Independent Films, Film Profiles

Death Line
by Gary Sherman

Death Line is a 1972 British horror film, distributed as Raw Meat in the United States. The film stars Donald Pleasence as Inspector Calhoun, and was directed by the American filmmaker, Gary Sherman.The film's plot concerns a family of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers dwelling in the disused lines of the London Underground tube network. The father of the family visits the neighbouring Russell Square and Holborn stations to pick off passengers for food, then takes them back to the gruesome 'pantry' at an incomplete station. When the cannibal kidnaps and kills an important politician, he is hunted by a detective as well as an American student and his English girlfriend who were the last to see the victim in the tube station. Donald Pleasence stars as the investigating police inspector, and when finally cornered, one of the cannibals screams a corrupted form of "Mind the doors!", obviously having picked it up parrot-fashion from the guards on the Underground trains.