52/72: DEATH LINE

 by Anthony King

The raw meat of the human race.

I have a list on Letterboxd of films that I've seen before that I didn't like or hated upon first watch, an opinion that went against general consensus. The goal is to rewatch all those films and reassess my thinking. Of the films I've gone back to revisit I've come away with a different opinion on about half of them. Sometimes I wasn't in the right mood; sometimes the video quality was poor; sometimes I didn't “get” the movie the first go around.The first movie of this column, Pink Flamingos, was on that list. I didn't get the genius of it the first time, but upon subsequent rewatches I see the masterpiece of it all. Gary Sherman's Death Line, aka Raw Meat, was on that reassessment list, and I'm happy to report my opinion of the film has changed since the first time I saw it five years ago.

Death Line opens with a man in one of London's tube stations, who collapses on the stairs. Patricia (Sharon Gurney) and Alex (David Ladd) walk by and see the man. She becomes concerned, insisting that he’s diabetic. Alex, though, is convinced the man is just drunk. They alert a policeman, bring him to where the man was passed out on the stairs, only to find the body missing. An investigation ensues led by Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) and Det. Sgt. Rogers (Norman Rossington). The police look upon the young couple with suspicion, yet as more people begin to disappear in the subway tunnels, more cops lean toward the theory of an underground habitat of people that supposedly live in the tube tunnels. It's then revealed that there are, in fact, people living in the tunnels who are cannibals.

The first time I watched Death Line it was terrible video and sound quality. It's already a dark movie, much of it taking place in poorly lit underground tunnels, but the poor transfer abated my enjoyment. Since then, Blue Underground has given the film a wonderful 4K upgrade, which has made its way to streaming platforms, replacing the shitty version. This time around I was able to allow myself to disappear into the film without distractions of bad video, I could hear the specific inflection in which Pleasence speaks, and I could finally see the nightmarish underground world in which the people lived.

As far as first features go, Death Line should be considered one of the best. Sherman has proven himself time again as his career moved forward with films like Dead & Buried (1981) with which he avoided the sophomore slump, Vice Squad (1982), Poltergeist III (1988), and Lisa (1990). True, many of Sherman's films didn't receive wide releases, and many were brushed off as genre pap upon initial release, but over time he has been regarded as a director of cult masterpieces. Coming out of the gate with Death Line as a writer and director, Sherman proved he had an eye for building an outre world populated with fascinating characters. Even our antagonist, a man who kills and eats people, garners our empathy, a feat not so easily accomplished, especially by a first-time director.

Donald Pleasence delivers yet another unforgettable performance as the top cop in the investigation. Like many of us, my introduction to Pleasence was as Dr. Loomis in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). In the first two Halloween films Loomis is a serious man, a character who offers no levity whatsoever. That is who Pleasence was in my mind for a long time – a self-serious actor who only took on the role of a heavy. Yet the more movies of his I watch the more I see how much Pleasence loved to play a character who could be played as heavy but injected with a sort of silliness, or a self-serious man with childlike qualities. And as I look at the list of films I've seen with Pleasence, it's only in John Carpenter's films that Pleasence plays his characters straight. In Wake in Fright (1971), Pleasence is a man who has completely lost his mind in the Australian outback. In Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), he's a cartoonish villain that lives in a mountain fortress. In Alone in the Dark (1982), he's a doctor at a mental institute who could very well be a patient. In Phenomena (1985), he's a friendly scientist with a chimpanzee assistant. These are not the Loomises I assumed Pleasence really inhabited. In Death Line, Pleasence is a cynical cop who's been on the force for too long, seemingly hates the younger generation, and is always blowing his nose. Yet Pleasence plays Calhoun with so much childlike wonderment he makes the character insanely likable.

While Death Line is a simple horror movie on the surface about cannibals that live underground in London, I got so much more out of this rewatch. I think Death Line is a story about class divide. After we spend more than a minute with the only remaining survivor underground, we immediately begin to empathize with him. Sherman and screenwriter Ceri Jones are able to get us to care about this... thing. The writers could have taken the easy route and focused on the murder of innocent people in the subway, but the fact that the first person we see taken by the underground dweller is a man who's been awarded an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). He's part of the aristocracy, recognized specifically by the monarchy. This, of course, doesn't warrant one's murder, nor does it mean he should be eaten. And later in the film we see the murder of blue collar workers in the tube. But the people who have turned to a cannibalistic lifestyle residing in the subway tunnels have been forced underground because the world chewed them up and spit them out. The government didn't care about these people. The writers were well aware of this divide around the world and wrote a genre movie about it.

Death Line is a brilliant film, and a perfect example of what a little care for its elements can do. I had a feeling my opinion on the film would change upon this rewatch, but I wasn't expecting such a drastic change. An incredible first feature with impressive performances, Death Line deserves all the love.