Death Line

Plot

A family of cannibals, descended from Victorian railway workers who were buried alive during construction and never rescued, dwells in the disused lines of the London Underground network. The last surviving member of the family (Hugh Armstrong) frequently visits the neighboring Russell Square and Holborn stations to pick off unlucky passengers for food. After the cannibal kills a politician, he is sought by a detective (Donald Pleasence) reluctantly assisted by an American college student and his English girlfriend, who were the last people to see the victim alive.

Cast

Production

Hugh Armstrong's role was originally to be played by Marlon Brando but Brando had to back out when his son Christian became ill with pneumonia.

Christopher Lee agreed to do the film for scale because he wanted to work with Donald Pleasence. Despite this, the two never share the screen together due to their large height difference. Director Gary Sherman kept them in separate shots until Lee sits down at the end of the scene so that he wouldn't have issues fitting them both into the same frame.

Critical responses

Ramsey Campbell, in a review cut from The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, but reprinted later, calls Death Line "an unusually bleak and harrowing horror film...very little in the film offers the audience any relief from the plight of the Man...The violence would be intolerable if it were not for the tragic dimensions of the film, but Hugh Armstrong's performance is one of the greatest and most moving in horror films".