chose to inter their remains here. You saw the gravestones outside when you came in? That is where most of them … most of us lie.”

“Then what … or better yet … who is here?” Valerie’s grip under her cloak tightens, just a bit. “Tell me, my Julia. What should we expect here?”

Julia comes to a stop. The mists begin to rise higher. Two objects, in front of them, strangely enough become more definite. “You are a connoisseur, yes my Lady?” She peers back at Valerie. “The Blackwoods had another name, before their founder was given this land and title. Before he chose to build his castle here. I don’t think you would have enjoyed the taste of them, my Lady. They were called … Blackbloods.”

Valerie chuckles at that. “Blackbloods. You told me their founder was a Hangman? If they’d only known the Countess …”

“It’s true.” Julia nods. “Elisabeth’s grandfather was given this power for his executions. Her brother, from what I was told later, Thomas is worse. Yet it all started here. At the foundations. I imagine that Blackblood did more than just kill criminals and dissidents to the Crown to get this privilege. I think this is where he held the … other bodies. I am sure you can understand such things. Personally.”

That is when the objects in front of them come into focus. Two boxes. Oblong. One of them has a face inscribed onto it.

“Doesn’t that seem familiar to you, my Lady?” Julia asks, pointing at them. “They are not quite Iron Maidens, but …”

“Iron Maidens.” Valerie’s eyes narrow at Julia, at her impertinence. “How would I know of such things? They were before …”

“In a way, wouldn’t that be you?”

The figures materialize from the mists. There are so many of them. Most of them are garbed in nineteenth century clothing, but others wear clothing from different ages of England, and across the world. Valerie’s chin tightens. “I see that many others made the wager, then.”

“That is one thing I understand about gambling,” Julia says, stepping right to Valerie’s side. “The House always wins.”

The figures walk closer to the two women. Valerie remains tall. She does not flinch.

“Julia.” She says in a low voice. “I order you. I command you to see us through this.”

“I will see us through this, Valerie, if that is your real name.” Valerie turns to see Julia smiling at her. The other has let go of her arm. “You know, something occurs to me.”

“Julia.” Her name in Valerie’s mouth is iron. A warning.

“It’s just … well. I suppose traveling all across Europe, all over the world even, costs you a considerable amount of money.”

The apparitions of the castle loom closer. 

“Julia.”

“I mean, truly. You benefited from the good graces of your wards at first. I imagine the Chiltons did not give you the money you seek. And judging by your existence of wanderlust, of not being able to stay still, you must have run out of your original funds long, long ago. Let me guess? If you were to get out of here, you would raze this place to the ground, sell the land, and take all the money for yourself?”

“Julia, you are my –“

Julia laughs. It is a mocking, scornful sound. “Did you mean anything you said, Valerie, or whoever you are truly? Would you have let go with you?”

Valerie lunges forward, suddenly. Julia’s mouth widens into an O. A slender blade pierces through her chest and out of her back, where her heart would have been. Valerie withdraws the blade, as Julia staggers back, and crumples onto the ground. In the mists. But her laughter doesn’t end. It rings on, and on.

“Oh come on now, Valerie! Stabbing me in the heart, at this point, is a little on the nose!”

Suddenly, Valerie is surrounded. There are two men. One of them is in frilled finery. The other is topless, and heavily muscled. They hold both of her arms. She struggles, but it is no use. Julia steps out of the mists again, in front of the other figures, completely unharmed, her gaze piercing into Valerie’s with a sly smirk on her face.

Valerie’s face twists into shock and rage. “I turned you. I could not feel your heartbeat! You were mine!”

“My heart never beat, Valerie.” Julia says, with sweetened venom, as she comes closer. “And I never felt yours.” She leans in closer to her as the two spectral men hold her in place. “And I was never yours.” She turns to the men. “Thank you, William. Herbert. You know what to do.”

Then the figures surround Valerie. Their hands, their fingers, scratch at her. Their teeth find themselves in her flesh. Valerie shrieks Julia’s name until they, all of them, are swallowed by the mists and the darkness.

