Raw Meat

Gary Sherman – 1972 – England

Stylish mystery/horror film with a wry sense of humor.  Donald Pleasence brings his patented looniness to the role of a London detective investigating some strange disappearances in the city’s subway system.  One of his lieutenants has a theory that seems to pan out; that miners caught underground decades earlier may have survived and degenerated into savagery and cannibalism.  Pleasence plays it like a British Columbo at times, and his humorous scenes are sharply contrasted with the gory details of the wild killer’s lair in the catacombs under the city.  A surprise highlight for me was a brief scene featuring Pleasence and Christopher Lee – (as an MI-5 agent looking into the same case) – matching wits with quintessential British understatement and condescension.  Sherman went on to direct the equally fascinating horror film Dead and Buried (1981), but not much else of note.