a marketing exercise; it's Pleasence and co-star Norman Rossington who carry the film, grounding this plausible yet outrageous tale in reality. Death Line is an oddity, to be sure, but even now, in 2002, it remains horribly horrific yet strangely homely. For all its faults, this remains a masterpiece; see it, and you'll never forget it.

of the literally rotting and bloodthirsty Victorian survivors lurking in the literal underground. Brilliant.

as an original work by not crediting death line or its writer once. Death line was far ahead of its time when you compare it to the stuff Hammer was putting out at the time, and for frights, scares and creepiness it is on a par with the "Exorcist" Very scary stuff - watch it in the dark, don't watch it alone.

distributor Rank, after almost uniformly negative reviews. It's been argued that had it been produced in the States, subject to the same hell-for-leather marketing campaign enjoyed by Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it would doubtless now occupy some benighted place in the horror pantheon. Well, possibly.Chicago-born Sherman had in fact found it difficult to get backing for the project in the States, and hauled production over to London. Drawing inspiration from the legend of the inter-breeding Sawney Bean clan, the 18th-century Scottish brigands who robbed and ate passing travellers, Death Line sees Inspector Calhoun Pleasence and Sergeant Rogers Rossington investigating disappearances in Russell Square tube station. Prominent among these is one James Manfred OBE, whose unconscious body - which later disappears - is discovered lying on the station's steps by a student couple, American Alex, an economics student, and his British girlfriend Patricia.Courtesy of an extraordinary seven-minute tracking shot, we shortly discover Manfred's fate: deep within the bowels of the station, a bearded 'thing' riddled with open sores and trailing ropes of drool, is feasting on passengers - a food supply for him and his heavily pregnant 'wife'. This wordless, unbroken shot of his lair, filled with half-glimpsed skulls, crawling maggots, scuttling rats and meat-hooked cadavers is mostly the reason the critics got their knickers in such a twist; it's a truly nightmarish vision, intensely claustrophobic - but offset by the Man and his lover's pitiful circumstance.Though slow to act in the face of previous vanishings including a Jewish dentist, and a Polish grocer from Kilburn , Calhoun is rather more receptive to the issue of missing English diplomats. He soon uncovers a possible explanation behind the phenomenon. It transpires that in 1892, 12 Victorian underground workers eight men and four women were left for dead after the section of tunnel they were working on collapsed. As London Transport CID man Bacon tells the bemused inspector, "The company went bankrupt. There was a bit of a stir at the time because no effort was made to rescue the trapped workers." Interbreeding for several generations, the survivors staved off their hunger through a unique protein diet. Following the pathetic death of his wife, the Man - whose dialogue consists of whines, grunts, and his learned cry of "Mind the doors!" has become the last remnant of this betrayed and forgotten humanity.Stratton-Villiers from MI5, played by a bowler-hatted Christopher Lee wants a cover-up. The reason Manfred had been travelling by tube was because he'd been caught short after visiting the vice-pits of Soho; while no government wants to admit culpability for deliberately abandoning its workers, however long ago. Cocky Alex, therefore, becomes a potential scapegoat for Calhoun, even after Pat is abducted by the murderous Man, looking for another dietary supplement - or a new mate to breed with.As with a select handful of Brit horrors from the era - From Beyond The Grave; The Abominable Dr Phibes; Psychomania; The Wicker Man; and the wonderful Theatre Of Blood, Death Line these days enjoys something of a modest but rabid cult following, especially in America. Its influence on John Landis' An American Werewolf In London and especially London Underground shocker Creep is clear.Shot exclusively on location in the UK, including Aldwych Tube Station, it's one of the few UK horrors of the period focusing squarely on the national heritage and identity, and its sophisticated, political themes - the literal collapse of Empire, class segregation and exploitation, and high level corruption - were particularly relevant in the early 1970s, an era mired in financial and vice-based scandals.It's also one of the few horror films in which our sympathies lie with the 'Monster'; the Man can't help his animal instincts, but 'humanity' comes off the worst. Civilisation is seen throughout to be lacking in comparison - a mildewed nation of racist, sexist, hypocritical bureaucrats, bent coppers and jobsworths, and in Alex's case, totally lacking in compassion. On first discovering Manfred's prone body Alex advises Pat to simply step over it, as he does back home on the New York subway. His chilly demeanour will drive Pat to temporarily split up with him, a negative of the scenes played out 'down below', in which the Man displays a genuine, heartbreaking grief following his wife's death.The dialogue is a joy, and stems mostly from Pleasence's interplay with everyone within a 10-yard scowling distance; the kind of senior working-class copper who instinctively mistrusts anyone he thinks is putting on airs and graces, like educated Alex or his more refined underling Rossington. Courtesy of his antics, we're propelled right back into the unreconstructed 1970s of 'The Sweeney' and 'Love Thy Neighbour' - with cultural conventions Sherman both acknowledges and deliciously sends up.And Pleasence is by far the most enjoyable thing in this; a snuffling misanthrope, constantly bawling for "more tea!" from his underemployed secretary, and contemptuously flicking tea bags into the bin. If he's not advising Alex to "hurry back to school - there might be a protest march for you to join", he's shirking his duty and getting drunk down the pub with Rossington. "Are you aware that our gracious Majesty is overseas in the far-flung Empire flogging her pretty little guts out so you can live in a democracy?" he drunkenly berates a publican trying to turf him out at closing time. It's totally hilarious.

