Nightmare Journey

For about 45 minutes, 'Horror Express' is really, really cool, before degenerating into chaotic tedium. A bit of what I like to call a Europudding (i.e. a complicated production, usually made on the continent) it has British stars, a French script, a Spanish director and an American producer and guest star. Oh, and it's set in China and Russia (although not filmed there).

It's 1906. Fossil hunter Christopher Lee (rubbish, he just keeps 'tutting' at everyone) discovers a two million year old man-ape hybrid frozen in a cave in Manchuria and decides to take it home to England. What he doesn't realise (how could he?) is that his artefact is actually an alien who can survive indefinitely simply by transferring himself into other creatures, including humans. Before you can say 'it's a bit like The Thing, innit?' the horrible, hairy creature is loose in the confines of an express train, killing people by sucking their minds dry with its single pulsating red eye, and making life very difficult for Lee and Peter Cushing (another scientist who, coincidentally, has caught the same train).

For a while, it's pretty tense, but it soon runs out of steam (sorry) once the original monster has been dispatched and it takes human form - and it jumps the proverbial shark completely when Cushing & Lee make slides of gunk from its eyes and see visual memories of a Brontosaurus and a Pterodactyl floating around under the microscope.

Just when you think it's hit rock bottom, Telly Savalas turns up. Now I have a massive amount of time for Aristotelis, but this is not his finest hour at all - he's rotten in it, and his appearance is so perfunctory you wonder why he even bothered (oh yeah - money). there's a brief hurrah at the end with a load of living dead cossacks and a toy train crash but, really, after the excitement of the start, it's an awful disappointment.

Anyway, the music is good, and at least half of the film is excellent, so it's not a complete write off. Here's the end theme, by John Cacavas, a kitchen sink job, part Spaghetti Western, part Rosemary's Baby, part Barbarella.

Horror Express

Telly Looks At...Disco

One of the pivotal sequences in 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham' is the 'incredible' over forties disco competition held in the 81 acre Cannon Hill Park. Styles range from the slightly shambolic to the unneccessarily sexually suggestive, but the star has to be indefatigable, knicker flashing, high kicking Mrs.Taylor.

As Mr. Savalas rather archly remarks of Mrs. T: "I'm sure somebody loves you, baby". Cheeky twat.

Telly Looks At...Architecture

More Midlands moments preserved for posterity in 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham'. This time, it's some of the striking modern buildings associated with the city that have earned it the nickname 'the Brasilia of Britain'.

I made that Brasilia bit up. Sorry, I just got excited. What does Telly say? 'You feel like you've been projected into the 21st century'. Can't argue with that, as most of these buildings are still there.

Telly Looks At...Art

I am obsessed with the 1981 short film 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham' and have been for some time. This incredible period piece, filmed in 1979, was the work of prolific director and producer Harold Baim, and it tickles and enthralls me for a number of reasons: it's extremely funny, hugely informative and very redolent of the world at the time I was growing up and starting to take notice.

I'm not from anywhere near Birmingham, but I know the second city quite well thanks to an ex-girlfriend from Harborne, and I think it's a very under-rated place which just happens to be full of the urban architecture I'm utterly fascinated by, especially the pre fucked with civic centre, a magnificent mess of the long gone and future past, a ramshackle and run down modernist vision characterised by a sign reading 'Paradise Place' affixed to a concrete ramp leading up to the Ballardian library complex.

Anyway, I'm incapable of not sharing gold like this, so let's start as we mean to go on - randomly - with some shots from the Gerald Irvine exhibition held at the premier Strathallan Hotel.

What does Telly have to say about this dazzling visual feast? Just that he 'looked in' and it 'nourished his brains'. Beautiful, baby, just beautiful.