31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 18 - The Monster Club

The Monster Club

104 mins

Dir. Roy Ward Baker

1981/UK

I know a lot of people have a love for this film, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it, but I felt kind of sad watching it.  You can really see how an older regime was hanging on to what used to work during a time period when classic horror needed to make way for Leatherface and Michael Myers.  Times were-a-changing.

While not truly an Amicus movie, this was made by a lot of the same people involved and is Roy Ward Baker’s last theatrical film.  Earlier in his career he gave us classics like The Vampire Lover, Scars of Dracula and The Vault of Horror.  In this one he brings together two genre greats, Vincent Price and John Carradine.  Both showing their age in a wraparound story for this anthology.  Price plays a vampire who stumbles upon Carradine, who plays a famous horror writer.  Price needs a quick fix of blood and bites Carradine, but not enough to turn him, just a taste.  Price being such a fan of Carradine’s work invites him to an exclusive club for monsters only, The Monster Club.  Inside the clientele are people wearing rubber masks dancing around two bad 80s music.  I am not sure if the masks are supposed to be monsters themselves or they are monsters wearing masks.  It is obviously so cheaply done I am not sure what was the thought here.  As they sit down at a coffin shaped table Price explains the hierarchy of monsters broken down into three short stories for the film.

Story one is about a monster called The Shadmock.  Who is basically a monster that looks like a TV horror host and when he whistles your skin melts.  He lives alone in a mansion and hires a housekeeper to help with his wares.  He winds up falling in love with her, but she only took the job so she and her boyfriend could rob the Shadmock of the contents in his safe.  Long story short, he whistles.

Second story, The Vampire is about a boy whose dad is a vampire, full-fledged sleeps in a coffin looks like Dracula vampire.  A group of vampire hunters led by Donald Pleasance break into the house and stake the boy’s dad as he and his mother look on in horror.  But before Vampire dad meets his demise, he sits up and bites Donald Pleasance who now in turn must be destroyed by his group.

The final story, The Ghouls, is about a horror film director scouting out locations for his next film and finds a remote village hidden from town that is inhabited by ghouls.  The town’s history is told in a series of awesome illustrations reminiscent of Bernie Wrightson.  The ghouls want to eat the director of course, and with the help of a half-ghoul off-spring he escapes, only to track down the police and be brought right back to the town as they are ghouls themselves.

All the stories are told in a light-hearted way.  There is humor spread throughout each story as well as the wrap around.  Each has their creepy moments if you think about it, but the plastic teeth and rubber masks make it hard to take this one too seriously.  It is the end of a different era, that of classic gothic horror that was pushed aside for the likes of hockey masks and chain saws, more boobs and blood.  If you love the likes of Tales from the Crypt, Tales that Witness Madness and the like, here is one last hoorah.