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Most memorable line is when Cushing and Lee are accused of being spies and Cushing retorts "Spies? Good Lord, we're British!" with utter outrage.
I'm sure there's a bit in it when Christopher Lee says something like: "The beast must have been reanimated by someone versed in one of the dark arts, like witchcraft or yoga."
Horror Express, all the way.
Not sure if it's Hammer, but I also love Death Line. It involves a hairy mutated geezer who lives in the tunnels of the London underground system near Russell Square tube station. The only surviving descendent of Victorian tunnel workers trapped underground and driven to cannibalism. Driven insane by darkness, isolation and a diet of rats and human flesh, he is only capable of uttering one phrase over and over again in his tormented wail: "Mind the doors! Mind the dooorrrss!!"
It also features Donald Pleasance as the scene stealing proto-Sweeney copper, who spends the whole time getting pissed and abusing the student protagonists who stumble into the mystery: "Get yer hair cut!" Christopher Lee turns up for five minutes as a sinister secret agent.
It's really shit, with brain achingly tedious tracking shots of dead people in the tunnels that go on for far, far too long - but the Donald Pleasance bits are absolute genius and that, combined with the premise, make it great.
Also, on a Donald Pleasance tip, there's a great anthology film which I think is called: "From beyond the grave". May or may not be Hammer. It involves a creepy curiosity shop owned by Peter Cushing, who sells various haunted antiques to sophisticated London proto-yuppie scum with horrific consequences. Donald Pleasance is a match seller with a sinister daughter. Somebody installs an old wooden door in their modern flat that opens into the past. There's a haunted mirror. All the stories are mental, in one way or another. Worth seeing. |
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