This 1972 movie opens with a man cruising various London sex shops, then attempting to pick up a hooker on an Underground station platform. He's turned down, and after she's gone, the man is attacked by an unseen thing that's breathing quite...wetly. Later, college students Patricia (Sharon Gurney) and her American boyfriend Alex (David Ladd) find the man's body on the stairwell as they are exiting the station. They go to fetch help (over Alex's protestations), and when they return to the scene with a constable, the man's body is gone. I'm going to directly quote D.K. Holm from Movie Poop Shoot here, because it's all a little involved, and quite frankly I'm feeling a little lazy right now.
Through plot contrivance, the kids and now the police have the name of the person, and the vanishing corpse turns out to be an upper class figure gone missing. A police inspector (Donald Pleasence) leaps to the case and eventually uncovers the truth: that the toff was killed by the last surviving member of a cannibalistic clan of people trapped underground in a tunnel disaster since 1892. This man, dwelling in an abattoir off the beaten path, makes forays out into the tunnels and platforms to capture human beings for meat, if for no other reason to keep his dying pregnant wife alive. When that fails, he comes upon a new potential bride, Pat, alone on the station thanks to the forces of plot convenience. Alex and the inspector independently go in search of the lair in which she is trapped.

I don't know exactly what I expected from Raw Meat. It was enjoyable, though it could've used some more judicious editing. Donald Pleasence was borderline campy in this, adding comedy to the mix. This was strange not only because I've never seen Donald Pleasence be funny before, but also because the humor was so prevalent it left me wondering what to think. And don't get too excited about Christopher Lee's name appearing in the credits- I did, but he gets little more than an extended cameo. I'll give this one 5-and-a-half out of 10 "I'll pass on the meat loaf"s.
3 comments:
Jeez...another movie I thought I was the only one who'd seen it.
I saw it too - at Lincoln Center in NY, la di dah!
When I saw it the director was there to introduce the film and he had a funny story about Christopher Lee. At the time, Lee was the highest paid actor in the U.K. so Sherman was very happy to have him for only one day. It was a scene with Donald Pleasence, who is just a bit over five feet tall. Unfortunately, Lee is 6'5", which made putting the two of them in the same frame look like a sight gag. Plus, Pleasence refused to stand on a box and Lee refused to scrunch down a foot. So in the end, they shot the scene with the two actors never being in the frame at the same time. Crazy!
There are some movies that should never be watched late at night. Some, because they'll terrify you and keep you awake. And then there are movies like this, which are so slow as to make it difficult to stay awake until the end. The good parts of this work really well, but some parts drag on far too long.
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