Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat)

You could drive a District Line train through the holes in the plot, but no matter, Death Line from 1972 features an excellent performance from Donald Pleasance, a bizarre cameo from Christopher Lee and plenty of seventies Tube nostalgia.

The basic idea is that a bunch of tunnelers became trapped underground near the old abandoned British Museum station in 1892, and after five generations of eating each other and the occasional unfortunate last-train passenger at Russell Square, the police finally take notice when a perv with a bowler hat and an OBE goes missing.

After his girfriend dies in childbirth there is only one of these unpleasant subterranean cannibals left: 'The Man', whose torrents of sticky dribble reminded me of Alien. When he gets really worked up he screeches "Mind the Doors", a gag that will be somewhat lost on Londoners young enough not to remember tube trains with conductors.

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