*

Julia Alert stands in the basement on her own. Her hands are folded in front of her as she regards one particular object. She looks at it almost as intensely as she had the painting of herself in the hallway of the castle. After a moment, she speaks in the direction of the object.

“Dr. Carmus finds you fascinating, you know. He believes that we are, in his words I believe, ‘localized’ versions of what you are. We’ve had so much time here, in this place, that we read a few of his works. I suppose that is one more way in which we could be related, you and I.”

Julia sighs, running her fingertips up and down the object in front of her. “Usually, we can only consciously exist one night once a year. The good doctor told us that human beings have three forms of life. Our bodies, that die quickly. Our souls, that we never truly understand … and our senses. I know our senses can continue a long time after we’ve died. The sensual life is long, and majestic. Blood is the best way to keep it going. I think, perhaps, that is how you have kept yourself going .. though you have been able to move, unlike ourselves. Blood feeds the five senses after we’re gone. And violence, well, it makes it feel all the more poignant. I am sure you find this very familiar.”

She moves around, her skirts twirling. “The young couple you brought us are new. But you are different. You always were. You weren’t exactly subtle, my dear Valerie. Even your voice sounds much older than how you look. Frankly, if anyone deserves to exist in a Castle of Blood, it is you, Countess .” 

She shakes her head, splaying her fingers out on the object in front of her. “Oh, I know who and what you are. I know you’ve killed many people. You like little girls, if I recall the stories. Alan wouldn’t understand. He was always such a do-gooder, even now. And poor, sweet Elisabeth is too squeamish for that sort of thing. Do not worry. We will not kill you. We are after all, all of us, murderers. By necessity. Lord Blackwood, Thomas, feeds us blood once a year to keep us in existence. To give us company. And I have it on the good doctor’s authority that we can use your blood to extend our existence for another year. To increase our sensual life. And we, darling, are nothing if not sensual. But with your blood in particular, even more than that of your darling couple, we could have longer. We might be able to even leave the Castle and its grounds. That is what you promised me, even though I suspect you never believed it would work. Just one more pawn discarded for the Countess, yes? But who knows?”

Julia shrugs her shoulders. “We might even be able to go as far as paying Thomas himself a visit. To … repay him for his generosity in keeping us existent. But you needn’t worry.”

Julia walks away. “Alan was a journalist before he joined us. He interviewed Poe. He likened your situation to ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ you know? I think he almost feels sorry for you. It is a pity. I once thank you beautiful. Like a worldly Galatea. But really, I think you remind me more of a Ligeia than anything. Yes. Legends. Your fate, right now, reminds me so much of that legend of how you spent the remainder of your days locked in your room in your own castle for your crimes, slowly starving to death. How that must have driven you mad. No wonder you could never stay, willingly, in one place.

“But it is all right now, my dear Countess. All you have to do, now, is lie back, be still, be beautiful. And be useful. Yes. Close your eyes, and think of … well, not so much England, as we are already here, but Hungary perhaps. Yes,” Julia slowly grins. “That should be appropriate.”

Julia leans down, and kisses the sarcophagus in front of her. She gazes down at it, her gaze filled with transfixed contempt. There is a determination in her eyes as she rises fully to her feet. She takes a piece of cloth in her hands. It is Valerie’s cloak. She looks, meaningfully, at the sarcophagus and drapes the cape around her shoulders. She pushes back her hair from her face. Then, she walks away, leaving the sarcophagus and the other coffins in the darkness and blood. Beautiful. Marble. Still. 

  1. My chambers. They’re not far away. The others will be busy with their new… burgundy vintages. ↩︎
  2. Good. I really can’t wait to taste mine, my dear. ↩︎
  3. Likewise. ↩︎

Horror Express to Killer B Cinema

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I started The Horror Doctor three years ago at the height of Quarantine. It was during a time when most of us were staying indoors, hiding from the amorphous and ominous thing we were warned could be lurking within both strangers and loved ones, and for which there was no cure and many deaths. 