the other, much more tender side of the 'monster' hiding in a liar-network underneath the London Underground. When a couple of young students discover the nearly dead body of a Military Intelligence Officer at Russell Square station and report it to the police, the investigation quickly gets stuck as the victim vanishes and his service attempts to cover up the mysterious disappearance. The cynic Inspector Calhoun against his will has to team up with the teenagers – he hates teenagers, he actually hates everything – to unravel the secret of the London Underground. The audience finds out about this secret long before the protagonists do, as we're informed about the story of tube-workers trapped by a cave-in at the end of the previous century and the subsequent subterranean culture they slowly developed. The last remaining inbred descendant has now tragically lost his wife and unborn child, which forces him to leave his trusted hideout place and search for a new partner. The extended images of the underground liar are utterly repulsive, with decomposed and half-devoured cadavers rotting away all over the place, but the cannibal himself is an oddly engaging and genuinely pitiable villain who treats his dying wife with rarely seen acts of patience and tenderness. He isn't the kind of deranged madman who hunts and butchers for no reason, but an atypical kind of loving husband. Eventually, the whole film actually becomes more saddening and moving instead of scary, which is possibly the most unanticipated twist in a grisly 70's horror film EVER! Also, "Raw Meat" is packed with an overload of brilliantly dry British humor and extremely clever dialogs. Donald Pleasance – what an amazingly versatile actor he was – is just perfect as the cynic Inspector whose investigation isn't really making any progress, but his confidence in solving the case actually makes you believe he's a great policeman anyway. Inspector Calhoun is the funniest British stereotype ever depicted in a horror film; an arrogant and negative-minded guy who drinks copious amounts of tea every day and suffers from a seemingly permanent cold. Writer/director Gary Sherman greatly captures the atmosphere of working-class Britain here, with long and frustrating workdays ending with excessive drinking in the nearby pubs and good cops that are forced to cover up the truth regarding the whereabouts of prominent missing citizens. By the way, for this otherwise irrelevant sub plot, Christopher Lee makes a cameo appearance as a Military Intelligence officer. The pace sometimes feels a little slow and dreary, mainly because there's very little action on screen, but Sherman maintains a respectable tension-level and regularly provides an effective shock-twist. To my knowledge, two other horror movies make use of the terrifically sinister London Underground setting. The Hammer classic "Quatermass and the Pit", although that one deals with alien invaders, and the much more recent "Creep" which totally aims at gory special effects and nauseating murders. "Raw Meat" is highly recommended viewing for fans of vintage Brit-horror.

a pregnant woman. He emits a primal scream that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. This is classic horror, reminiscent of films as diverse as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and Cronenberg's version of "The Fly", as well as tales of Appalachian inbreds. The monster that invokes both pity and dread. And yes, there's a beauty involved. There is such pathos here that it actually augments the horror of the story. The lair itself is simply indescribable. I'm used to superior art direction in British horror films, but this is a rare achievement. The other elements of the story, the police procedural plot, for example, are relatively mundane, though efficient, and Christopher Lee makes a cameo appearance that stops the show. There's a genuine scare, done without shock SFX, but by using timing, silence and suspense. Films like "Death Line", and Cronenberg's early low-budget horror films are unique and ought to be cherished. You'd be hard-pressed to do it the same way, today. You'd want CGI creatures, faster editing and more violence. The director of this film achieves a lot with little, and all that's required of the viewer is to sit back and allow oneself to be drawn in. This movie is a real find.