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Death Line
Raw Meat / Tunnel der lebenden Leichen
UK 1973
produced by Paul Maslansky for Harbor Ventures, K-L Productions
directed by Gary Sherman
starring Donald Pleasence, Norman Rossington, David Ladd, Sharon Gurney, Hugh Armstrong, June Turner, Christopher Lee, Clive Swift, James Cossins, Heather Stoney, Hugh Dickson, Jack Woolgar, Ron Pember, Colin McCormack, Gary Winkler, James Culliford, Suzanne Winkler, Gerry Crampton, Terence Plummer, Gordon Petrie
story by Gary Sherman, screenplay by Ceri Jones, music by Wil Malone, Jeremy Rose
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Alex (David Ladd) and Patricia (Sharon Gurney) find a sick, maybe dying
man in a subway station, but once they return to the location with the
authorities, he's gone. Now this should be the end of the story ... but
the person they've found was actually high ranking public servant James
Manfred, OBE (James Cossins), and he has gone missing ever since, so
Scotland Yard inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) starts a large scale
investigation ... until MI5 (in the person of Christopher Lee, giving a
fun performance) takes him off the case. But Calhoun isn't one to give a
case up easily, and when more people go missing/are killed at the same
subway station, he figures this is definitely a matter for Scotland Yard,
and he just puts himself on again. Now blood of whoever it was who
kidnapping/killing these people is found at the scene of the crime even,
but that doesn't help Calhoun at all, as the blood is apparently from
someone who has never seen the light of day and is suffering from a rare
kind of plague - pretty much a man thought to not exist in all of London
... but (unbeknowest to the inspector) he is real (and played by Hugh
Armstrong) and lives in an abandoned subway station where about 100 years
ago a group of workers were cut off the outer world by a cave-in, and
first they survived by eating those who died in the cave-in, later they
fed on unsuspecting subway passengers. Now though the plague-ridden fellow
is the last of his kind after his female consort (June Turner) succumbed
to the plague ... and eventually, he kidnaps Patricia to replace her. His
attempts to ask the police for assistance get Alex nowhere, so he searches
the subway tunnles himself and ultimately finds Patricia, fights the
cavedweller to a standstill, manages to make an escape with Patricia, and
when inspector Calhoun, with the police force in tow, finally arrive, they
can only find the cavedweller finally dying from the plague ... Of
course, superficially Death Line is nothing but pure pulp fiction
that doesn't really go for narrative originality but instead aims for
spectacle and shocks. And the directorial effort is not especially subtle
and apart from that seems a little bit on the functional and slightly
old-fashioned side - which has its charms for sure but doesn't make a
memorable movie. What saves the film though is Donald Pleasence, who's at
his amusing best in this one, playing his inspector like a grumpy
eccentric with no respect for authorities and a special dislike for his
partner (Norman Rossington). Thus everytime Pleasence is dominating the
scene, the film is greater than it ought to be, but when not it's a fairly
routine affair. So yes, totally worth a watch - but only thanks to
Donald Pleasence.
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