Death Line DVD (Full Uncut Version) Network Released

Donald Pleasence gives a rather unsavoury performance as the seedy, sarcastic police inspector trying to work out what is going on, and his character is emblematic of the horrible 1970s London in which the movie takes place. Starting with scenes of upper crust establishment peer James Cossins (an actor best known for playing snobby authority figures in sitcoms like Fawlty Towers) drifting in and out of various Soho strip clubs and peep shows, the film’s portrayal of London life is not a flattering or reassuring one. The police are blustering, persecuting bullies, and even the supposedly enlightened, sensible student protagonists are portrayed as self-absorbed and quick-tempered. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the most sympathetic character in the film quickly emerges as the cannibal himself, portrayed by actor Hugh Armstrong as a desperate, tragic figure, riddled with disease after a lifetime of unimaginable squalor, and horribly alone. Armstrong’s performance as a sub-human outcast, clearly doomed and heading for nothing but a pointless destruction, is right up there with those of Richard Wordsworth in The Quatermass Xperiment (1954) and Freddie Jones in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) as one of the most moving in British horror.