When I find myself lacking in creativity and inspiration, it's somewhat ironic that I'm drawn to kicking my feet up and settling down in front of a film that shares those self same deficits.
The 1981 anthology film, 'The Monster Club' is a last gasp effort from the remains of the Amicus group, by now no longer called Amicus, and with Max J Rosenberg having been elbowed out long ago, it is however, identifiably Amicus. A rather flimsy framing story provides the bare bones on which to hang three tales, and in true Amicus fashion they are great, awful and middling. If there is one thing that really damages 'The Monster Club', it's the simple fact that a film like this had no right being made in 1980. Woefully out of step with what else was going on in horror cinema, this was after all the beginning of the video nasty boom, 'The Monster Club' is a 'Dracula AD1972' for the 80s. In one sense, you have to give the producers credit for going to the effort of preparing a vehicle that they thought would be a hit with the teenagers and young adults of 1980. Regularly in the British film industry of the mid to late 70s, and early 80s, nobody was going to any kind of effort to produce something original and inventive. What is presented here though is 'this is what the kids will like' through the eyes of people who had already been in the industry for thirty or forty years and could barely remember their own youth, let alone imagine what would engage the minds of adolescents in a time of punk and rebellion.
Despite my opening, I do have a fondness for 'The Monster Club'. It is trying, whilst being trying on your patience. There are familiar faces on screen, old hands behind the camera from the heyday of British horror, and when the film works, well then you could just be watching 'From Beyond the Grave', or 'Asylum'. When it doesn't work, there isn't a sofa cushion big enough to hide behind in embarrassment. If you ever wanted to know what a dreadfully old John Carradine, crippled with Arthritis, looked like dancing to middle of the road soft rock music, then your answer is provided in 'The Monster Club'.
'The Monster Club', should you have any difficulty with your imagination, is a club. For monsters. Better yet, it's a nightclub, with the kind of music that no-one with any sense was listening to in 1981, or any other year quite frankly. Vincent Price, playing the vampiric Eramus, is a member of the club, and when he is caught short without blood whilst out and about, he sinks his fangs into R Chetwynd-Hayes, as played by John Carradine. Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes was of course a celebrated author of horror stories, and his stories provided 'From Beyond the Grave' with it's meat, and indeed 'The Monster Club' too, but here he is an emaciated Carradine, preyed upon by Price. Realising quite what he has done, and who he has done it to, Price is suitably mortified and invites Carradine back to his club, by way of apology.
Immediately upon entering the club, Chetwynd-Hayes' heart must sink like ours as the viewer. The paucity of the set, the small handful of extras, and the costumes, makeup and visual effects work leave you under no illusions as to what the next 90 odd minutes will deliver. It's especially sad considering that all of this is in the hands of Roy Ward Baker, an incredibly skilled director who gave us 'A Night to Remember', and genre favourites 'Quatermass and the Pit' and 'Asylum'. Throughout the 70s he'd been kept in work by ITC and it's slew of TV action series, while finding time to helm some of Hammer's more ill-advised projects. 'The Monster Club' was a return to the big screen, and when the final credits roll, you can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy. Where he can, he injects as much style and atmosphere as the screenplay and accompanying budget will allow, but expecting a 64 year old to know what to do with the tepid rock/pop numbers is clearly a step beyond. The music video was a new medium in 1981, and almost as clumsy as the crash zooms and shots of people dancing out of time that we're treated to here, although I defy anybody to creatively find a way to get through a BA Robertson tune. So, the club with it's never-ending supply of non-hits from the soundtrack album that didn't sell, provides a shaky framing device for three tales from the pen of the real Chetwynd-Hayes.
