How Death Line used can­ni­bal hor­ror to expose social inequality

On the sur­face of it, Death Line is a pret­ty con­ven­tion­al idea for a hor­ror movie. A net­work of can­ni­bals are liv­ing under Rus­sell Square tube sta­tion and kid­nap­ping, then mur­der­ing, com­muters. There’s the sar­don­ic cock­ney detec­tive, Inspec­tor Cal­houn (played by a gid­dy Don­ald Pleas­ance), as well as one of the most effec­tive screen mon­sters ever com­mit­ted to cel­lu­loid; Hugh Armstrong’s trans­for­ma­tion as the film’s pri­ma­ry plague-rid­den can­ni­bal will make you feel both dis­gust and empathy.

Look a lit­tle deep­er though, and you’ll find that Gary Sherman’s 1972 film con­tains an odd­ly pre­scient mes­sage about social inequal­i­ty in Lon­don. This begins with seedy, wealthy Con­ser­v­a­tive min­is­ter James Man­fred (played by British sit­com actor James Cossins) hunt­ing for women across London’s Soho sex dis­trict. He treats a woman he meets on the tube like a piece of meat by ask­ing her ​“how much?” before being kicked in the privates.

From the very first scene, a mem­ber of the estab­lish­ment is framed as cor­rupt, with Manfred’s per­ver­sion and hunt for flesh effec­tive expo­si­tion to the can­ni­bal hor­ror that fol­lows. When two stu­dents find Manfred’s uncon­scious body on the plat­form, they rush for help. But by the time they return, it’s too late; some­thing has already car­ried him off into the shad­ows. When Cal­houn is lat­er asked about Manfred’s dis­ap­pear­ance, he replies: ​“What would a big shot like Man­fred be doing on pub­lic trans­port?” The film’s mes­sage is abun­dant­ly clear: politi­cians and their con­stituents are not treat­ed as equals.

Cal­houn is briefed that the site where Man­fred went miss­ing is direct­ly above an aban­doned sta­tion where, back in 1892, a group of work­ing class dig­gers (eight men, four women) were trapped after a ceil­ing col­lapsed. Their bank­rupt con­struc­tion com­pa­ny didn’t both­er to send out a res­cue mis­sion because it would have cost too much money.

This rev­e­la­tion is uncom­fort­ably rel­e­vant 45 years on, with many believ­ing that the recent Gren­fell Tow­er fire – which police say has claimed the lives of more than 80 peo­ple – was caused by the rich aban­don­ing their oblig­a­tions to the poor. In the case of Death Line, this relates to a com­pa­ny fail­ing to pay to dig out their work­ers. In the case of Gren­fell, it relates to the coun­cil report­ed­ly fail­ing to pay for safe cladding and sprin­klers to pro­tect their ten­ants from a fire. The film’s sound­track con­sis­tent­ly fea­tures the haunt­ing sounds of screams and dig­ging; echoes of an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion that has ben­e­fit­ted one side of soci­ety more than the other.

This mes­sage of social inequal­i­ty stretch­es to the estab­lish­ment too. When Cal­hourn inves­ti­gates Manfred’s lux­u­ry apart­ment, Christo­pher Lee’s sar­cas­tic, top-hat-don­ning, MI5 agent con­fronts him. After Cal­hourn says ​“fuck you!” Lee barks back, ​“This is beyond even your work­ing class viril­i­ty. The Man­fred case is closed, are we clear?” This scene all but con­firms a state cov­er-up, and also mir­rors the con­spir­a­cy para­noia that has been cir­cu­lat­ing post-Grenfell.

When Armstrong’s can­ni­bal hide­out is final­ly dis­cov­ered, it’s impos­si­ble not to be unset­tled by the film’s gris­ly prac­ti­cal effects. The squeak­ing of rats rever­ber­ates off dirty walls, mag­gots feast on human flesh and dis­coloured organs hang off hooks as if being dis­played in a high street butch­ers. A preg­nant woman turns blue and takes her last breath as puss-filled warts pul­sate across a face. A cry­ing Arm­strong cra­dles the dying woman and offers her the corpse of Man­fred as sus­te­nance, cut­ting his throat open and feed­ing her the politician’s blood. The two, who speak in inde­ci­pher­able groans, are the last sur­viv­ing mem­bers of a new gen­er­a­tion born from the orig­i­nal work­ers. They’ve been breed­ing and feast­ing off the soci­ety above ground for decades.

Armstrong’s can­ni­bal was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be played by Mar­lon Bran­do, though at no point is it pos­si­ble to see how the leg­endary actor could have bet­tered it. When his can­ni­bal, known as The Man, kid­naps a female stu­dent, he’s torn over whether to eat her or care for her. Mean­while, each of the bod­ies of his can­ni­bal rel­a­tives are shown in a crib – some skele­tal, some decom­pos­ing – lov­ing­ly dec­o­rat­ed with stolen jew­ellery. Even though his acts are obvi­ous­ly bru­tal, there’s a del­i­cate side to his nature too. In many ways, Arm­strong cre­at­ed cinema’s first three-dimen­sion­al can­ni­bal. The Man is a dark evo­lu­tion of Boris Karloff’s Franken­stein monster.

When Cal­hourn final­ly unearths the can­ni­bal lair, he mock­ing­ly laughs at the sight of Manfred’s body, sigh­ing, ​“God, what a way to live.” This line seems to sug­gest that Death Line is using the guise of an enter­tain­ing B‑movie can­ni­bal hor­ror (it was renamed Raw Meat in US and pro­mot­ed using an inac­cu­rate sex­u­alised poster) as a smoke­screen to force view­ers to con­front the even deep­er hor­rors of social inequal­i­ty. Despite being beloved by mod­ern film­mak­ers such as Edgar Wright, Death Line remains a large­ly for­got­ten British mas­ter­piece. Yet its rel­e­vance grows every year the gap between the nation’s rich and poor widens.