Death Line (1972)

Death Line is a 1972 horror film starring Donald Pleasance, and featuring a cameo appearance from Christopher Lee.

Student Patricia, and her American boyfriend Alex, are travelling on the London Underground late one evening when they find a respectable looking man lying unconscious on the stairs. After eventually convincing a policeman to investigate, they discover that the mystery man has disappeared.

As it turns out, the vanishing man is actually quite an important person, so Donald Pleasance’s Inspector Calhoun is tasked with investigating the disappearance. He uncovers an urban legend about a group of railway workers who were trapped by a cave-in, their descendants still living below ground.

It couldn’t possibly be true, could it?

Death Line is actually a very very good film. The reviews for it are overwhelmingly positive, and it is easy to see why. Donald Pleasance and Norman Rossington are both excellent as Calhoun and DS Rogers. They are a very funny double act and end up providing a lot of unexpected humour.

And believe me this humour is needed, because Death Line is very grim and also incredibly bleak. The scenes in the mutants’ lair, with the rotting remains of unfortunate commuters, does not leave a lot to the imagination.

Apart from Pleasance and Rossington, Hugh Armstrong is ridiculously sympathetic as the lead cannibal (not a sentence I ever thought I would write). The scene where he repeatedly shrieks, “Mind the doors!” is terrifying and heartbreaking in equal measure.

In fact, it is difficult not to have an element of sympathy with the mutant, cannibalistic underground dwellers, despite their murderous ways. There is an interesting juxtaposition between Manford – the very well-off first victim whose disappearance sparks the initial investigation – and the cannibal antagonists. It is almost a class thing, the upper class versus the exploited working class, and how the so-called ‘lower class’ is treated.

Or maybe it is just a film about mutant cannibals killing unsuspecting commuters.

Either way, it is a very good film, just not one I feel the need to revisit on a regular basis.