“Mind the Doors.”
A man is attacked and left at the bottom of the stairs in a subway tunnel at Russell Square in London. A young couple, Alex Campbell (David Ladd) and Patricia Wilson (Sharon Gurney), find the man and report it to a local policeman. When they return to the stairway, the man is gone. The next day Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) is informed of the incident. They find out that the man’s name is James Manfred (James Cossins). Manfred turns out to be an Officer of the “Order of the British Empire”. Calhoun recalls that there have been a few missing persons reported in the same area.
Calhoun talks to an expert in the history of the London underground, Inspector Richardson (Clive Swift), about the specific history of the Russell Square area of the underground. According to Richardson, during the Victorian Era a cave-in trapped some workers in the tunnels. At that time both male and female workers were used. The men dug the tunnels and the women hauled the dirt up to the surface. An urban legend arose that some of the trapped workers were able to survive by eating the corpses of fellow workers. The legend says that offspring of the trapped workers still live underground. Calhoun tries to investigate if Manfred’s disappearance has anything to do with the other missing people, but is hampered by an MI5 agent, Stratton-Villiers (Christopher Lee).
Down in the abandoned tunnels a man (Hugh Armstrong) tries to tend to a sick pregnant woman (June Turner). He offers her blood from a freshly killed James Manfred. When the woman dies it leaves the man as the last living offspring from the original trapped workers. The man, emotionally crushed, lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Distraught he continues to try to tend to the dead woman. In his anguish he murders three maintenance workers in a tunnel.
Calhoun continues his investig
ation in starts and stops, one moment baffled and the next garnering an epiphany or two.
“Death Line”AKA “Deathline” AKA “Raw Meat” was released in 1972 and was directed by Gary Sherman. It is a British and American horror film. The film is noted as being one of the first horror films to feature cannibalism.
Donald Pleasence is so much fun in this. His portrayal of the snarky and cranky curmudgeon is wonderful. Both flighty and shrewd his character takes over the movie and propels it forward. He is the best part of the film. You go along happily, even with his aversion to teabags. Christopher Lee has a small part as an MI5 agent. Supposedly, Lee took the role so he could work with Pleasence. Their scenes together are short, and they are almost never in the same frame together, which was an interesting way of making the 6’5” Lee on the same level as the 5’7” Pleasence. The only time they are framed together is when Lee is sitting down.
There isn’t much in the way of plot here and, other than Pleasence, the characters are not exactly likable. Actually, the most sympathetic character in the film is the cannibal. The character doesn’t even have a name, but he did his best to take care of his family. It also appears that he never learned to talk. The only speech he ever learned was a garbled “Mind the doors” which came from the automated train speakers that echoed through the tunnels as he was growing up.