The Monster Club (Horror/Comedy anthology)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: C+
From the
1960s to the early 1980s, Roy Ward Baker had an amazing run of filmmaking in
features and TV, particularly the Horror genre with the feature films. Many of them were anthologies and The Monster Club (1980) marks the end
of that run. It also happens to be an
anthology with the writer of the tales played by John Carradine, and Vincent
Price as the vampire he fatefully meets up with.
There are
three stories here, but they sandwich some of the weakest transitions in Horror
anthology features. With lame, silly
Pop-as-Rock music, we go from story to story, influenced by soon-to-be-dead
Disco music and very corporatized ideas of Rock. It is so bad, Michael Jackson combined it
with The Greg Kihn Band’s Our Love’s In
Jeopardy and the money to hire Vincent price for one of the most regressive
acts of musicmaking ever: Thriller.
Of
course, Baker is a far better filmmaker than Thriller Music Video director John Landis could ever hope to
be. Then there are the stories. The first Shadmock segment is very
muddled and boring. The Vampire
Story segment fares better with Donald Pleasence as a schoolmaster who
is accompanied by fellow British gentlemen who are creepy to begin with and are
vampire hunters. Richard Jordan and
Britt Ekland also star. That leaves the
also-interesting daylight zombie/vampire Humgoo Story with Stuart Whitman and
Patrick Magee that is more like a British Night
Gallery segment. Well, as meat Loaf
says, two out of three ain’t bad.
Baker and
writers Edward and Valerie Abraham ruin many moments of tension by trying to go
broader with comedy that is not witty enough, nor has the ironic distance past
such Baker and like efforts that made them so much fun, but it is a historic
end to all of them and say goodbye to an eras sadly past.
The 1.85
X 1 image is from an analog PAL master and has consistent color, but some video
black problems. This is still not bad,
and cinematographer Peter Jessop, B.S.C., working in Rank Labs-processed color
as it become more assimilated into the often boring color we see today. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is interesting as
most films were turning to analog Dolby Stereo at the time, but this film was
as monophonic as all the earlier Baker efforts.
The music is so lame, it is for the better.
The lame
theme song is the responsibility of The Pretty Things, who made (as the notes
tell us) the album S.F. Sorrow
before The Who make Tommy, as far as
concept albums are concerned. The 11
songs from the film are offered in stereo in the extras, along with a very
silly commentary by a couple of film critics, a nice bunch of biographies,
stills, production notes, and the original theatrical trailer. The film was never release din the U.S. theatrically.
Of
course, the early Lucas/Spielberg works were an influence, the kind that gives
us Bea Arthur running a bar in outer space.
This film has that feel, but is not always for children by any means. This was also the last film for Horror
producer Milton Subotsky (City Of The Dead is reviewed elsewhere on this site), so it really
is the end of an era. Fans should see it
at least once.
- Nicholas Sheffo
