Very Cool!!!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Death Line AKA Raw Meat is quite a unique little film.Others have described the plot etc. I'd just like to say that this is a film that really should be remade. The original, while fascinating, has many contradictions in tone, awkward transitions between procedural and horror, between mythic and comedic. Yet in the hands of a director who can see the potential for this story it could be expanded upon and updated easily into a true classic. Watch the film and then imagine it being directed by a Guillermo Del Toro or even Chris Carter or perhaps Brad Anderson giving it the 'Session 9' treatment. Also a superior level of acting would have helped astoundingly. Yet there are so many interesting ideas rumbling around in here.

Don't get me wrong. I love British horror movies, I'm a huge fan of Donald Pleasance and Christopher Lee (although the latter has nothing but a glorified cameo), but I don't feel this one lived up to its brilliant premise.It starts off very promising, with a great title sequence, the first attack happens quickly and the mood is set within the first ten minutes. Then sadly the movie just sort of lingers, with several overlong sequences leading up to a finale that is merely okay. It could easily have been edited down with at least 10 minutes, and although I still found the end product mildly entertaining I can't help but think about the amazing potential it had. Pleasance as a police inspector facing cannibals living in the London underground? That alone sounds like the coolest British film ever made. Well sadly it's not.A key factor when you want to create an effective horror film is to keep the threat constant, to have it sort of luring in the background in every scene. Well for me the monster(s) didn't seem threatening enough, as a matter of fact it came off more sympathetic than monstrous. So when the villain in a horror movie doesn't frighten you, what are we left with to scare us? The empty underground tunnels? Christopher Lee as an arrogant MI-5 operative? Not likely. It has some good effective gore though, I'll give it that.There is some fun acting from Pleasance and the supporting cast (like Clive Swift of later "Keeping Up Appearances"-fame), but too many of the characters also seem a bit wasted as most of them have little if any effect on the main plot itself. After all the American student is the guy who actually makes an impact on the plot, the police itself is too busy drinking tea and harassing bartenders.But I'm guessing the filmmakers were aware of what was missing when they released the film with false advertising and a poster that LIES.*MILD SPOILERS BELOW, NOT RELATED TO THE ENDING* The original vintage poster showed a whole group of cannibals, giving off the impression that we're in for some "living dead"-type horror action, where the threat is VERY real and dangerous. Instead we're treated to ONE single cannibal grieving his mate. Where the Heck is the scary HORROR? More than anything else I felt sorry for the poor cannibal, the last of his kind.The film wins on atmosphere and that wonderful British quirkiness, but that's about it.

Death Line is set in London & starts as British minster & OBE no less James Manfred (James Cossins) finds himself on the platform for Russell Square Underground train station where he is attacked, the last train from the station drops off American students Alex Campbell (David Ladd) & Patricia Wilson (Sharon Gurney) who find Manfred laying down on the floor. Patricia wants to help Manfred but her boyfriend Alex is reluctant, eventually they agree to leave him & seek help but upon their return with the police Manfred has gone. Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) is interested in the case because of who Manfred was & starts an investigation & discovers that other's have also mysteriously disappeared at the station, unknown to Calhoun an inbred cannibalistic man lives in the Underground tunnels of an uncompleted station & likes to take unsuspecting train passengers & kill them...More widely known as Raw Meat in the US this British production was directed by Gary Sherman & produced by Paul Maslansky who went on to produced the Police Academy series of films & subsequent television show & gets points for being the first horror film to use the dark, grime filled tunnels of the London Underground as it's main setting the likes of Creep (2004) would go on replicate. Death Line has it's fair share of positives & negatives, it's a nice claustrophobic story & has a great moody atmosphere but the story is rather fragmented with little connecting narrative & it's just too slow. Things are introduced but then go nowhere, the importance of Manfred & MI6 sniffing around is completely abandoned, the point raised about the inbred killer having a disease is mentioned a couple of times but again nothing becomes of it & the police investigation seems rather half hearted (two people are brutally murdered & they don't even close the station?). However the more defined than usual character's help carry it, the working class Inspector Calhoun played by Pleasence in particular is great to watch & listen to as he makes constant sarcastic remarks while a great intelligence & cool personality occasionally comes through. The script tries to give inbred killer a sympathetic side & tries to make us feel sorry for what he is rather than make us despise him for what he does to survive. The one main killer is the slow pace, at almost an hour & a half long virtually nothing happens, there's lots of talking & while I appreciate a good build-up as anyone else there's not much tension or suspense & it feels very laboured. Death Line certainly has it's moments, there's a few nicely humorous moments, there are some surprisingly gory moments & it tells a story competently enough but you have to sit through a lot of forgettable padding to get to the good stuff. Despite all the reviews & the US title Raw meat suggesting that the inbred killer is a cannibal he is never shown eating any human flesh, maybe the implication is that he is a cannibal but it's never shown on screen that he is. Good overall but not great.Death Line manages to really the early 70's London feel, the dirty Underground tunnels with the dripping water a constant motif are used to very good effect. Well made with one particularly impressive panning shot of the killers hideout that starts on a Rat nibbling a severed arm & continues as the camera pans round to reveal dead mutilated bodies & the killer for the first time. It's a very slow moving & long shot that set the tone & layout of the setting very nicely. There's some good gore here too, a man gets a shovel in his head, someone in impaled on a broom handle, various dead & decaying bodies are seen, there's a slit throat & a Rat's head is bitten off.Filmed in London in the UK apparently the Underground station Aldwych was used to double up for Russell Square. The acting is pretty good, this is easily one of Donald Pleasence's best roles & he gives his character a lot of life in what could have been a very one dimensional & routine part. Christopher Lee makes a small cameo appearance in one scene.Death Line, or Raw Meat, is a good early 70's British horror set on the grimy London Underground that is maybe a little slow, it has some good moments including some good gore & a great tracking shot but there's a lot of padding to sit through to get to them.

'Death Line' is about a group of people who had been making the 'old' tunnels and had become trapped and just left there to die. But they didn't die, they bred! And managed to survive up to the current day by entering the Underground tunnels and grabbing the occasional 'last train' passenger from the platform! Saw this in an old cinema in Victoria, London.There was this old guy (one of the last survivors of this 'lost' troupe) stumbling along dark 'tube' (underground) tunnels to get to the station for his next meal - a lone passenger from the platform, who he would take back to his lair and where his ugly bride was about to give birth to the next generation. He would hang her up on a meat hook (until supper, presumably). But he kept repeating something that he had obviously had heard many times before - I thought was mumbling 'Diana Dors! Diana Dors!. The girl I was with in the cinema thought he was saying 'I'm all yours! I'm all yours!' But what he was ACTUALLY saying was 'Mind the doors!' Great idea. They should re-make it. Great film (for the 70s)...Shame Diana Dors wasn't in it...