While many “Euro-horror” films of the 70s feel like fever dreams, Horror Express (originally titled Pánico en el Transiberiano) is a remarkably tight, imaginative, and eerie locked-room mystery. It’s a film where the science is baffling, the religion is terrifying, and the mustache on Christopher Lee is legendary as he played Professor Sir Alexander Saxton — or is that Sir Professor — a British anthropologist taking the Trans-Siberian Express from Shanghai to Moscow. He’s not alone. He has the frozen remains of a caveman he found in Manchuria, which he believes are the missing link. Peter Cushing plays his rival, Dr. Wells, who is also on board.

The creature, however, isn’t just a caveman. It’s a vessel for an ancient, formless extraterrestrial that absorbs memories and knowledge through its victims’ eyes, leaving them with milky-white orbs and smooth brains. As the body count rises, the train becomes a claustrophobic pressure cooker involving a Russian Count and Countess, a mad monk named Pujardov and an alien that eventually decides a zombie uprising is the best way to catch its ride home.

Captain Kazan (Telly Savalas) is able to stop it for some time, but Pujardov believes that the alien is Satan and pledges his soul to it, allowing himself to be possessed. Then, it raises all of the past victims as zombies.

Phillip Yordan supposedly made this movie because he had bought the miniature train from the film Nicholas and Alexandra. Director Eugenio Martín said,  “He came up with the idea of writing a script just so he would be able to use this prop. Now, at that time, Phil was in the habit of buying up loads of short stories to adapt into screenplays, and the story for Horror Express was originally based on a tale written by a little-known American scriptwriter and playwright.”

However, producer Bernard Gordon, who also worked with Martin and Savalas on Pancho Villa, claimed that the train was made for that movie.

Lee and Cushing were the big draw for this movie, but Cushing nearly quit, as this was made during the first holiday season since the loss of his wife, Helen. According to an article by Ted Newsome, “Hollywood Exile: Bernard Gordon, Sci Fi’s Secret Screenwriter,” Lee fixed this by placing Cushing at ease, “talking to his old friend about some of their previous work together; Cushing changed his mind and stayed on.” It’s also said that he suffered from night terrors, so Lee would sleep in the same bed as him.

If you grew up watching this on late-night TV or a $5 bargain-bin VHS, you likely remember it as incredibly dark and muddy. This was less an artistic choice and more a legal hostage situation. Because the U.S. distributor, Scotia International, came up $50,000 short on the budget payment, the original camera negative was impounded in Spain. For decades, American audiences were watching bootleg quality prints struck from the workprint, obscuring the film’s actually quite handsome cinematography.

Of all the great things about this movie, the fact that they can look inside a caveman’s mind and see dinosaurs is the most charming.

Also: As we all know, Phillip Yordan also made the best train movie of all time, Night Train to Terror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

“It’s illegal…it’s immoral…and it’s so damned good!”

In the 1970s—hell, well into the late 80s—my grandfather drove an El Camino. He kept that beast in working condition long after most had been reclaimed by the earth, even if it eventually became more Bondo and black primer than actual Chevrolet steel. He loved that car with a religious fervor, so he’d be thrilled to see Eddie Joe Rodgers (Gil Gerard, TV’s Buck Rogers) tear-assing through the North Carolina backwoods, delivering moonshine in that same iconic silhouette.

In the grease-stained world of old-time bootleggers, Eddie Joe is a dangerous anomaly: a “go-getter.” He’s too fast, too bold, and he’s cutting into the established margins. He’s such a disruption to the local ecosystem that the reigning kingpin, Old Bill (William T. Hicks, the ubiquitous face of the Earl Owensby cinematic universe, which is very much a real thing), decides to break the sacred code of the hills. Instead of a local hit, Bill invites the “big city” mob—led by a young, menacing Danny Aiello—into town to liquidate the competition.

Sure, the sheriff (Mike Allen) would like to do something about it, but seeing how Eddie Joe is sleeping with both Old Bill’s daughter, Jamie Sue (Melody Rogers, who would go on to be Zack Morris’ mom) and his daughter, Ginnie (Erika Fox), does he even want to?

