If the alien was just after knowledge, and only wanted to escape from Earth, why did it bring all the dead soldiers back to life near the end of the movie?.Was the creature scared that the survivors, would warn the rest of the world,of it's existance, and wanted them dead if so why did it just not kill them itself and take over one of their bodies .?
shareSaxton had the drop on the creature, and was ready to blow its head off. Reviving the brain-drained bodies of his victims (and controlling their movements) was a power that Prof. Saxton was unaware that the creature possessed, and the creature used it to escape. The creature already had what it wanted from the train- its freedom, a healthy host body, and the information on where to further pursue his (presumed) goal of returning to the stars. At that point it had no use for the passengers and simply wanted them dead. It had already shown its callous disregard for human life.
shareI wonder if the creature was actually dead at the end of the movie, it would have made a great sequil if it had survived
shareI reckon the camera tracking away from the earth at the end of the film meant that the 'energy being' was leaving the earth's atmosphere and making its way home. After all, a mass of pure energy wouldn't need oxygen or transport to make its way through space. Unfortunately, this leaves its earlier 'enquires' about space travel to the engineer character looking a bit pointless.
shareI seriously doubt that the monster was flying away as an energy being. Rather, I think they simply chose to close the film on that note as a reminder of what else may be lurking out in space. I wish they would have made a sequel, though, for there is no reason to think it would have died in the train crash.
shareIf the camera tracking away from earth was meant to suggest the creature's "energy" was leaving, then why would it have needed a host body to begin with? It sort of invalidates that.
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The creature was dead, the reverse shot of Earth from space was just a way to end the picture. Maybe director Gene (Eugenio) Martin wanted to make an artistic correlation between the circular headlight on the train racing through the Siberian wilderness and the relatively bright Earth receding through dark outer space.
Horror Express was the last movie made at a Spanish studio before it shut down. There was no money for a sequel. In the early 70s, the movie industry in Europe was on the skids as the international market for European movies went south. No more Italian westerns with the studio inserting title credits in four or five languages for the export market and English dubbing, no more distribution deals with US studios like 20th Century Fox and Paramount, which were on hard times as their aging Boards of Directors finally retired after running their studios into the ground.
There was a magazine, with a name like Cinema Fantastic, that had a great article on Horror Express, describing how the film producers got Horror Express completed under the wire, just before the production money ran out. The train interior sets were made for the movie, they were not recycled sets from a big budget movie then, Nicholas and Alexandra according to the producer.
The character of a never dying alien creature from Horror Express made another appearance, of sorts, as the alien Skaaroth in the Doctor Who episodes City of Death (1979).