Couldn’t find a UK poster for Death Line anywhere, so unfortunately the visual accompaniment above is the poster for it’s US release, under the rubbish title of Raw Meat.

Given the sheer scope for subterranean transport-based terror, I think it’s a crying shame that there isn’t a truly classic horror film set in the London Underground. 2004′s vacuously nasty tube tale, Creep, certainly couldn’t be described as anywhere near ”classic”, and neither could 1972′s Death Line, despite boasting as it does today’s Scene of the Day.

Don’t get me wrong, Death Line isn’t a bad film, it’s infinitely better than Creep, for example. It’s just that it’s not deserving of quite the high level of esteem it is sometimes held in on the grounds that it’s not a particularly well put-together film.

Directed by American Gary Sherman (whose only other film of note is the rather good Video Nasty, Dead & Buried), Death Line offers up the cracking premise that the rabid patriarch of a cannibalistic family, descended from underground workers trapped and abandoned in the fictional “Museum” tube station some 60-odd years before, has found a way to pop out onto the platform for some fresh meat, namely groovy Swinging Londoners of the early 70s.

Sherman sadly botches this idea at several turns, however, stumbling out of the traps by blowing the mystery behind the murders a mere 10 minutes in, following police inspector Donald Pleasance’s (oh, yes) investigation into the very first slaying. The film is also overly-concerned with rendering it’s commuter munching monster a touch too sympathetically. This is most obviously apparent in a painfully arduous and amateurish (though, strangely celebrated in some circles) ten-minute tracking shot through the cannibal’s dank lair. There is also the small matter of his supposedly blood-curdling, though in actuality rather hilarious, battlecry of “MIND THE DOORS!!!”

But while Death Line is nowhere near as good as it perhaps could or should have been, it is still a very entertaining watch, and thanks in no small part to the warped novelty that is a byproduct of it’s often cackhanded realisation. Will Malone’s creepy, kinky electronic score will surely linger in the mind for quite some time, but perhaps it’s the raft of kooky performances that prove most memorable. The aforementioned Pleasance is at his playful, waspish best in the lead, while many will recognise Norman Rossington from A Hard Day’s Night, playing his sidekick. Christopher Lee pops up in a near pointless cameo as an MI5 agent, but when I watched it at least, the biggest cheer was reserved for the appearance of Clive Swift AKA Richard from fucking Keeping Up Appearances (I love it when random sitcom staples turn up in 60s/70s British horror films, see also; Paul “Jerry from The Good Life” Eddington in Hammer’s The Devil Rides out and, most unsettling of all, Bill “Compo from Last of the Summer Wine” Owen in Pete Walker’s bonkers slasher, The Comeback).

So, with the sloppiness of Death Line and the actors therein in mind, let’s have a look at the scene in question. The trickiest sequences in horror can often be those leading up to the big fright, the scene in which tension and forebooding often culminates in an attack and bloody murder. The pratfalls are numerous, and many hack directors often manage to kill all that hard-won tension completely by having one of their characters take an unscheduled trip to the toilet, say, or something equally transparent and protracted.

What Gary Sherman chooses to do before a major set-piece triple murder in Death Line, however, is build up tension by inserting the most surreally mundane and awkwardly delivered conversation between two characters in horror history. Unfortunately, no one else seems to love this scene as much as I do, so I couldn’t find a clip solely comprised of it. However, if you kindly fast-forward to exactly 4 minutes in on the Death Line clip below, you will see this bizarre exchange in all it’s glory, right before the hapless conversationalists are bloodily dispatched.

I guarantee you’ll be quoting it for the rest of your life!

Tags death line donald pleasance gary sherman horror raw meat scene of the day will malone