Three years later, the world has opened up again. The thing is still out there- we have since developed a vaccine and devised methods of detection, but the threat continues.  Life, in all of its forms, goes on. Before the Pandemic, I particularly enjoyed going to the Toronto After Dark Film Festival – an event that happens every October showcasing independent and open premieres of horror and all manner of weird films. I missed this event during the Pandemic, but found an online substitute in the form of The Last Drive-In on Shudder with Joe Bob Briggs, Darcy the Mailgirl, and crew. Unlike After Dark, this was a communal event that allowed me to engage with the hosts, as well as my fellow watchers. As another contrast to the festival, I got the opportunity to talk about the show in real time, and riff on the films along with others around the world. Some people I know had this experience with Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I never really got into that. For a few years, as the Pandemic loomed over us, for me and my fellow Mutants, as the show’s community is known, it was all about blood, breasts, and beasts.

Alongside other benefits, The Last Drive-In got me to appreciate B movies again- those low budget productions with equal parts cheese and charm. Then, one day, I ventured out again. I met new people, some of whom became very special to me. I slowly began to rebuild a public and private life that I had previously feared had been permanently overtaken by darkness. In the midst of reforming my life from the ashes of the Pandemic, I found out about Killer B Cinema. My partner stumbled across tickets for Zuma and immediately bought them to cheer me up, suspecting this would be exactly my kind of thing.

After seeing only a few select people for so long, I admit it took some time and encouragement to warm up to the idea of being in a public communal space again. But in the end, thankfully, we decided to go. Along with a strange and enjoyable film, we also discovered a niche event filled with an IRL community of weird movie aficionados adjacent in many ways to Joe Bob’s Mutant Fam. 

Nestled into Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood, the movie was held in a unique and cozy cyberpunk-themed bar known as See-Scape. Past the unassuming exterior, we entered to find a whole other world within. As Joe Bob Briggs has said, science-fiction – particularly the classics – and horror tended to go hand in hand. The cool and quirky See-Scape blends genres in both its aesthetic and purpose: the main floor has good food and drinks alongside board and video games, while the upper level features a patio, second bar, and versatile space that is intermittently a stage/dance floor as well as a theatre of the absurd.

This is, fittingly, where Killer B Cinema, a recurring film event running the first Friday of every month, resides. The B films selected, restored, subtitled, and shown by Lizzie Violet and Zoltan Du Lac run the gamut between strange international versions of familiar films like Cellat! (Turkish Death-Wish), Aysecik in the Land of the Magic Dwarves (AKA the Turkish Wizard of Oz), Pape Gudia (a Bollywood reinvention of Chucky), a North Korean propaganda film Hong Kil-dong, the vintage sci-fi spectacle Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, and first for us, the strangely spliced and endlessly entertaining Filipino film Zuma. And then in October, 2023, we were treated to a classic: Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express.

I first heard about the film from a Creepshow episode called “Night of the Living Late Show,” in which a man recreates the 1972 horror movie in a virtual reality simulation so that he can live out his childhood interacting with facsimiles of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and later sleep with the Countess. The episode, with the protagonist’s death within the Night of the Living Dead simulation due to the machinations of his jealous wife, was excellent, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I needed to see the film for myself. And I did. A few times. I’ve reviewed Horror Express before on Letterboxd. However, I gained a new appreciation and perspective of the film after seeing it at Killer B. 

So let me tell you how it goes. Before every film, we have the opportunity to order drinks and pub food, while Zoltan plays animated shorts in the form of a silly 1963 anime called 8th Man, or 8 Man. It is black and white with minimal frame rates, jerking wooden movements, and bad dubbing that nevertheless manages to be hilariously entertaining, particularly when watching it along with a live audience. It is based on the manga by Jiro Kuwata and Kazumasa Hirai in which a detective is injured and rebuilt into a humanesque android that functions as the sole member of the eighth division of the Tokyo Police, overseen by one Chief Bumble Thumbs.

