This is one of the scariest movies you will ever see. If it does not scary you no movie will. This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. There are a lot monsters in it.

With both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee starring, we're already off to a great start. Next we have the creature, which is very compelling conceptually - it would have felt right at home in a classic Star Trek episode. As you can guess by the title, the setting is a train, which serves to heighten the tension. Musically, one could mistake this for a spy-thriller, which the film did borrow elements off. In addition you even get zombie elements thrown in. Horror fans, and even the casual, will find something to like with this one.

This superb Spanish horror-cum-thriller features one of my very favourite pairings of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, in one of the rare instances where they team up on the same side and fight for good together! Other than that, this film has an original and interesting plot which is totally at odds from the kinds of Gothic films that Hammer and other European film companies were making at the same time. The setting of a high-speed train is a good one, and there are lots of scenes in murky carriages which bring out the claustrophobia of the situation.The other main areas of horror that the film taps into are fear of the unknown (you never know the location of the killer, or what he/it/she is doing) and paranoia. Paranoia because halfway through the film becomes a kind of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS variant, with the alien intelligence swapping bodies at the point of death. One of this film's key highlights is the eerie whistling on the soundtrack which is repeated throughout the film - this serves to make the hairs rise up on the back of your neck every time it pops up and is one of the spookiest sound effects I've ever heard in a film.The cast is a varied one. Aside from the three imported stars, the supporting cast is composed of Spanish actors and actresses who are all believable and act well in their roles. However acting honours must of course go to the inimitable team of Cushing and Lee who are once again excellent here. Cushing plays a gentle-mannered doctor on the train who is required to perform a couple of autopsies in the baggage carriage! This leads to some classic scenes which recall his old Frankenstein days as he carefully saws the heads off corpses and examines their brains! Lee, on the other hand, is very good as the arrogant professor, in a role which I feel is well-suited to his personality! If Lee is a little stiff (but still great) as the professor, then Telly Savalas occupies the other end of the spectrum with his hilariously over-the-top role of the cossack leader who beats and shoots his way through a number of suspects! His performance is aptly described by the phrase "scenery chewing". I love the moment where he throws a knife in a victim's back before shooting him twice just to make sure he's dead! One other actor of note is the one playing the mad monk, who makes Rasputin look sane in comparison! For the time this was made, this seems to be a fairly grisly little chiller. Aside from the aforementioned brain removals, the numerous victims suffer bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth, and have their eyeballs turn white (they've been boiled you see). On top of all this, there is some ludicrous mock science which reaches a laughable high-point when Cushing and Lee discover an image of the Earth from space imprinted in the creature's eyeball fluid! This film's low budget (most of which probably went on getting Cushing and Lee all the way to Spain from Britiain) is cleverly hidden via the use of plenty of simplistic yet startlingly effective special effects. The simple white contact lenses give the dead bodies a really macabre look, while the killer's glowing red eye seems to have been a definite inspiration for the look of THE TERMINATOR. And of course, there's the use of the model train which is shown repeatedly throughout the film, and crashes and explodes at the very end - they certainly wring every penny out of it, that's for sure! The biggest complaint about this film seems to be that it has pacing problems, but after watching a number of films from this era which are much worse, this doesn't bother me at all - especially when horror legends Cushing and Lee are on screen and giving it their all.At the film's very end, it changes track (rather like the train itself...) and becomes a zombie movie, with all the dead bodies of the cossacks coming back to life and seeking victims! This is a pretty scary scene, only hampered by some slapdash editing in the moments where Lee and his pretty female accomplice have to fight their way through the zombies. The ending ties everything up nicely, too. With an intelligent, original plot, great acting and effects (aside from the rather dodgy ape man suit!) this is one of my very favourite horror/science fiction B-movies and should be seen by all fans of older horror films. It's downright classic!

An enjoyable film with great leading actors. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing lead he cast with Telly Savalas making a brief but strong turn towards the conclusion. Dr Wells (Christopher Lee) finds a frozen Neanderthal man while on an expedition. Boxed up and ready to transport it's bundled onto a train and kept locked up on a China to Russia trans-Siberian journey. Prof. Saxton (Cushing) is also a man of science and a fellow passenger on the train. He pays the luggage guard to take a peak inside the locked box to validate Dr Well's claims and this is where the horror starts. Instead of being a Neanderthal man instead it's some kid of alien entity which can absorb the life force and memories of anybody it wants to and in doing so can take on their shape. So how do you stop a shape shifting, life stealing alien when you are confined to a train? Well, that's exactly what Dr Wells and Prof Saxton have to do, while at the same time dealing with the other train passengers who range from eccentric snobs to a Rasputin like mad monk. This is a truly cult classic film in which Lee and Cushing silkily navigate the script. The plot is original and there truly is tension evident even years after the film was released. It's a (John Carpenter) "The Thing" style film at least 10 years before the Carpenter classic, and what is more amazing is that all the action and story takes place in the confinement of a train. The plot, while being enjoyable and tense, pitches religion against science while dealing with something that neither can explain fully. The camera work is really good for the time of production and John Cacavas score is chilling and fits perfectly. Although I have mentioned Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing the other stand out name is of course Telly Savalas, his inclusion is powerful and commanding but I'd was left wondering why he only featured at the climax of the film rather than earlier, either way his appearance signals a potential end to the troubles faced by the passengers. Freddy Francis has done a great job in directing this and I recommend it to anyone who likes a fun, tense, roller coaster of horror. 7 out of 10.