Director Edward Mann had an interesting career. He started as a cartoonist, syndicated for decades, and was a force in the cultural growth of Woodstock. He’d go on to direct and write several movies, including Island of Terror, Cauldron of Blood, The Mutations, Hallucination Generation and Seizure. 

The talent behind the camera is just as eclectic as the cast. Director Edward Mann had a career trajectory that defies logic. He was a syndicated cartoonist for decades and a pivotal figure in the cultural explosion of Woodstock. His filmography reads like a fever dream of cult cinema: Island of Terror, The Mutations, and Hallucination Generation.

Then there’s Gil Gerard, who didn’t just star in this. He co-wrote it. Gerard’s real life was a masterclass in “faking it ’til you make it.” After dropping out of college, he somehow bluffed his way into becoming an industrial chemist and a regional VP. When the firm asked for his Master’s degree, he didn’t confess; he just moved to NYC to drive a taxi and act. This film — which he also co-produced — served as his auteur-style calling card for Hollywood, leading him straight to the 25th Century as Buck Rogers. 

When I was a kid, he and Connie Sellecca were a power couple before she left Gil for John Tesh. 15-year-old me never got over that and also doesn’t understand that she didn’t marry Tesh until five years later, which still doesn’t explain me being irrationally mad at the composer of “Roundball Rock.”

The deputy in this is Worth Keeter, who would go on to make plenty of movies of his own, like Unmasking the Idol, Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll, Snapdragon, and so many episodes of Power Rangers. Of course, this was made in Shelby, NC, at Earl Owensby Studios.

IMDbs often lazily claims that The Dukes of Hazzard remade this. That’s a total fabrication. While they share the same DNA of fast cars and corrupt lawmen, they are simply two different branches of the hicksploitation tree (they’re likely thinking of Moonrunners).

This is an entirely grittier, weirder beast. It’s at once Gerard making a movie where he writes, acts, sings and romances, while also being a hicksploitation film with authentic regional accents and a story perfect for the drive-ins that it would play at. I mean, how can you not appreciate a movie where a character asks her stuffed bear for romantic advice, only for the scene to veer into some of the most uncomfortable teddy bear intimacy ever committed to celluloid?

You can watch this on The Cave of Forgotten Films.

“If that’s Charles Bronson, ask him if his tallywacker wants some poontang!”

For that line alone, I stayed with this movie.

If you ever wondered what Grease would look like if it were shot in a weekend by people who primarily worked in the adult industry, Patrick Wright’s Hollywood High is your answer. Wright, a man usually cast as “Large Truck Driver #2” in exploitation flicks, takes the director’s chair here to deliver a disjointed, sun-drenched, and largely topless day in the life of the most delinquent students in Tinseltown.

Jan (Susanne Severeid, Don’t Answer the Phone) Candy (Sherry Hardin, Ten Violent Women), Monica (Rae Sperling) and Bebe (Marcy Albrecht) spend most of this movie topless and smoking the stickiest of the icky with Frasier Mendoza, hooking up with the Fenz (Kevin Mead; guess who he’s supposed to be) and Buzz (Joseph Butcher, not far removed from playing the latter side of Bigfoot and Wildboy), hanging out with sex symbol of the past June East (yes, Mae West, but played by Marla Winters), having classes with stereotype teachers like the mincing Mr. Flowers (Hy Pyke, Grandpa from Hack-O-Lantern) and the overly horny Miss Crotch (Kress Hytes) when they’re not being chased by a cop, who they eventually hit with a watermelon and take his pants off, revealing that he’s wearing lingerie.

Turner Classic Movies notes the existence of an unrelated 30-minute television pilot, also debuting in 1977, for a prospective series. It featured Annie Potts and aired as part of NBC’s Comedy Time.  It also spawned an unrelated sequel (Hollywood High 2), proving that there is always a market for teens in trouble as long as the cast remains unencumbered by shirts.

For the film historians hiding among the exploitation fans, there is one genuine highlight: a crisp, 1970s shot of the Cinerama Dome in its prime. It’s a brief moment of architectural dignity in a movie that otherwise features people stealing pants and smoking out of makeshift bongs.

You can watch this on Tubi.