But somehow, the episodes of 8 Man always foreshadow the main presentation, and this showing of Horror Express was no exception. So, after a strange episode with a child prodigy who invents an imagine-maker device that creates monsters from the psyches of its users – including dinosaurs – which 8 Man relentlessly strives to keep out of the wrong hands, leaving the poor boy with a train set to amuse himself, we get right into the feature film.

The best way to describe Horror Express is taking The Thing, but instead of a research station in Antarctica where American scientists succumb to infection and paranoia, we are on a Trans-Siberian Express from Shanghai to Moscow in 1906. However, this iteration of the being – which is also, albeit loosely, analogous to The Thing From Another World, and before The Thing, a creature adapted from Joseph W. Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? – is a fossil of an early hominid. This monster is really a creature suspended in ice, with the ability to absorb the knowledge of anyone it touches. As it makes contact with its victim, the cursed individual’s brain will essentially be erased, their eyes turned into unseeing white orbs with blood running down their sockets, and they will die.

It gets worse… Not only did this creature survive its deep freeze to steal the contents of people’s minds, it can also transfer its essence into the bodies of its victims, essentially hiding among the train’s passengers. In that sense, it seems to function not unlike a member of the Great Race of Yith from H.P. Lovecraft’s works, albeit without the switching of minds and bodies, just a simple possession of consciousness. The being has weaknesses, of course. It has a hairy hand that it needs to hide, likely the result of frequent astral masturbation. It can only use its power to mesmerize and absorb someone’s mind in complete darkness. At the same time, light allows the entity to pass as anyone else, and the darkness is a double-edged sword in that it both strengthens the being, while also revealing its red eyes, leaving it open to detection.

This entity, which we later find out is a being of pure energy that had been abandoned on Earth, manages to consume a thief (a spy who Peter Cushing’s character Dr. Wells has been heavily macking on – which actually surprised me as the man tends to portray sexless intellectuals like Sherlock Holmes, Grand Moff Tarkin, and The Doctor), and eventually a cast of suspicious characters including an engineer, a detective, and many others.

The friendly rivalry between Peter Cushing’s Wells from the Geology Society, and Christopher Lee’s Professor Sir Alexander Saxton is as entertaining as anything you might observe from these two real-life friends and consummate actors’ interactions. Saxton is nefariously hiding the creature’s remains in a crate for his great discovery, while the inquisitive Wells wants to know what he is holding, and isn’t above bribing a train employee to peer at this potentially groundbreaking discovery. 

There were a lot of things I didn’t remember from my first watches. I didn’t recall that there had been a voice-over narrative by Christopher Lee at the start foreshadowing the events to come, and the actual discovery of the creature in ice in Manchuria. I recalled the film starting on the bustling train station in Shanghai. While perhaps this initial scene added more “telling than showing,” it’s a narration from Christopher Lee, and who would turn that prospect down?

I think there are so many wonderful things about this film: the ornate setting of the train, the snowy landscape of the journey, the dark isolation juxtaposed with the warmth of camaraderie broken by mysterious murders. There are even hints of romance: chemistry with Helga Line’s Natasha, and even the Countess Irina Petrovsky, played by Silvia Torosa, who is seen flirting with Lee’s Professor Saxton despite her husband standing by. And last but not least, the mad Eastern Orthodox priest Father Purjardov, played by Roberto de Mendoza – who basically looks like Rasputin – somehow manages to steal the show just as much as Lee and Cushing. 

But what I think really struck me, both viewing it with others and seeing it again, is the turn of the century imperialism and patriarchal elements inherent within this film. Natasha and the Countess are clearly set up objects of desire to the predominantly male horror viewer-audience. Saxton, and to some extent Wells, blatantly look down on foreigners, even as they rely on their craft for transportation. Wells’ scientific assistant, the taciturn, capable, and pragmatic Miss Jones, played by Alice Reinheart, has her mind devoured by the creature- the only woman aside from Natasha the spy that it consumes. Wells ends up penetrating Natasha’s body (though perhaps not in the way he would have liked), when he conducts an autopsy after her demise. Eventually, he and Saxton perform surgery on the eyes of the creature, as well as its victims, and in the process see the last things the monster has seen, including beings from millions of years back. For me, this is reminiscent of the 8 Man’s imagine-machine, with its visions of dinosaurs fantastical creatures. Through this parallel, we spiral back thematically to the anime preceding the film.