First up, and to provide a sense of optimism that's quickly dispersed by the second story, is a segment that wouldn't be a bit out of place in Amicus' finest offerings, 'Asylum' and 'From Beyond the Grave'. Conveniently Eramus sits Chetwynd-Hayes down next to a framed family tree. Of monsters. A curious Chetwynd-Hayes asks about the heritage of all the creatures on display, providing two of the three stories with a starting point. We start with a Shadmock, and despite a childhood of seeing this film on ITV of a Friday night every six months for about six years, I can't remember what mates with what to produce a Shadmock. What I do know is that they are creatures capable of great emotion, and they have a unique way of expressing that emotion. A lethal whistle. Simon Ward crops up in this segment, as an indicator of how far his stock has fallen since 'Young Winston', and by association, what a mess the British film industry was in by this time. This is good stuff, and while never scary, it has that chill factor that is associated with the better efforts from Amicus.
Unfortunately, as good as the Shadmock tale is, with James Laurenson putting a neat little performance as the titular creature, there is always the lurking dread that when it ends you'll be back to the nightclub linking story. And the music. 30 years on watching 'The Monster Club' has numbed me to the pop and rock numbers, but I can't imagine how hellish they must be to someone watching and listening for the first time. The visuals don't help either, with the camera stubbornly sat staring at these has-beens and never-will-bes for the entire duration of their respective numbers. Unfortunately the middle segment, concerning a vampire trying to live the quiet life in suburbia, almost makes you pine for a synthesiser heavy melody. Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasance get to slum it in this comical short. Except, the comedy is thin on the ground, and perhaps the only amusement to be found is in wondering how Pleasance will top each of his increasingly hammy appearances. With the script he's been handed, you can only empathise.
A young boy, relentlessly bullied at school, and desperate to see more of his rather camp and eccentric father, is harrassed by the Bleeney. Who or what are the Bleeney, you may wearily ask? They're the Sweeney, but looking for blood sucking creatures of the night, hence 'Bleeney', by which I mean they've just clumsily bolted 'Bl' onto 'eeney' hoping you'll fill in the gaps. God knows what American audiences (plural?) made of this mangled slice of slang. Anyway, the Bleeney, led by Pleasance are sure the child's father is a vampire and carry out undercover surveillance before unleashing their masterplan. I've probably made that sound more grand than it is. They just hide in shop doorways on a depressingly early 80s high street.
Back to the musical numbers. This section at least features some wit and a little imagination, as we are treated to a Monster Club stripper. To end, 'The Monster Club' raises it's game again, and gives us another chilly unsettling episode that would and could have sat in any of their better offerings. Rent-an-American Stuart Whitman (presumably Shane Rimmer was busy) plays a typically irritable film director, who decides to scout his own film locations. He winds up at a village that lurks beyond a wall of fog, and also seems to exist in a different time entirely. Lucky us, we get Patrick Magee as a strangely dishevelled Innkeeper to show Pleasance how hamming should really be done. In fact, everything and everyone in this village is strangely dishevelled, and before long it's evident that Whitman isn't going to get out alive. He finds an ally in a young girl, and forming an escape plan they take shelter in the village church where he discovers some uncomfortable reading that explains what happened to this creepy little hamlet. Roy Ward Baker handles this story with a gusto that almost takes you back to the glory days of Amicus. Best segment by far, it trumps the others with a sequence of illustrations by John Bolton (he of the Hammer comics) that manage to be scarier than anything else in the picture. We even get a nice little twist, after some slightly comedy escaping. Well, Stuart Whitman does have rather bandy legs, and shooting him running in long shot was always going to end in tears.
So, with the film seeming to end on a high, you'd think they'd wrap it up here, with an exchange of dialogue between Price and Carradine, and then credits rolling. They don't. The film slots in another musical number which feels like it runs for easily 2 hours, as we all stare in horror at Vincent Price dancing with a fat lady. In the background Carradine dances, limbs contorted with Arthritis, and you don't know whether to weep or just close your eyes until you can't hear the music any more.
