The Bloody, Unsettling ‘Midnight Meat Train’ Gave Us Bradley Cooper as a Leading Man

Bradley Cooper’s rise to A-List, possibly Oscar-winning prominence within the Hollywood system is likely worthy of an A Star Is Born movie all its own. From a small supporting role on Alias — where he essentially got Xander’d to the sideline so that Jennifer Garner and Michael Vartan’s characters could get together — to an eye-opening bit part in Wet Hot American Summer to, nearly two decades later, three Oscar nominations (and counting!) and a spectacular critical/box-office success for his directorial debut, A Star Is Born.

But it wasn’t always so. After his run on Alias ended and his TV follow-up Kitchen Confidential was swiftly (too swiftly, for some) cancelled, Cooper moved into movies. With a supporting role in 2005’s Wedding Crashers, Cooper at least found a foothold in a movie that tons of people were seeing. Most critics and observers credit Wedding Crashers with getting Cooper to the rung on the ladder with The Hangover. Which is almost certainly correct, given the types of characters he plays in both movies. But, trivia or not, the first leading role in a theatrical movie that Bradley Cooper ever got was in the 2008 horror flick The Midnight Meat Train. An ignominious way to kick off a (possibly) Oscar-winning career? Perhaps. But it makes for a hell of a conversation starter.

Based on a short story by celebrated horror master Clive Barker, The Midnight Meat Train tells the story of a late-night subway train prowled by a vicious killer, who murders the after-hours stragglers, hangs their bodies on meat hooks, and then takes them to his subterranean lair where he butchers the bodies. It’s a horrifically bloody affair, with former professional footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones playing the murderous subway killer. Cooper plays Leon, a photographer looking to Make It as an artist and struggling to impress art-dealer Brooke Shields (this movie just gets better and better). One night, seeking to up the ante on his photographs by capturing the seedier side of the city, he follows a woman into the subway and documents what may well have been a sexual assault if not for an attack of conscience on his part. Of course, the would-be victim makes it onto the subway only to get killed by the Subway Killer, but points for effort maybe?

Cooper keeps prowling the edges of the Subway Killer’s massacres — which are reported only as missing persons, because apparently there is also a Midnight Cleanup Crew who scrubs everything clean — until he finally crosses paths with the Killer, at which point things starts to get seriously macabre. Clive Barker, who created the Hellraiser franchise, makes his presence felt as Cooper’s character finds himself further and further drawn into the Killer’s underground murder-realm.

So is The Midnight Meat Train just another modern-day B-movie with a snazzy title and a whole lot of really unpleasant business happening underground? Sort of. Cooper’s presence is reason enough to watch; it’s not like he’s delivering Toni Collette-in-Hereditary realness. On the scale of future-A-Lister-in-horror, Cooper ranks below even, say Greta Gerwig’s sparky turn in House of the Devil. But he ranks higher than footnotes like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Still, the big reason to run-don’t-walk to HBO for The Midnight Meat Train is if you’re a fan of over-the-top, super-bloody, cartoonishly-gory kills. Great horror movies keep their audiences on a string, yanking them in whatever direction they want with extreme tension and scares. Bad horror movies either let the tension get too slack or are too haphazard with where they’re yanking their audience. But a movie like The Midnight Meat Train is so unconcerned with being good or bad, it just wants to drown you in blood. There’s a place in the firmament for that, if you’re interested. And if you are, you’ll be gifted with once-in-a-lifetime sights like …

Enjoy your future Oscars, Bradley Cooper! Just know that your kingdom stands upon a foundation of meat.