The theme of penetration, driven by momentum of the male gaze, doesn’t stop there. There are frequent shots of the train pummeling down the track, a seemingly inexorable and blatantly phallic image which is central to the narrative. Purjardov the priest, desperately begs the creature, who he thinks is the Devil, to enter his mind and take his body. But I think the darkest embodiment of these ideals is the figure of the Cossack Captain Kazan. An imposing, large, bald man played by Telly Savalas, the captain chews up the scenery, intimidating the other passengers with his body language and crass manner, and proceeds – like the historic Cossacks of legend, a Slavic semi-nomadic militaristic people –  to get results in direct and brutal ways. When first introduced, the captain is pictured in bed with a woman, probably another in the latest, while he intimidates an old staff member providing him news about the latest troubles on the train. He comes in, and – mockingly giving respect to nobility, in the form of the Count and Countess – proceeds to beat up passengers and threaten their lives until someone gives up “the murderer” among them.

Even the creature, hiding in another body – having looked into the eyes and violated the bodies of so many – is terrified of this man; the monster itself couldn’t comprehend the inhumanity that humans display toward each other. For all of its atrocities, the being is simply attempting to steal the knowledge it needs to build a ship, to get its borrowed physical form home. Captain Kazan, while supposedly doing his duty, uses that as an excuse to exercise his sense of power and brutality. The inspection scene still stays with me; as a child I was told harrowing stories about the Cossacks and their role in pogroms by my Polish Jewish grandparents. In some ways, Kazan seems a larger monster to me than the creature. The contrast of the two begs the question: which being is worse, the alien entity itself, or the manner with which humans treat those deemed foreign and “other.” Amidst the classism and anti-foreigner sentiment, and entitled superiority displayed by the English and American contingents, there is a powerful, violent, hyper-masculine energy that emanates off Kazan, as he physically enacts what the creature is doing psychically. It is no coincidence, I’m sure, that he endures the thing’s onslaught longer than anyone else.

I will say, more people survive this film than they would in modern cinema. Wells and Saxton manage to get everyone to another car of the train, and detach the car containing the creature, who, as it transpires, can reanimate its victims into extensions of itself. Thankfully, the bodies all seem to be on the detached cars. The entity is seemingly destroyed because Kazan’s superiors gave orders to Russian soldiers in another station to change the track of the train, and ultimately send it off a cliff should there be no word back. Even the soldiers question this order, realizing it would potentially doom countless lives, but knowing they have to be sure, that they have to obey orders. And it works out, but it may not have done. The reanimated corpses could still be on the surviving cars with vestiges of the being’s mind. Even if they weren’t, the train could have crashed and killed everyone.

The most haunting thing about the film, is that after we see the rest of the train crash and burn, the camera pans out to show the Earth in space, as we had previously seen through the eyes of the creature, and we’re left to wonder if a being of pure energy can truly be destroyed by a train wreck. And if we are in fact seeing the Earth through the monster’s perspective, are we any better than it? Is the danger actually outside, or always lurking within?

These were some of the thoughts that swirled around my head as the B movie fans began to applaud. The perspective shifts once more. And for all the harrowing events of the movie as well as our reality, the fictional deaths and theatrical ridiculousness, for all the fear and anticipation it took to get us here, to this place where we can gather in a room with a like minded community, to talk and laugh and eat and drink in person again. It was a long dark journey that led us to a good night. And I look forward to the future, to more films at Killer B Cinema, and all the other live events now possible as we collectively reanimate from the perpetual fog of the last few years.