'The Monster Club' remains a curious mix of tones, and lurches from good to bad to appalling to great to awful with a palpable air of 'we don't know who we're making this film for'. The uncertainty and desperation is apparent throughout, and you can't help feeling that a further couple of polishes with the screenplay might just have eradicated some of the more damaging problems with the film. Or perhaps not. When you start off with a premise of a nightclub for monsters, you're already giving yourself a big hole to climb out of. So, tonally uncertain, mixing the genuinely creepy with toe-curling comedy, and musically criminal. The budget barely covers the picture, and when it looks cheap, boy does it look cheap, 'The Monster Club' is the epitome of 'a mixed bag'. Credit where credit is due, they tried something different, pulled in a couple of genuine horror stars, and that they largely failed miserably is some of the fun of this picture. I come back to it time and time again. Whether that says more about me, than the few delights this film offers, I just don't know.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Doctor Who - Meglos
If anyone ever tries to tell you that Season 18 was the sensible, grown up brother of Season 17, then I strongly recommend you punch whoever it might be squarely on the nose. Young or old, male or female, I'm not fussed as long as you punch them, and punch them hard. 'The Leisure Hive' almost pulled the burgundy wool over our eyes, but in the end there was just way too much silliness to put to bed memories of 'Destiny of the Daleks' and 'Nightmare of Eden'. 'Meglos' is another step in the wrong direction, and doesn't feel so much as a story belonging in Season 17, as more like a story left over from the middle of a Troughton season. It's space opera, with very little to commend it.
Throughout John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch's story (yes it took 2 whole people to cobble this thing together) there's an unshakeable feeling that this is 3 different scripts mashed together, and unfortunately none of those scripts had an ending. As proof of the latter, I present you with Exhibit A, a final episode that runs to 19 minutes, and that includes opening and closing credits, and a recap that is far from being brief. So, why does Meglos feel like 3 different scripts? Well, the skimpiest synopsis shows that there's a lot going on which doesn't look like it belongs together. We have a mysterious creature who potentially owns the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. He just needs a bit of help getting his hands on a power source. Meanwhile on a different planet, two factions fight over what is better, science and stupid haircuts or religion and synthesised chanting. They also have a power source, that's quite powerful. But wait, the mysterious creature from the first script can also change form and give us a doppelganger thriller too. Except it's not thrilling.
First up, Meglos the titular creature is a villain that looked good on paper, possibly, but who is utterly ridiculous when put into practice. I'm not spoiling things if I reveal he's a cactus. Certainly anyone who's been going to Madame Tussauds since 1980 will know he's a cactus. He's a cactus, with no arms and no legs, and who only gets to move about when an episode 4 plot contrivance demands it. He's a genius, and an evil one at that, but he's a cactus. Somehow, he's managed to contact comedy space pirates, for whom the budget means only two of a group of six get to speak, and by God I wish the budget hadn't stretched that far. Bill Fraser looks embarrassed to be the leader of this gang, and rumour has always had it that he agreed to take on the role if he could kick K9. I'd have taken the role so I could kick Christopher H Bidmead for commissioning the script in the first place. I digress. So, without any mobility and sat inside a control centre (on a planet called Zolfa-Thura) which seems to demand mobility, Meglos has contacted these space pirates to come to his aid. They bring him a random human, and we soon learn that Meglos requires the human in order to copy the form, to give him some mobility, and mainly so the pirates don't have to continue to shuffle him around on a wobbly balsa wood tray. Having got human form, albeit slightly spiky human form, he then reveals he wants to harness a power source from another planet.
The Doctor and Romana are busy having one of those tiresome TARDIS console room scenes, where they try and fix K9. For reasons I can't remember, despite having watched this on it's original broadcast, then again on UK Gold in the 90s, and again last week for the purposes of this rant, they decide to go to Tigella. I haven't mentioned the planet Tigella yet, but that's because I was talking about Zolfa-Thura and Meglos, and that power source he wanted. But wait, Tigella has a mysterious power source! It's ever so powerful in fact, but quibbled over in an underground city by two factions, some Pan's People scientists who have as much skill when it comes to acting as they have when it comes to combing their hair, and the other ones, the boring religion bunch. That there is a fight going on over science versus religion means not a jot to the story, it simply provides a handy excuse for a sacrifice cliffhanger, and some argumentative padding. It's not developed, and is as pointless as the constant references to taking back the surface of the planet. There's a lot of back story missing in this story.
