Death Line
miND tHe dOoRs!
Death Line/Raw Meat is an absolutely golden piece of seventies horror as far as I’m concerned. It’s got everything I could want in a film - there’s an opening theme that badly walks the line between funky and gameshow theme, a sleazy toff (OBE) getting kidnapped by a cannibal in the London Underground, Donald Pleasance doing a wonderful turn as a facetious copper, a guest appearance from Christopher Lee at his most stiff upper lip and a film that manages to truck along for most of its run time then entirely runs out of steam and sort of meanders to an ending, like it completely forgot what it was doing. Something cannibal was it? Probably.
It’s in that wonderful/awful period where people were trying to pay their bills, keep making films and that, and so films were just sort of entirely all over the shop. Not from one film to the next, often from one scene to the next. There’s some atrocious howlers around then, especially as the UK got increasingly obsessed with tits, and some gems. Death Line is one of the gems.
I first taped it off the tele at some point in the nineties and immediately fell in love. I feel like I should apologise to everyone who had to put up with me, at every single train station, muttering “miiind the doooors” in my best cannibal voice for years afterwards. I still struggle to behave myself with it now. If Em were still around, she’d exhaustedly testify to this. “He’s a fucking idiot”, she’d tell you, as I would pretend to try and eat you whilst spluttering out “mind the doors” for the thirteenth time. Watching it again and I can feel the temptation rising again.
This film got me deeply. The right film, the right time, for my entirely wrong brain.
I have no idea if that’s a recommendation or a warning, that’s for you to decide. Whatever you decide though, you should definitely mind the doooooorrrrs.