Director Gary Sherman would later bring us Poltergeist 1-3 and Dead and Buried. Meanwhile marvel at this 1972 classic British horror set in the depths of the London Underground. Near the abandoned British Museum Station, survivors of a cataclysmic disaster where the workers on the original tunnels around 1892 were buried alive and left, as the company went bankrupt, created a colony of people who had never seen daylight and fed off the unwary late night travellers on the last tube at Russell Square Station (with a few rats as an aside).
The surviving women appear to have worked alongside the men in the tunnels but this is not exactly explained. That colony is now reduced to its' last couple and when the pregnant woman dies it does the temperament of the cannibalistic man no good at all. Though he is immensely strong, he is not in good shape, suffering from the plague and later a good clout on the ear as well. The immortal words "Mind the doors" are all he can say, having learned it from the constant recorded message from the departing tube trains. It seems that the survivors never passed on the quality of speech to their descendents but, again, how it was lost in under 80 years is not explained.
There is some nice blood and gore and a couple of moments that made the cinema audience (myself and girl-friend of the time included - hi Janice) jump out of their seats. Oh and the man bites the head off a rat before Ozzy did the same to a bat. Perhaps this is where he got the idea from.
Hugh Armstrong gives a particularly good performance in a difficult role as the man of few words, whilst we also get Donald Pleasence in an unusual performance as the rather unpleasant Inspector Calhoun and Christopher Lee in more or less a cameo as an investigating MI5 agent brought in when a high-ranking perverted, porn-obsessed civil servant joins the missing list. Eye candy comes in the form of Sharon Gurney, who plays the student girl-friend of American student Alex (David Ladd) and wears the most ridiculous bright yellow boots that even in 1972 no student or any girl with taste would be seen dead in (take it from me I remember student girls from 1972 - hi Linda).
For such a good horror film it's a shame that this is a totally cheap, bare bones disc from Network graced by not a single extra (not even subtitles though at least you do gat a chapter list as part of the packaging which is more than can be said for some). To its' credit, the picture is excellent, with vibrant colour (for the underground) and free from sparklies, whilst the sound is clear with no hiss, pops or crackles. A surround remix would have been nice as an alternative to the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono presented here. The 5* rating is for the film alone and not the package!
As this is the first issue on GB DVD, I'm unsure what is here on the "full uncut version", which clocks in at a measly 1:23:45, that wasn't there on VHS or the USA DVD version "Raw Meat" issued earlier. There's certainly nothing that I can't remember seeing in the cinema release in 1972 and 1973.