Train to Busan (2016)

 

“A 4K Upgrade for a Genre Classic ”

Oh yes indeed - one of the best ever zombie films gets a welcome 4K UHD release from Studio Canal.

Seok-Woo (Yoo Gong) is accompanying his young daughter Soo-an (Soo-an Kim) on the train from Seoul to Busan to visit his ex-wife. Unknown to any of the travellers when they board, a bit of a toxic waste leak at a chemical plant has led to a zombie outbreak of the ‘running very fast’ variety, and one of the infected is on the train. Soon there are lots and lots of infected on the train and when it turns out city after city is being affected the few remaining survivors have to hold out until they get to Busan. If they ever do.

So many good things have been said about TRAIN TO BUSAN by so many reviewers that it’s difficult to know what to add, suffice to say that Hollywood could learn a few lessons in character building and development from this one. Then they might realise that when the non-stop action and razor-sharp editing kicks in you actually end up with a thrilling, edge-of-the-seat movie experience rather than a hollow effects extravaganza.

What else? Well, great horror films that take place entirely in daylight are a rare commodity in themselves, but this is one (TREMORS is another). There are some tiny bits in a tunnel but there’s no night in this picture. You’ll miss the music on first viewing because the pacing and the acting will sweep you away but it’s actually nicely effective. 

Extras on Studio Canal’s disc are the same as on their previous Blu-ray and DVD release. These include a trailer for SEOUL STATION, and a making of featurette.

On its release in 2016 press releases for TRAIN TO BUSAN were filled with quotes like ‘The Best Film of the Year’, ‘Exhilarating’, ‘Will Keep You Gasping For Breath Until the End of the Line’ and ‘A Genre-Transcending Masterpiece’. It’s still all true. TRAIN TO BUSAN isn’t just a great horror picture, it’s a great film. one that will enthral you, thrill you and (by the end) move you. A must for any genre connoisseur's film library. 

TRAIN TO BUSAN is on on 4K UHD from Studio Canal on Monday 27th May 2024

Human Desire (1954)

"Film Noir That Stays Firmly On Track"

Fritz Lang's contemporary (for 1954) movie version of Emile Zola's 1890 novel of love, lust, betrayal and violence gets a dual format release from Eureka.

Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford) is just back from the war in Korea. He resumes his job as a train driver and rents a room at the house of fellow engineer Alec Simmons (Edgar Buchanan). Simmons' daughter Ellen (Kathleen Simmons very much looking as if she was the inspiration for Sherilyn Fenn's character Audrey in David Lynch's Twin Peaks) has the hots for him, but one night he bumps into Vicki (Gloria Grahame), the wife of Jeff's heavy drinking, insanely jealous superior Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford).

What Jeff doesn't realise at the time is that Vicki is married, nor that she has just been an accessory to her husband murdering a man he suspected of being her lover. Jeff and Vicki begin an affair. Vicki tells Jeff Carl is blackmailing her. If only Carl was out of the way they could be together. Perhaps an accident on the railway...

Stylish and grim, Fritz Lang's noir is set almost entirely in and around the world of the railroad, giving it the kind of industrial, soot-stained, smoke-filled feel that would be utilised so well by David Lynch in his early features, which makes you wonder if that director was profoundly influenced by this very film. While the Simmons family are there to show us some 'good' characters, they barely get a look in as Lang concentrates on his three leads, whose parts are played as glorious examples of morally dubious humanity by Ford, Grahame and Crawford.

Eureka's Blu-ray offers us a 1080p presentation. As an extra you get Tony Rayns talking about the film for half an hour. There's also a 40 page booklet featuring new writing on the film from Travis Crawford, Richard Combs and Adam Batty. 

Stylish and brutally cynical, HUMAN DESIRE is apparently one of Fritz Lang's more underrated films. It's certainly worth catching up with as a fine example of small town noir. And it has trains in it. 

Fritz Lang's HUMAN DESIRE is out on dual format from Eureka on Monday 18th February 2019

Horror Express (1972)

"Full Steam Ahead For First Class Horror"

Everyone's favourite early 1970s English-Spanish coproduced science fiction horror picture set on a train gets a sparkling new 2K transfer courtesy of Arrow. 

China 1906. Geologist Sir Alexander Saxton (Christopher Lee), while exploring caves in Szechuan Province, comes across the frozen fossilised remains of what might be the missing link. Intending to take it back to England he crates it up and puts it on the Trans-Siberian Express. Where it thaws out, causing all kinds of trouble for both Saxton, his old chum / rival Dr Wells (Peter Cushing) and assorted EuroHorror character actors, as well as Telly Savalas who pops in for the final act.

One of the best, most creative and best written movies of the entire EuroHorror boom of the 1960s and 1970s, HORROR EXPRESS succeeds in practically every level despite its low budget. Justifiably loved and revered by fans and critics alike, if you've never seen it stop reading this now and go and obtain a copy. HORROR EXPRESS came out as a dual format release from Severin in the US a couple of years ago, and Arrow have just brought it out in a new transfer. 