Somehow Meglos gets wind of The Doctor wanting to visit Tigella, and that buggers up his plans to steal their power source, the Dodecahedron. So he flicks some switches and can magically see inside the TARDIS on a 14" colour portable. Stretching plausibility a little further he then conjures up a 'chronic hysteresis' which is not the hernia it sounds like, but some time loop thing that I prefer to call 'interminable repetition in order to get Episode 1 to a decent running length'. Quite why they wanted to get Episode 1 above 20 minutes is a complete mystery when they clearly didn't give a stuff about Episode 4. The time loop is supposed to trap the Doctor forever, and Meglos seems very chuffed about this, like the Doctor is an old adversary, a nemesis, and not some chap he's never heard of who is going to complicate his heist plans. Meglos finds a use for the Doctor though, and copies his form, which will allow him to infiltrate Tigella without suspicion, although it's inferred that it's been a while since the Doctor was on Tigella, and that he may well have been in a different regeneration. So, the pirates kidnap the Doctor from the tedious time loop in order for Meglos to copy him right? No, this time he does it, clothes and all, by taking a quick look at the 14" colour portable. Yeah, I know it seemed like he needed a form with him in order to copy it, but it turns out that he doesn't, so you'll be thinking he changes frequently to aid his infiltration of, and then escape from Tigella. Nope.
The Doctor and Romana escape from the time loop in a fashion that will leave you open mouthed. You have been warned. Meglos gets to Tigella, does the nasty, and lots of corridor running and arguing and stuff ensues. There are about 10 minutes of Episode 1 where there is some hope that we might be onto something here. The remaining 70 minutes are spent beating that notion to death, and the hilariously rushed (and largely incomprehensible) finale has to be considered one of the soggiest, dampest squibs in the whole Who canon.
I'm boring myself now, trying to explain what Meglos is all about. From those 4 paragraphs above you'd think there was a lot going on of interest. There isn't. It's a potboiler. The three different elements to the story don't really work together, and in between the looky-likey warry-faction weapony-stealing stuff we get some crap running around in some unconvincing jungle studio sets. I can't make this review of Meglos gel and seem coherent, because the story simply doesn't gel or seem coherent. Plot holes and loose ends abound, the dialogue is appalling and worse still delivered by some of the very worst actors to set foot inside of BBC Television Centre. Jacqueline Hill lends some dignity to the affair, returning to play the leader of the religious bunch, but it's a very poorly acted story.
Where the story does excel however, is in all the areas you'd expect it to fail. 'The Leisure Hive' felt like Murray Gold had been on scoring duty, with barely a minute going by without incidental music, an effect that was what I imagine being smothered to death by a Radiophonic pillow would be like. 'Meglos' sounds great though with both Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland working on it. There are some nice cues for the title villain especially. The special effects also benefit from actually being special. 'Meglos' was the first outing at the BBC for the Scene-Synch system, which basically allowed the camera to move when CSO was being used. The principle camera's movements when following the actors etc would be mirrored by the camera providing the background image. By golly it worked too, and the opening episode of 'Meglos' contains some very convincing overlay work. See the DVD extra about Scene-Synch for a fantastic snippet from Barry Letts' 1982 'Gulliver in Lilliput' where a Lilliputian swordsman takes on the gigantic Gulliver's hand. It's really quite impressive. The model work is especially good too, save for the scene of the pirate vessel taking off, which is every bit the equal of the Dalek Saucers in flight from, well, any Dalek story from the 60s or 70s. There are some nice underground city sets, and directorially it looks good in places, with some nice shots that Terence Dudley probably dreamed up to take away from the tedium of the script itself.
DVD extras are thin on the ground, with no making of. The 'Life in Pictures' piece dedicated to Jacqueline Hill is both touching and interesting, and from a nerdy point of view I loved the feature on Scene-Synch. I was less enthused with the Flanagan and McCulloch get together, while 'Entropy Explained' was engaging and boasts a massive typo to look out for. The commentary with Lalla Ward and John Flanagan is nothing special to be honest, I could only manage a cursory listen.
