(Interview originally posted at Filmoria)Gary Sherman has been working in the film and TV business for many years, but it is for his 1973 horror Death Line (AKA Raw Meat) that many fans may be familiar with his work. Forty years on, the film – which was set in the depths of the London underground – is still a massive cult classic and has a huge fan following. The director, writer and producer told me that his directorial feature debut came about quite by chance when we spoke recently.
This interview is ready to depart … so mind the doors!
Having worked, up to that point, on music films,
documentaries and commercials, Sherman was keen to make a feature and had been
told that the way to do it was to write a script. He was working with Ceri
Jones on a commercial in England – one which incidentally had a much bigger
budget than Death Line would go on to have – when Sherman told
him the story he had thought up and the pair then went on to write the
screenplay. That screenplay was passed up the ladder until the call came
through that they wanted to make the film and were happy to have Sherman
direct.
The film has managed to become a cult hit with older and
younger audiences alike. Sherman himself laughed that “probably 98% of [the
fans] were not born when I made that movie”. He also said that “because of this
whole resurgence of zombies … Dead and Buried found a whole new
audience … they’re all in their twenties!”
Death Line was filmed on a part of the
underground that had already been closed before the war – a phenomenon once
again in the news after the recent Sherlock episode focused on
a disused station. Sherman tells me that looking into the history of the
underground was what sparked the idea for the story in the first place.
Any scenes in the film with actual trains were shot at
Aldwych station – which at the time was closed during the weekend – but it was
not an easy job getting permission to film on these platforms and in these
tunnels. London Transport, Sherman tells me, refused to let them shoot because
they thought the film was rather derogatory. Sherman took an old script,
added in a couple of scenes that had to be shot on a tube platform, and tried
again. That is how they got permission … but it meant they had to have people
on hand to keep the London Transport representatives out of the station!
“because of this whole resurgence of zombies … Dead
and Buried found a whole new audience … they’re all in their twenties!”
The casting is something of which Sherman is evidently still
immensely proud. At one point, the Godfather himself, Marlon Brando, was
considered to play the ‘man’ character – with the proviso that he be
unrecognisable. Jay Kanter, executive producer on the film, was very close to
Marlon Brando and had the idea of including him in the film. Nobody was ever
going to know, Sherman tells me. Kanter talked to Brando about it and he
thought it was a pretty funny idea. Sadly, Brando was forced to head home after
a family emergency and the timing just didn’t work out.
So, I asked, if Marlon had been in it, would he have not
been credited? “We would have put a funny name,” Sherman laughs, adding that
Harry Frampton was doing the prosthetics and would have had a ball disguising
Marlon.
One of the key actors in the film is, of course, Donald
Pleasence, who Sherman says he wanted for the part from the time he wrote the
script. He sent a copy of it to New York and flew over there to meet with the
actor, who was delighted to be offered the comedic role, claiming that nobody
ever offered him comedy.
“Getting everybody else was like cake once we had Donald,”
Sherman says. “All these great British character actors – who you never would
have thought would have done a little horror film like this – were all game to
do it because Donald Pleasence was in it.”
“All these great British character actors – who you never
would have thought would have done a little horror film like this – were all
game to do it because Donald Pleasence was in it.” – Gary Sherman casting Death
Line
Seeing as it was his first feature film, one thing Sherman
had not factored in was that Christopher Lee was very tall and Donald Pleasence
was far shorter. When he got them in to rehearse, he soon realised that putting
them in a two-shot together was just not possible. Sherman then decided to do
the whole sequence in singles and adjust the eyelines – and then get Lee to sit
down. See what you think of the end result…
When I asked Sherman what it was he felt made people
love Death Line so much he complimented his cast and added
that, “It makes a political statement. It pokes the class system in England
right in the eye. The ‘Man’ is a sympathetic character – he’s not an ‘evil’
monster. He’s just trying to survive.”
“Death Line was the first of its kind” he
explains. “There had never been anything like it before …. I’m very proud of
it! … Death Line was just a really fun film to make.”