So which is better?

First, the movie. Severin's version boasts only the Spanish opening credits whereas Arrow only has the English ones. A minor point but HORROR EXPRESS obsessives (of which I am one) will want to know as the credits are quite different. Secondly the transfer itself. Severin's transfer isn't quite as good. It's a little sharper and grainier and warmer, whereas the Arrow transfer looks cleaned up, softer and colours look more natural. 

Second, the extras. Nearly all the extras on the Severin disc (composer John Cacavas interview, director Eugenio Martin interview, producer Bernard Gordon's 'Notes From the Blacklist' and Chris Alexander introduction) have been ported over to the Arrow release. The only thing that's missing is the Peter Cusing audio interview from 1973 that the Severin disc runs as an additional 'commentary' track.

Where the Arrow disc wins is in the new extras, and best of these is an outstanding commentary track from Kim Newman and Stephen Jones which is engaging, enthusiastic, and packed with interesting pieces of information and genre commentary. It's truly excellent stuff and worth getting the new disc for. 

There's also a fascinating 15 minute piece from Ted Newsom on the career of HORROR EXPRESS producer Bernard Gordon, and an appreciation of the movie from filmmaker Steve Haberman. Purchasers of the first pressing also get a booklet with new writing on the film by Adam Scovell.

The genre classic that is HORROR EXPRESS is getting a Region B Blu-ray release from Arrow Films on Monday 11th February 2019

Breakheart Pass (1975)

"Throw Bronson From the Train"

Eureka are bringing out this Charles Bronson-starring 1975 western adapted from the Alistair MacLean novel.

We're in the frontier era. A train loaded with supplies sets off for isolated Fort Humbolt in Nevada, where apparently there has been an outbreak of Diphtheria. On the train are a couple of carriages full of soldiers; a moustache-twirling, could-he-possibly-be-up-to-no-good Governor (Richard Crenna); his rather unemotive ladyfriend (Jill Ireland); a liberal sprinkling of character actors (Ed Lauter, Charles Durning, Ben Johnson, David Huddleston); and prisoner-but-actually-the-good-guy-unsurprisingly Charles Bronson.

Off they go! Choo choo! But pretty soon it's choke choke, bang bang and various other methods of despatch as passengers start to get bumped off by an unseen killer. Is the train actually loaded with medical supplies? Is the no-good Governor there for reasons other than altruism? Does Charles Bronson have a fantastic fight on top of a moving train just like in the poster?

The biggest problem with BREAKHEART PASS is that, while the action sequences are terrific (and likely all directed by prominently credited second unit legend Yakima Canutt) the stuff in between, and especially during the first act, is all rather uninvolving. 

In fact, these bits are a good example of the difference a good director can make to a script (written by MacLean himself). We don't see the murders (that plus perhaps some black-gloved hands would have been good) and Bronson is given nothing to do for the first half an hour, with the film floundering with no POV character. During all of this I have to say I did find myself wondering what someone like Sergio Martino or even Michael Winner (yes Michael Winner) might have done with this material instead of actual director Tom Gries, and I suspect we would have ended up with something a bit livelier, more interesting and better paced.

Once it gets going BREAKHEART PASS isn't bad, but everyone here either had done or would do better. Surprisingly bloodless for a 1970s Western (it gets a PG certificate here) and without the inherent nihilism and bleakness of most of the decade's best pictures in the genre, it's still a decent timewaster if you fancy a bit of adventure and trains crashing.

The only extra is a talking head piece from Kim Newman, which lasts nearly half an hour, and in which he talks at length about the MacLean properties that were adapted for the screen in the 1960s and 1970s (I had forgotten there were quite so many). He even shows us some of his MacLean paperbacks, but not the tie-in edition of BREAKHEART PASS which I remember seeing everywhere at the time and which must have been prominently positioned in every WHSmith's and Woolworths throughout the land.

Alistair MacLean's BREAKHEART PASS is out from Eureka on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 14th May 2018

Runaway Train (1985)

In the mid-1980s, the Cannon Group seemed to have their name (or rather the names of producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) on every other film being released to video. Unfortunately at that time every other film being released to video tended to have titles like BREAKDANCE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO or NINJA III: THE DOMINATION. Cannon was responsible for both those and a whole slew of what was (often kindly it has to be said) described as schlock films. Even when they made a bid for the big time with a budget to match they were more likely to end up with something like Tobe Hooper’s LIFEFORCE, which, while tremendous and delirious fun, was still very much a movie in the exploitation mould of their much lower-budget affairs.

Very, very occasionally, however, Cannon got it right. Fresh from the success of a string of European art house movies like SIBIRIADA and MARIA’S LOVERS (with Nastassja Kinski), Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky was given carte blanche (he admits it in the extras on this disk) by the Go-Go boys (as they were known at the time. The Globs was another less-than-complimentary nickname bestowed upon them by their Hollywood contemporaries) to make the kind of film he wanted. The result was RUNAWAY TRAIN, a movie that succeeds marvellously in the exceedingly difficult task of being both an action movie exploitation picture and an art house epic, all at the same time. That’s not at all an easy thing to do, and I can probably count the number of movies that achieve this balancing act so well on the fingers of one hand. I had never seen RUNAWAY TRAIN until now, and if this review has one take home message it’s this: if you only ever see one Cannon Film, this is the one. 