I can only recommend 'Meglos' as a reminder that Season 18 was not some wonderful rebirth of the show. I'd rather watch the entertainingly naff 'Horns of Nimon' a hundred times over. An odd concoction of misfiring, quickly abandoned themes, it's a tedious exercise that fails to convince when it's trying to be serious, and provides no laughs when trying to be light-hearted. Episode 1 flatters to deceive, and by the end of it, it has set the tone for the remainder of the story. Buy it as a completist, but not as entertainment. The extras go some way to redeeming this release, but it's never going to be considered essential viewing.
Throughout John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch's story (yes it took 2 whole people to cobble this thing together) there's an unshakeable feeling that this is 3 different scripts mashed together, and unfortunately none of those scripts had an ending. As proof of the latter, I present you with Exhibit A, a final episode that runs to 19 minutes, and that includes opening and closing credits, and a recap that is far from being brief. So, why does Meglos feel like 3 different scripts? Well, the skimpiest synopsis shows that there's a lot going on which doesn't look like it belongs together. We have a mysterious creature who potentially owns the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. He just needs a bit of help getting his hands on a power source. Meanwhile on a different planet, two factions fight over what is better, science and stupid haircuts or religion and synthesised chanting. They also have a power source, that's quite powerful. But wait, the mysterious creature from the first script can also change form and give us a doppelganger thriller too. Except it's not thrilling.
First up, Meglos the titular creature is a villain that looked good on paper, possibly, but who is utterly ridiculous when put into practice. I'm not spoiling things if I reveal he's a cactus. Certainly anyone who's been going to Madame Tussauds since 1980 will know he's a cactus. He's a cactus, with no arms and no legs, and who only gets to move about when an episode 4 plot contrivance demands it. He's a genius, and an evil one at that, but he's a cactus. Somehow, he's managed to contact comedy space pirates, for whom the budget means only two of a group of six get to speak, and by God I wish the budget hadn't stretched that far. Bill Fraser looks embarrassed to be the leader of this gang, and rumour has always had it that he agreed to take on the role if he could kick K9. I'd have taken the role so I could kick Christopher H Bidmead for commissioning the script in the first place. I digress. So, without any mobility and sat inside a control centre (on a planet called Zolfa-Thura) which seems to demand mobility, Meglos has contacted these space pirates to come to his aid. They bring him a random human, and we soon learn that Meglos requires the human in order to copy the form, to give him some mobility, and mainly so the pirates don't have to continue to shuffle him around on a wobbly balsa wood tray. Having got human form, albeit slightly spiky human form, he then reveals he wants to harness a power source from another planet.
The Doctor and Romana are busy having one of those tiresome TARDIS console room scenes, where they try and fix K9. For reasons I can't remember, despite having watched this on it's original broadcast, then again on UK Gold in the 90s, and again last week for the purposes of this rant, they decide to go to Tigella. I haven't mentioned the planet Tigella yet, but that's because I was talking about Zolfa-Thura and Meglos, and that power source he wanted. But wait, Tigella has a mysterious power source! It's ever so powerful in fact, but quibbled over in an underground city by two factions, some Pan's People scientists who have as much skill when it comes to acting as they have when it comes to combing their hair, and the other ones, the boring religion bunch. That there is a fight going on over science versus religion means not a jot to the story, it simply provides a handy excuse for a sacrifice cliffhanger, and some argumentative padding. It's not developed, and is as pointless as the constant references to taking back the surface of the planet. There's a lot of back story missing in this story.
