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Death Line
DVD/APPROX. 88 MINS/1972/UK UNRATED
DVD/APPROX. 88 MINS/1972/UK UNRATED
6
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A million miles away from the costumed camp of Hammer movies, Death Line (aka Raw Meat) is a very strange affair indeed. A very British mixture
of slasher and art house sensibilities with a streak of nasty violence running throughout, the films odd tone might be off putting to fans of more
mainstream gory movies but adventurous film fans will delight in the bizarre comedic touches and long drawn out shots of rotting corpses!
Two students, a cynical, almost world weary American called Alex and his English girlfriend, Patricia get off the tube train at Russell Square station
in London to discover a dying man lying prostrate at the foot of some stairs. He's a top level civil servant who has come to a sticky end after a
night of cruising the seedy strip joints of Soho. When Alex returns to the scene with a police officer in tow they discover that the body has gone
missing...
They report the incident and try to forget their harrowing experience but hardened and slightly goofy cops Calhoun, in a really bizarre but brilliant
performance from horror stalwart Donald Pleasence, and Rogers (Norman Rossington) discover that the sleazy government official wasn't the first
person to go missing in that particular location. A spate of disappearances have taken place over the preceding months and with a high ranking
MI5 man, played with weird zeal by Christopher Lee in an off kilter cameo, closing in on the case they don't have much time to uncover the
mysteries behind the vanished people.
It turns out that the London Underground train system houses a labyrinth of unused, unfinished tunnels and stations and that almost 100 years
before some workers had been trapped when a tunnel collapsed and never rescued. Could these poor, unfortunate souls have survived, breeding
and evolving into a race of troglodyte cannibals who enjoy nothing better than feasting on innocent commuters? That seems like the most likely
explanation now doesn't it!
The killer is a hideously deformed, diseased and undernourished character whose language skills only extend to bellowing "Miiiind theee
Dooouurrss!", a phrase learnt by copying the station tannoy system when the trains pull up to the platform. He and his sickly family haven't seen
daylight for decades and he makes hunting trips into the station to cave workmen's heads in with shovels and ram sharp stick through their guts.
All this is surprisingly gory and twisted for a British movie of this vintage which more usually featured some mind vampiric bloodletting and a little
bodice ripping cleavage to score an X certificate.
The movie is abstract and weird from the off with a blurry title sequence in which porno theatre signs all pulled in and out of focus while a funky,
Moog lead piece of music grooves on in the background. All the performances are skewed and odd, especially Pleasence', who barks for cups of tea
from his female subordinate and gets wildly drunk. He makes frequent off topic remarks about unrelated matters and generally displays a
eye-popping, unrestrained side to his acting that is hugely entertaining. His fellow officer makes a good straight man for his superiors goofball
antics.
The twisted, ugly fiend that lurks in the darkness is portrayed in the same light as a classic Frankenstein's monster, with a mixture of ferocious
sadism and heart tugging pathos because he mourns his lost family, all dead from disease and malnutrition. When he kidnaps student Patricia
towards the end of the film it not to eat her but to keep her, for he is essentially lonely in his stinking bolthole and craves human contact.
Death Line is a wild and woolly trip into the surreal and bizarre side of UK horror and is an essential watch for retro horror fans who have grown
weary of candelabras and stakes through the heart. A vicious and violent film with an almost Python-like comedy edge and a loopy score, it's great
fun if not really very scary so get ready to learn the terrible and dark secrets that lurk beneath the streets of London in....Death Line.
of slasher and art house sensibilities with a streak of nasty violence running throughout, the films odd tone might be off putting to fans of more
mainstream gory movies but adventurous film fans will delight in the bizarre comedic touches and long drawn out shots of rotting corpses!
Two students, a cynical, almost world weary American called Alex and his English girlfriend, Patricia get off the tube train at Russell Square station
in London to discover a dying man lying prostrate at the foot of some stairs. He's a top level civil servant who has come to a sticky end after a
night of cruising the seedy strip joints of Soho. When Alex returns to the scene with a police officer in tow they discover that the body has gone
missing...
They report the incident and try to forget their harrowing experience but hardened and slightly goofy cops Calhoun, in a really bizarre but brilliant
performance from horror stalwart Donald Pleasence, and Rogers (Norman Rossington) discover that the sleazy government official wasn't the first
person to go missing in that particular location. A spate of disappearances have taken place over the preceding months and with a high ranking
MI5 man, played with weird zeal by Christopher Lee in an off kilter cameo, closing in on the case they don't have much time to uncover the
mysteries behind the vanished people.
It turns out that the London Underground train system houses a labyrinth of unused, unfinished tunnels and stations and that almost 100 years
before some workers had been trapped when a tunnel collapsed and never rescued. Could these poor, unfortunate souls have survived, breeding
and evolving into a race of troglodyte cannibals who enjoy nothing better than feasting on innocent commuters? That seems like the most likely
explanation now doesn't it!
The killer is a hideously deformed, diseased and undernourished character whose language skills only extend to bellowing "Miiiind theee
Dooouurrss!", a phrase learnt by copying the station tannoy system when the trains pull up to the platform. He and his sickly family haven't seen
daylight for decades and he makes hunting trips into the station to cave workmen's heads in with shovels and ram sharp stick through their guts.
All this is surprisingly gory and twisted for a British movie of this vintage which more usually featured some mind vampiric bloodletting and a little
bodice ripping cleavage to score an X certificate.
The movie is abstract and weird from the off with a blurry title sequence in which porno theatre signs all pulled in and out of focus while a funky,
Moog lead piece of music grooves on in the background. All the performances are skewed and odd, especially Pleasence', who barks for cups of tea
from his female subordinate and gets wildly drunk. He makes frequent off topic remarks about unrelated matters and generally displays a
eye-popping, unrestrained side to his acting that is hugely entertaining. His fellow officer makes a good straight man for his superiors goofball
antics.
The twisted, ugly fiend that lurks in the darkness is portrayed in the same light as a classic Frankenstein's monster, with a mixture of ferocious
sadism and heart tugging pathos because he mourns his lost family, all dead from disease and malnutrition. When he kidnaps student Patricia
towards the end of the film it not to eat her but to keep her, for he is essentially lonely in his stinking bolthole and craves human contact.
Death Line is a wild and woolly trip into the surreal and bizarre side of UK horror and is an essential watch for retro horror fans who have grown
weary of candelabras and stakes through the heart. A vicious and violent film with an almost Python-like comedy edge and a loopy score, it's great
fun if not really very scary so get ready to learn the terrible and dark secrets that lurk beneath the streets of London in....Death Line.
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