Jon Voight, in a role he was initially reluctant to play (we get to hear all about that on the extras as well) is Oscar ‘Manny’ Manheim, a criminal so vicious he has spent the last three years welded into a cell at a remote penitentiary in the wilds of Alaska. Manny hasn’t been resting on his laurels, or even his bunk, however, and, in a plot development that curiously enough echoes recent news events in Strasbourg, he has his appeal to the court of human rights accepted and is allowed to be freed from his solitary confinement so that he can mix with the other prisoners. 
      Prison Warden Ranken (John P Ryan) isn’t at all happy about this, and attempts to engineer a situation whereby Manny can be legally shot by one of the guards. It all goes wrong, however, and the prison embarks on the latest of what seems to be The Regular Daily Riot, where things get smashed, books get set on fire, and Danny Trejo (billed here in a very early role as Daniel Trejo), in a literally blink and you’ll miss him appearance, gets to shout and scream and fight with all the others. 
      Things calm down but it’s all too much for Manny, who plans an escape. He manages to do so with the aid of Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts) who ends up accompanying him on a death-defying plunge out of the prison sewers fifty feet straight down into a freezing river. Then it’s a quick hike in temperatures of 30 degrees below freezing, during which Roberts loses his shoe but magically not his foot, before they come to a railway station. There Manny sees his chariot to freedom in the shape of not just one but four massive clanking locomotives that have all been coupled together. However, just as Manny and Buck leap aboard, the driver decides to have a massive heart attack, jam the brake lever so the brakes burn out, drop dead, and fall off the train, thus creating the uncontrollable machine of the title.

From then on the film switches from an extremely effective prison break drama to a runaway action picture, but Konchalovsky, with the aid of his actors (including an almost unrecognisable Rebecca de Mornay as the only railway worker left on the train), never loses sight of the human side of things. There’s philosophy, clever dialogue interplay, and some tremendous acting in between some spectacular photography, model and back screen projection work. So effective is most of this that even watching this nearly thirty years after it was made, I still thought much of what was happening on screen had to be for real.

The ending of RUNAWAY TRAIN is just perfect. It will stay with you long after the movie is over, and of course I’m not going to tell you what it is because if you haven’t seen this movie you need to get hold of Arrow’s new double disc DVD and Blu-ray set when it comes out. In fact, RUNAWAY TRAIN is a success all round. Both Voight and Roberts are especially memorable and deserved their Oscar nominations for this picture, but de Mornay helps to anchor their performances in the real world. John P Ryan played the distressed father to a psychopathic homicidal mutant baby in IT’S ALIVE, reprising his role in IT LIVES AGAIN. Here he plays a very different character in Warden Ranken who is pretty much a psychopath himself, relentless in his pursuit of the two escaped convicts, and he puts in as believable a performance as the two leads.. 

Technical credits are all top notch. Fans of British horror will recognise the name of DP Alan Hume who, as well as working on a number of Bond films shot the Amicus film FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE and John Hough’s THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE. Editor Henry Richardson (who was also nominated for an Oscar for this) cut Tyburn’s THE GHOUL and LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF, and a trawl of the end credits reveals other names famous for their work on Hammer and Amicus pictures including Howard Brandy who produced BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB and Peter Weatherley who edited it. Most of the kudos, though, has to go to director Andrei Konchalovsky, whose unobtrusive style, and sensitivity with the subject matter elevates what could so easily have been a third rate Cannon picture starring Sylvester Stallone into poetry starring Jon Voight, and bloody well done to him for doing so.

      As always, Arrow have packed their disc with extras, including an extensive interview with star Jon Voight which last about forty minutes. Voight shows a quite phenomenal memory of the making of what was obviously a significant experience for him as he talks about his casting, his preparation, and his work on the picture. A slightly shorter interview with Andrei Konchalovsky is no less interesting, at least in part because of what he has to say about working for Cannon. There are also interviews with Eric Roberts who has nothing but good things to say about the movie, and Kyle T Heffner who reminisces about having his head shoved down a toilet filled with apple juice. Finally, to round off the package there’s the RUNAWAY TRAIN trailer commentary from Trailers From Hell, in which director Rod Lurie (the remake of STRAW DOGS, apparently) gives his own opinion on the film.

RUNAWAY TRAIN is a classic. It’s due to be released on Blu-ray by Arrow later this month, and both film and presentation are absolutely marvellous. Do yourself and favour and pick up the best version available of a film that shows all all its key players at the top of their game. Seriously good stuff.

RUNAWAY TRAIN will be released on a Blu-ray and DVD Dual Format Edition on Monday July 22nd 2013