Somehow Meglos gets wind of The Doctor wanting to visit Tigella, and that buggers up his plans to steal their power source, the Dodecahedron. So he flicks some switches and can magically see inside the TARDIS on a 14" colour portable. Stretching plausibility a little further he then conjures up a 'chronic hysteresis' which is not the hernia it sounds like, but some time loop thing that I prefer to call 'interminable repetition in order to get Episode 1 to a decent running length'. Quite why they wanted to get Episode 1 above 20 minutes is a complete mystery when they clearly didn't give a stuff about Episode 4. The time loop is supposed to trap the Doctor forever, and Meglos seems very chuffed about this, like the Doctor is an old adversary, a nemesis, and not some chap he's never heard of who is going to complicate his heist plans. Meglos finds a use for the Doctor though, and copies his form, which will allow him to infiltrate Tigella without suspicion, although it's inferred that it's been a while since the Doctor was on Tigella, and that he may well have been in a different regeneration. So, the pirates kidnap the Doctor from the tedious time loop in order for Meglos to copy him right? No, this time he does it, clothes and all, by taking a quick look at the 14" colour portable. Yeah, I know it seemed like he needed a form with him in order to copy it, but it turns out that he doesn't, so you'll be thinking he changes frequently to aid his infiltration of, and then escape from Tigella. Nope.
The Doctor and Romana escape from the time loop in a fashion that will leave you open mouthed. You have been warned. Meglos gets to Tigella, does the nasty, and lots of corridor running and arguing and stuff ensues. There are about 10 minutes of Episode 1 where there is some hope that we might be onto something here. The remaining 70 minutes are spent beating that notion to death, and the hilariously rushed (and largely incomprehensible) finale has to be considered one of the soggiest, dampest squibs in the whole Who canon.
I'm boring myself now, trying to explain what Meglos is all about. From those 4 paragraphs above you'd think there was a lot going on of interest. There isn't. It's a potboiler. The three different elements to the story don't really work together, and in between the looky-likey warry-faction weapony-stealing stuff we get some crap running around in some unconvincing jungle studio sets. I can't make this review of Meglos gel and seem coherent, because the story simply doesn't gel or seem coherent. Plot holes and loose ends abound, the dialogue is appalling and worse still delivered by some of the very worst actors to set foot inside of BBC Television Centre. Jacqueline Hill lends some dignity to the affair, returning to play the leader of the religious bunch, but it's a very poorly acted story.
Where the story does excel however, is in all the areas you'd expect it to fail. 'The Leisure Hive' felt like Murray Gold had been on scoring duty, with barely a minute going by without incidental music, an effect that was what I imagine being smothered to death by a Radiophonic pillow would be like. 'Meglos' sounds great though with both Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland working on it. There are some nice cues for the title villain especially. The special effects also benefit from actually being special. 'Meglos' was the first outing at the BBC for the Scene-Synch system, which basically allowed the camera to move when CSO was being used. The principle camera's movements when following the actors etc would be mirrored by the camera providing the background image. By golly it worked too, and the opening episode of 'Meglos' contains some very convincing overlay work. See the DVD extra about Scene-Synch for a fantastic snippet from Barry Letts' 1982 'Gulliver in Lilliput' where a Lilliputian swordsman takes on the gigantic Gulliver's hand. It's really quite impressive. The model work is especially good too, save for the scene of the pirate vessel taking off, which is every bit the equal of the Dalek Saucers in flight from, well, any Dalek story from the 60s or 70s. There are some nice underground city sets, and directorially it looks good in places, with some nice shots that Terence Dudley probably dreamed up to take away from the tedium of the script itself.
DVD extras are thin on the ground, with no making of. The 'Life in Pictures' piece dedicated to Jacqueline Hill is both touching and interesting, and from a nerdy point of view I loved the feature on Scene-Synch. I was less enthused with the Flanagan and McCulloch get together, while 'Entropy Explained' was engaging and boasts a massive typo to look out for. The commentary with Lalla Ward and John Flanagan is nothing special to be honest, I could only manage a cursory listen.
I can only recommend 'Meglos' as a reminder that Season 18 was not some wonderful rebirth of the show. I'd rather watch the entertainingly naff 'Horns of Nimon' a hundred times over. An odd concoction of misfiring, quickly abandoned themes, it's a tedious exercise that fails to convince when it's trying to be serious, and provides no laughs when trying to be light-hearted. Episode 1 flatters to deceive, and by the end of it, it has set the tone for the remainder of the story. Buy it as a completist, but not as entertainment. The extras go some way to redeeming this release, but it's never going to be considered essential viewing.
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