AniInterview
Sorry, this movie sucks
SnoReptilePlenty
Memorable, crazy movie
Tacticalin
An absolute waste of money
Johan Louwet
I'm not a big fan of horror anthologies. It is always going to contain one I find silly or bad and it's usually the middle story. With The Monster Club this is no exception. Best story by far is the first containing most drama and horror. The last story surely had potential but the monsters looked more human, even the Addams family like monsters from the Monster Club looked scarier. Still I liked the sequence in the church with the creepy images from the picture book. And except for the first story the movie is not to be taken really serious, more comedy than horror. That we have Vincent Price as the vampire storyteller and host is always a treat and the songs in between were entertaining with the stripping to the bone scene as a pretty cool event. However the only song I thought was memorable was "Sucker for your Love" which felt very eighties and easy to sing along. Heck I even played that song again a few times after the movie was over.
FlashCallahan
A writer of horror stories is invited to a "monster club" by a mysterious old gentleman.There, three gruesome stories are told to him; between each story some musicians play their songs.In the end, it's recognised he's the greatest monster of all....Anthology movies were rife in the seventies and early eighties, but none more is as camper as this very peculiar gem.I have never seen a movie where they play some utterly bonkers Ska music between stories.And those stories, just beyond bizarre.The best one has to be about the shadmock, a guy who lives on his own and can turn cats into cheeses on toast with just a whistle. A couple of crooks con him by getting the woman to pose as help, so she can get close and take everything.After a musical interlude, we are taken to the funniest story, involving Donald Pleasence, Ketchup, and a gang of mustachioed vigilantes.The poorest story is ironically the eeriest, but it feels out of place compared to the other stories, involving a film maker who somehow gets transported to another time.It's ludicrous, with silly wolfs and even cruder masks, but it works, thanks to the film being tongue in cheek and knowing it.well worth checking out.
The_Movie_Cat
Although Amicus broke up in 1975, Milton Subotsky carried on producing, making works like this and 1977's "The Uncanny" Amicus anthologies in a spiritual sense.Having said this, The Monster Club really is a horror movie at the end of an era. Most of these films look incredibly tame and dated in today's context and always struggle with the line between terror and camp. But The Monster Club is a film that genuinely attempts to be not only wilfully silly, but even post-modern, as the title quote suggests. Two of the three segments involve the movie industry, including a film within a film.Of those segments, then the final one, with a village of zombies-by-any-other-name is quite good, even though it does feature one of the most inexplicable moments in horror, the hero of the piece hailing down a police car and then not informing them that there's a dying girl just around the corner.What's most surprising though is how overt the comedy becomes. When I initially saw the inside of the titular Monster Club, with a hoard of completely unrealistic "monsters", I'd assumed it was some new wave club with humans wearing masks. The end of the film reveals that they are, in fact, supposed to be genuine creatures of the undead.Each of the three segments are breached by a musical number, all of which are pretty good, but feel like they belong in a different picture. Vincent Price delivering a monologue about the evil of man to the skinny tie brigade may feel like an anachronism, but just three years later he was further cementing his status as an icon with his vocal performance on Thriller.Placing The Monster Club in an historical context reveals much. Old-school horrors like grown men wearing plastic fangs can compel because of the innate classiness of the production, but there's no such sophistication here. I'm no major fan of the slasher genre, but when you consider that guest star Donald Pleasence had made Halloween just two years earlier then it throws into perspective how antiquated Monster Club was.As for the likes of B.A. Roberton as the musical performers, then just two years later Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow was derogatorily calling him a "hippy" and telling him his interview show was "s***". The old crashes uncomfortably into the new, and The Monster Club tries unsuccessfully to marry the two in a brief window of opportunity.
Theo Robertson
Ronald Chetwynd Hayes is a very underrated author . His horror stories often feature a twist ending mixed in with lots of black humour . I read his Tales Of Fear And Fantasy short story collection as a sixteen year old and can fondly remember the stories featured . Hardcore horror fans who enjoy gore will probably consider his stories quaint but as an entertaining read I recommend him . Unfortunately I find it difficult to recommend THE MONSTER CLUB to anyone John Carradine plays the author who goes to a club only to find it populated by monsters and meets a vampire called Eramus who describes different types of bloodlines of monsters and relates three short stories . There's two serious problems with the film 1 ) Director Roy Ward Baker doesn't know whether to make the film serious or amusing and decides on embarrassing camp 2 ) The stories themselves are pretty dire .Baker can defend himself in that he doesn't have much of a budget and much of the make-up is dire , especially the werewolf in the NHS glasses . That said however it's the way the werewolf is played that leaves a lot to be desired . Baker however does pull out a chilling sequence done via drawings where a vicar relates how he found a ghoul in a graveyard . The sequence is very well done but seems completely at odds with the rest of the film which is a badly judged jokey , camp affair . And the revelation that the human race is the worst type of monster isn't a revelation at all
